Unsuspecting

Look back on 10 March, look back on early morning on 11 March. Think of millions of Japanese... How many of them thought on 11 March in the morning their country would be devastated by a destructive earthquake Japan had not seen for decades? I bet the number ranges somewhere between 0 and 100 and is slightly misleading, as to carry out this experiment correctly we should exclude all geologists, seismologists and other people who deal with earthquakes day in, day out. But ordinary people? It struck them out of the blue. This is the life, its charm consists also in unpredictability...

On Friday I watched footages of monstrous tsunami waves wreaking havoc to Japanese coast and apart from sympathy I felt a strong admiration for that nation. Film coverages showing people's behaviour during the earthquake showed an amazing picture of people who, confronted with a dreadful danger, kept a cool head, do not fall into panic and try to wait out the worst. Japanese construction technology again has proved its mastery. Very few building were destroyed by the earthquake of magnitude of 8.9 Richter degrees itself, that was the tsunami wave that really went on the rampage. Trains did not derail when the earth was quaking, they were wiped out by the blast of seawater. Japanese communication and early warning systems also worked perfectly. Thousands of people from coastal areas were told to evacuate just two minutes after the giant wave formed near the epicentre of the earthquake. Given the scale of the disaster, death toll of 10,000 to 20,000 is not a striking figure. Probably if the same happened in any other country, in densely populated area, the number of fatalities would be much, much higher...

On Saturday early morning everything seemed to herald a nice weekend for me. The twist of fate hit my family and me out of the blue. Fortunately, things are slowly getting back to normal, but I had to cross out a few items from my weekend to-do-list, so during this short spring episode (at least the weather is uplifting - sunny, temperature "in its teens") I had to do without the first bike ride this year and gave up on writing an important post about Polish pension system reform. Big apologies for such a short posting.

Hopefully, things will straighten out and next weekend I will publish a post which has been written since late November and will be the longest published on PES. In two weeks, circumstances permitting, I will catch up with the issue of pension reform, the post planned to released today will be supplemented by coverage of a TV debate between one of the biggest advocate of the reform, finance minister Jan Vincent Rostowski, and one the biggest opponent of the reform, Leszek Balcerowicz, tentatively scheduled for 21 March.

All in all, life has reassured and convinced me it should not be the bed of roses. All difficulties toughen us up, if we do not let them kill us, they make us stronger, they shape out resilience. This is the leaf to be taken out of the Japan's book. The earthquake and the subsequent tsunami did bring the Japanese to their knees. Mentally they will get up of their knees quite soon, but the damages will pose a much bigger problem for the economy. Japan is the most indebted country in the world, with the public debt accounting for almost 200% of GDP. For this reason the earthquake will take a heavy toll on the Japanese economy...