Saturday night, and I'm sitting at home (as usual) tapping away on the keys. It's a miserable day and football this morning was freezing. I couldn't even feel my hands and more than once I saw the boys on the field with their hands under their armpits. There were lots of dropped balls and Junee lost today against Harden 4-6. It's their first loss for the season but was a close one, just the same. The canteen is the best place to be when it's wet and windy and lucky for me, It was the Under 13s turn to help out and I didn't mind at all. One lucky lady had the job of standing next to the pie-warmer. We sold lots of hot coffee and chocolate.
I was reading more news stories from China and am in shock over the number killed and homeless. Almost five million people have been left homeless by Monday's earthquake and it's feared as many as 50,000 may be dead. And to make matters worse, at the epicentre of the Sichuan quake, the water level of a lake is rising rapidly and the dam may burst at any time. It's amazing to think that 5 days after the quake they're still finding people alive under all the rubble. The news from cyclone-hit Burma is just as mind-numbing. The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has nearly doubled to almost 78,000 and another 56,000 people remain missing two weeks after the storm. According to CNN, the Red Cross fears the cyclone toll may be as high as 128,000; the U.N. estimates more than 100,000 died. The U.N. estimates 1.5 million to 2.5 million survivors are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care. Aid groups have reached only 270,000 so far thanks to military rulers refusing to allow foreign experts to direct relief efforts despite rising deaths. Today, US lawmakers urged President Bush to consider "humanitarian
intervention" in Burma.
It brings it home how lucky we are to have warm homes and plenty to eat. On Friday I drove to Wagga to have lunch with Emily and Lauren and it struck me how we how the way we live is worlds apart. The faces of those sobbing Chinese mothers were on my mind and I felt blessed to have so few worries.
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