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My cousin John, in Michigan, emails me all sorts of interesting things. Today he sent one about Chinese watermelon carvings, oddly enough. The carvings in the photos were so intricate, so delicate, that I thought I’d share them with you.

Impressed, I ran a Google search on the topic and found articles with instructions on fruit carving, a brief explanation on the art of fruit carving (and other solid objects), even how-to books on the subject available for online purchase.

One of the URLs piqued my interest: “thaiwave.com.” OK, now I’m wondering if this was a really bad joke in the wake of the tsunami. It turns out to be a link to Benjarong Magazine online, a tourist magazine serving Thailand and Southeast Asia.

So I began to wonder: how is the area doing since the tsunami? How are they progressing with the cleanup? We saw all sorts of news coverage on the devastation of the area, including some awesome amateur video footage taken during the event, but now it seems as if the media is suddenly enamored with the historic elections in Iraq — and has no idea that anything at all is going on related to the tsunami (what tsunami?).

Surely, the mainstream media can be fickle at times. Radio and television news services are so oriented to “Now!” that it seems as if they forget that these things have a longer lifeline to them: a past, present and future, if you will. Politicians tend to exploit and manipulate this “Now!” culture to their own advantage, using out-of-context quotes and sound bites to mangle memories and alter opinions (remember “I actually voted for it before I voted against it”?).

I love the Internet. It’s different: it remembers. It holds all sorts of information gathered over a period of time; you just need to look for it. Pull up the information on whatever topic and make up your own mind. Powerful stuff.

So, my curiosity already piqued, I thought I’d dredge a few things up:

I explored the Benjarong Magazine site menu, and found a photo gallery on the progress of the cleanup operations in Phuket (pronounced: “poo-KET”), one of the hardest-hit areas. There are some awesome images here; give them time to load. New images are posted daily.

Hotel rates in the region have taken a plunge. Phuket-hotels.com lists generic rates and availabilities for the area, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, find the link that says, “Last Minute Hotel Discounts,” directly beneath the “Print this Page” button. The link will take you to LateStays.com, with the Phuket area already selected and displayed. Rates are in Thai Bhat.

If I’m reading it correctly, hotel rooms are currently being discounted some 30 – 60%, if not more, during peak American tourist season, obviously reflecting decreased demand — yet another casualty of the tsunami.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have seen cleanup cost estimates reaching into the billions and time estimates reaching well into the next decade; I wonder how the tsunami will affect the Southeast Asian economies — from a lack of tourism and from businesses shifting suppliers to alternate companies (and countries) because of tsunami-related infrastructure damage and difficult travel.

We may never know the answer to this; the tsunami may well be the single, most expensive natural disaster in history.