I woke up late that day on 26th of december.

Usually i would always be on the beach on sundays, sometimes early, other times later.

These were one of the later times.

I got involved as people were informed from the radio that they wanted someone to come to one of the temples and help out with some of the victims.

All the hospitals around town were full, and subsequently people that were fit enough, but to my eyes still pretty banged up were sent to the temples where they could get some blankets and a room to get some rest in.

Many of these people were seperated from their family friends and loved ones.

During those times the normal telephone network was congested all the time, it was impossible to make a telephone call, you could stand around with a landline or a cellphone for an hour without getting through.

Since i was doing some work to Norway for a Norwegian company i was also equipped with a VOIP solution.

A SIP based service from a company in Norway.

I was lodged into a guest house by the name of “Patra Mansion”.

If i remember correctly their line was an ADSL of about half a megabit.

Despite the normal telephone network being congested, my VOIP/SIP phone worked fine.

Well not exactly fine, but it worked good enough to help this situation, they had actually chosen a “broadnet” solution in their building based on old unsheathed paired POTS copper cable for their internal network inside the guesthouse, but it sorta worked.

So my first service to people that were in desperate need was to offer my telephone so they could make phone calls to their relatives back home, wether it was South Africa, Sweden, Norway etc.

Some of the ones that came and used the SIP phone came in touch with their family back in their native country, and from them learned about the whereabouts of the people they were looking for, because some had of course called home and provided their family back home with information about them.

Because of the SIP phone i was able to help some families get reunited.

We were actually running 2 of them from my room, one from my laptop and the other one from a box provided to me from my SIP provider.

These days with a SIP phone i have about 280-400 milliseconds latency to Norway from Phuket, during those days i had around 800 milliseconds or more, so at times it was abit akward to make a conversation, because you have to add the latency to the time it takes someone to listen to your statement on the telephone, and for them to respond.

I followed many of the same group of people during a couple of days, helping them to find different hospitals, finding online resources that carried lists with names of people that would be in different hospitals.

For some reason during the congested period i was able to make telephone calls through my Norwegian based SIP phone to a Thai telephone number much more easy than if i were to make from a POTS or cellphone line inside of Thailand.

I found the best way was to help reunite groups, and when they seemed strong enough to function and help eachother one might find other individuals or small groups that might be helped.

This is a technical blog, and i do not want to delve to much into the emotional stress that were experienced during and after.

It did however give me a great sense of meaning being able to be there for my fellow human beings.