Exactly eight years ago as I write this I received an urgent call from a friend on holiday in Thailand. At that time, I was sleeping off the effects of the previous day. It is quiet at this time of the year in South Africa, when the country goes into deep aestivation, from the public holiday a week before Christmas until the first working day after New Year's Day.

My friend was in a resort which had just been struck by the tsunami triggered by the 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra. After establishing that he and his mates were safe, he had decided that he needed to tell a journalist, on the assumption that this would be a big story, which was prescient of him. As you may recall, not everyone immediately grasped the significance of what had happened - how could we? That became apparent only over the following few days, as reporters reached the remoter parts of Aceh, which until then had been off limits to foreigners.

After my friend's call I rushed to work, but was unable to summon anyone else to come into the office. In any case, the newspaper that I worked for at the time had suspended publication until the first weekend in January. From Johannesburg, I wanted to alert our coastal bureaus to the fact that a tsunami, travelling at the speed of an airliner, would hit the South African coast in 12 hours. But all the numbers I rang went unanswered. None of the local media picked up the story either.