Vicissitudes

Just a mere three years after the Indian Ocean tsunami its presence have been mostly wiped away from the world consciousness ---so many other things have taken precedence, this fad and that, what baby would Jamie-Lynn Spears have, the network wars, the continuing morass in Iraq, the presidential derby in the United States, and most of all, the collapse of the US dollar against the world's currencies. But the lives that have been affected are changed forever, and no headline would change that.

There is one headline, though, that gives pause --- the death of former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in a wanton act of violence. This closes a loop on one of the watershed events of world history --- the rise of "People Power" and the eventual dismantling of Communism. Many of the heroes of that era - Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Mario Vargas Llosa, Corazon Aquino, Benazir Bhutto, Lech Walesa, the Tiananmen Square martyrs --- where are they now? Memory and circumstance have dulled their sheen.

This, I pray, would be a martyr's death that will galvanize the elements in Pakistan toward unity. Let's not talk of worst-case scenarios --- if things can get any worse in Pakistan, the long-term stability of both South and Southwestern Asia will be compromised.

Closer to daily events, salary increase time has come a lot earlier this year --- thanks to our series of studies we are upgrading our salary scale (yay! more money), which naturally, has ignited some premature celebratory speculations --- the grapevine is seething more than ever.

It's still so easy to get caught up with these things - love, life, loss, our lives may be changed by things outside our control ...