Malaysia Airlines MH370

At this moment, my thoughts and prayers are with those on board the missing flight MH370 and all their family and friends.  I am still hoping for a miracle to happen.

Sand sculpture at Puri Beach, India
from the Facebook page "Malaysia Airlines MH370- Tribute"

What irks me about all this is that with 300 odd lives at stake, the people resposible just took their own b****y time to react.  A plane goes missing at 2.30 a.m. (even earlier than 1.30 a.m. by some accounts) and they only alert the rescue control center at 5.30 a.m.  What if their own family was on board?

Then they call for press conference after press conference - come prepared lah, don't let the journalists get the better of you.  From what I saw, the journalists were better informed than the panel.

I used to know a guy who was the PA for a federal minister.  Whenever his minister was to attend a press conference or any meeting for that matter, he would be frantically running around to prepare a brief which included answers to possible questions that may be posted.  Don't they have good PAs anymore these days.

They tell us not to speculate and the PM goes on to use the words like "bereaved" and "condolences".  What are we supposed to make of that?

To top it all we have the morons who, because they HAVE to say something, post the darnnest things on social media not at all bothered about the sensitivities involved.  And the bigger morons who actually share these postings.

When this is all over, and I hope and pray that it will end well, I think we need to evaluate our crisis management capabilities, even for us as individuals in our own homes.