Good bye

If you are in a place like this archipelago these days, you pay attention on how to say good bye. It could very well be your last ride. The recurring land slides, floods and earth quakes, the avian flue and SARS, the plane, train and bus crashes, and, of course, the recent ferry that went missing on the Java Sea. (I have never been afraid of flying, but Indonesian domestic flights always give me a fright, the flights are bumpy because the flights are conducted at rather low altitude.) No reassurance is given. Enough reason for despair and defaitism, for running amok (and I haven't mentioned yet the economic Verelendung: the rising prices, the lack of jobs). It is not fair, though, to tell people on whom hardship falls to merely accept their bad fate.