Well, the candles have been doused on the southern beaches and all but the hardest hit folks will be stowing memories of the tsunami back in their closets and getting on a plane headed Anywhere Else. The Thai government flew in about 1,600 next-of-kin from around the world for the commemorations (many thousands more delined the invitation), but it’s doubtful there’ll be much of a payday for the prime minister’s ulterior motive, which was to convince CNN and anyone else who was watching that things are back to normal in the wave-whacked resort-shore provinces. In places it’s still quite grim. Wreckage and ruin and no money or incentive to rebuild. We keep hearing about the continuing body-identification process, but I really don’t understand how it can still be making any progress. If a DNA sample hasn’t shown up in the mail yet to make a match with some dried scalp or the human pulp in a jar, how can they maintain any hope that it might still happen?

My newspaper, The Nation (disaster-day-after cover at right), had a wall-to-wall screensaver on its front page on Christmas Day, one of the more famous photo of the waves splashing into a Phuket hotel garden and pool, but thankfully we carried something a little more tactful on the anniversary itself – candles at the evening memorial. That said, The Nation did do a nice job (shock!) on its website, where you can see a tsunami special here. The photos are nothing to rave about (the one reproduced above is from Associated Press), but you can read a not-unbearably-dull commentary and a bunch of recent-news updates, including one about Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s umpteenth failure to keep his promise, this one relating to mega-battered resort area of Khao Lak.

“In February,” The Nation quoted one of the hoteliers there as saying, “the prime minister came here and boasted how there would be all this help for us, that we would host a grand recovery celebration on December 26 and show the world how Thailand can bounce back. This is not happening at Khao Lak.” That little corner of Phang Nga province was a moonscape on 12/26/04 and most of it still is today. If anyone cares to book a holiday there, only 20 per cent of its original hotel rooms are currently available, and that’s not because the Shriners are in town.

The prime minister was at the anniversary memorials, of course, because they’re high-profile events, but he’s still not going to visit the people a little further south who’ve been underwater for the past week thanks to the worst flooding Thailand has seen in decades. They can rot, he seems to be saying of the 600,000 homeless, because they didn’t vote for me. It’s one of his policies to give priority to the provinces and districts that support his party, Thai Rak Thai – the name means “Thais love Thais”.

I was at work yesterday, on the anniversary, and round about 6pm recalled what I’d been doing exactly a year earlier when I finally heard that a disaster had occurred down south. It was a Sunday, of course, and the family was visiting. I was reading in the bedroom and my brother-in-law was channel surfing in search of a decent football match when the news alerts finally caught everyone’s attention. They were saying a couple of thousand people might have died. The BBC soon got us properly up to speed.

By the next day my wife Ae was on the verge of packing a bag and flying south to lend a hand. I pondered the possibility of going along, but in the end we settled for a shop-around and a taxi downtown to the main hospital that was collecting blood and other needed stuff. Ae had filled a pile of boxes with purchased provisions, we handed them over, I donated a pint of my finest burgundy and we joined a swarm of other people beavering though a mountain of clothing that had been dropped off. It was, er, interesting work. Some evening gowns that were to die for, pardon the terrible pun, along with chic sequinned tops, haute high heels and lush silk neckties heading southward. I could only hope they might come in handy at the funerals.

And, for us, that was the extent of the natural catastrophe of the century. I offered a few observations on my weblog, thanked friends and relatives overseas who called with concern … but that was it.

In the lead-up to the anniversary, Ae and I, and almost everyone else in Thailand, have only had to suffer through some unprecedented cold weather for this time of year. December is normally a sunny 28 to 32 degrees Celsius. Instead we had nearly three weeks of stern clouds floating on 12 to 18 degrees. I had to wear socks around the apartment, which doesn’t look that good when your only other clothing is your Y-fronts, as the neighbours across the way can attest.

Anyway, enough about me suffering the agonies of the chills. Back to the real suffering …

Mourners Reflect on the Year Since Tsunami
Dec 25, 2005
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) – Mourners returned to battered shorelines Monday to mark one year since the Indian Ocean tsunami crashed ashore in a dozen countries, laying waste to coastal communities and sweeping away at least 216,000 lives.
Under a clear sky and before a gentle sea, survivors, friends and relatives of those who died and world leaders commemorated those lost in one of the worst natural disasters the modern world has experienced.
In Indonesia’s Aceh province, which was closest to the earthquake that spawned the waves and bore the brunt of the disaster, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono led hundreds of other officials in a minute’s silence at a ceremony held on a jetty overlooking the sea.
“It was under the same blue sky, exactly one year ago that mother earth unleashed her most destructive power upon us,” Yudhoyono told the gathering.
Similar periods of silence were to be observed at officials ceremonies in Thailand and Sri Lanka, where flags would be lowered to half-staff and bells rung in remembrance. Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu prayers services were being held across the tsunami zone.
Some preferred more personal reflection.
In Thailand, one man sat in the sand, a bouquet of white roses laying in front of him. The man, who declined to talk to a reporter, was among scores of Westerners who travelled to sites along Thailand’s world-famous beachfront where their loved ones disappeared into the waves.
Ulrika Landgren, 37, of Malmoe, Sweden, brought her nine-year-old son to Patong beach where nine friends died. “Somehow it’s good to see this place,” she said, tears falling from behind her sunglasses.
One year ago Monday, a magnitude 9 earthquake – the most powerful in 40 years – ruptured the sea floor off Sumatra island, sending waves 33 feet high across the Indian Ocean.
They crashed ashore in a dozen countries, sweeping entire villages away in Aceh and Sri Lanka, swamping resorts in Thailand and surging into coastal communities from India to east Africa.
At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared, The Associated Press found in an assessment of government and credible relief agency figures in each country hit. The United Nations puts the number at least 223,000, though it says some countries are still updating their figures.
The true toll will probably never be known – many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of places struck were not accurately recorded.
The tsunami generated one of the most generous outpourings of foreign aid ever known. Some $13 billion was pledged to relief and recovery efforts, the UN says, of which 75 percent has already been secured.
But the pace of relief and reconstruction has been criticised, and frustration has grown among some of the 80 percent of refugees who are still living in tents, plywood barracks or the homes of family and friends.
It was a somber Christmas for many of those who decided to hold private ceremonies Sunday.
Sigi Gsteu, of Feldkirch, Austria, wiped away tears as he told of three close friends who died when the torrents flooded their Thai resort bungalow.
“When a person is missing and you don’t have [a body], you cannot say goodbye,” he said as he set two simple wooden plaques engraved with his friends’ names beneath a lone pine tree where the resort once stood.

Left, a Nation photo of one of the daft sculptures put up on a southern beach where the tsunami hit, which for some reason was lit with celebratory fireworks when the picture was taken earlier this month! One can only hope that the permanent memorial being planned is a little more stirring than this moronic vignette. We’ve had a year to think things over. It’s time to come up with something genuinely meaningful.