James Cherkoff is, thankfully, safe in Sri Lanka.

He reports

Liz and I are in Sri Lanka. We arrived in this beautiful country ten minutes before the tsunami did. We watched the waves come in from a restaurant high above the beach. Lucky for us. We haven't seen the news in the last week and are only starting to appreciate the scale of the disaster now. The Sri Lankan people are in a state of shock but are clearly very touched by the support they are receiving from around the world. We are back next week.

Yes, when you are there you see a local microcosm and don't realize the global scale of the tragedy