Tsunami - how well do you know this word?

These days when there is an incident of earthquake happening, especially when it is an undersea earthquake, the buzz word seems to be tsunami. Tsunami is the Japanese word for giant waves or killer waves. I have actually noticed that most people do not know the word tsunami - at least before Boxing Day of 2004. Yes, that fateful day saw a 9.1 undersea earthquake off Acheh, Indonesia triggering a monstrous tsunami that devastated many parts of Asia - Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, just to name a few.

I would like to conduct a random survey to find out how many of my blog followers actually knew the term tsunami before the one that happened in 2004. For the record and your information, I knew of the term tsunami when I was about six years old. And I did not learned it in school but by reading about it from a few encyclopaedias Dad had bought for both my brother and I.

I had also learned about the Earth's structure, volcano and earthquake from the very same encyclopaedias. My knowledge about tsunami would be further strengthened in the Geography classes I had attended when I was in junior high school. By then, the term tsunami has become a familiar word to me and I managed to have better understanding about it through those Geography classes in school.

I was quite surprised that many adults I know did not know the term tsunami before the Big One happened on Boxing Day of 2004. I am actually quite amused... this general knowledge should have been known by most people as it would most likely be a very common knowledge that could be easily picked up from various sources and/or reading materials.

You would have picked this knowledge up if you have been a very observant person and a voracious reader like me. And please respond to this blog entry if/when you can, and it does not matter where you are from.