2004, a year to remember how fortunate we are...

2004, a year to remember...
A new year, a new start...but 2005 didn't get a very cheerful welcome. All new year celebrations programmes on TV was cancelled, and 2005's coming is celebrated in a sombre mood. As all of you know, 26th December 2004 will be remembered as that fateful day when hundreds of thousands of people across Indonesia, Thailand, India and many other countries lost their lives to the unmerciful forces of nature. Whole families were wiped out, whole villages were gone like they were never there. It happened so near to Malaysia, thank god nothing serious here. Made me realise how fragile life really is...

In memory of those who lost their lives on 26th December 2004...let us mourn their deaths, and lend a hand to those who survived...

Death is nothing at all.

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I, and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other,
that we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we shared together.
Let my name be ever the
household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort,
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
Somewhere very near,
Just round the corner.

All is well.

- Henry Scott Holland (1847 - 1918) -
Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral