It’s been almost a month since I last posted anything here — I’ve been feeling strangely uncomfortable about resuming my normal inane day-to-day ramblings without first commenting on the tsunami that hit southeast Asia on Boxing Day, but the shocking magnitude of the calamity has rendered me inarticulate. Why does real life seem to be increasingly emulating bad disaster movies these days?

But, life goes on — at least, for those of us that weren’t washed away by a huge tidal wave anyway.