...the blogger of doom

Well the planet certainly is having a big of a yawn and stretch at the moment. Major earthquakes in Indonesia, a tsunami Polynesia, floods in India, a typhoon in the Philippines. It's almost as if the earth is trying to shrug of the itchy parasite that is the human race.

I've been to Padang, and stayed in that big hotel that is now just rubble. In fact many of the places I've visited at in Indonesia have suffered complete devastation after I left.

• Padang, West Sumatra, September 2009 - Major earthquake. Major landslides around nearby crater lakes. >1,500 dead.

• Sibolga, North Sumatra, December 2004 - Boxing day tsunami destroys the town. ~240,000 killed
  

• Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra, November 2003 - Flash flood destroys village. 239 dead.

• Cianjur, West Java, September 2009 - Earthquake and landslides. 86 dead.

• Pangandaran, West Java, July 2006 - 7.7 magnitude earthquake and tsunami destroys fishing village. 668 killed.

• Kuta, Bali, October 2002 and 2005 - Dual terrorist bombings kill 225.

• Yogyakarta, Central Java, May 2006 - 6.3 magnitude earthquake, 5,782 dead.

• Medan, North Sumatra, September 2005 - Mandala Airlines 737 crashes in the city enroute to Jakarta, killing 144 people. I caught the same flight a few years earlier.

Spooky. Don't invite me around to your place for dinner. If I am some sort of a cosmic lightning rod, I'd stay away from Lombok, the Gili Islands, southern British Columbia and San Francisco for a few years, though I think the real moral of the story is that Indonesia is a dicey place to live at the best of times. Poor buggers.

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