Towards the end of 2003, I fell sick with pneumonia. I had thought that I had contracted a 72 hour virus, but the days passed and my temperature kept spiking. Alone in the house in Sanda and stuck in bed, a friend insisted that I see her doctor. I did and verdict was pneumonia. The doctor wanted me to go to hospital immediately (such was the poor state of my body) but I convinced her that I was able to come daily to her surgery for a tenteki, or intravenous drip, of antibiotics. Fortunately we were on a three week school break and it worked out well.

So it was that I found myself eventually strong enough to come downstairs and watch TV from the comfort of the hori-kotatsu, a sunken heated pit in the living room. The day after Christmas I was watching CNN or the BBC when the news of the earthquake off Sumatra broke, followed by the string of powerful tsunami that brought devastation to communities in Indonesia, Thailand and India.

So often we forget the vast power of the Earth, assuming a stability, an immutability, that really does not exist. We are subject to the laws of the universe and our lives are necessarily contingent upon the changes and random chances that comes with life on an energetic living planet. Yesterday the volcano Arak Krakatau appears to have caused another tsunami with significant loss of life in Sumatra and Java. This is the same volcano that exploded so violently and famously in 1883, its newest iteration an outgrowth from the old caldera.

If humans manage to survive their own colossal folly, and I hope we do, then there will always be the natural threats, which, having always been with us, have helped shape our past and will likely shape our destiny.