I fell in to a burning ring of fire...

The world is shifting. It changes imperceptibly every day through processes we don't even notice, such as erosion.

Sometimes Mother Nature likes to flex her geological muscles. Bit of a show off, she is.

I'm not going to explain geology to you, so if you don't know anything about plate tectonics, please go read up on it and then come back to this post.

When a plate starts to release, it triggers different reactions. Earthquakes along fault lines, subsidence, water table changes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis. Sometimes the signs are so small we can't even tell, unless we're connected into sensors and actually follow press releases from geological associations.

When new islands form, however, we notice. When volcanoes spew ash thousands of feet into the stratosphere, we notice.

The Pacific plate is big, and it's grumpy. More importantly, it's releasing energy along its perimeter, also known as the ring of fire.

Mount Redoubt erupted in Alaska. Last week, a new island (and lots of pumice) burst out of the ocean near Tonga, creating tsunami fears. It looks like we're in for a little bit of a show, courtesy of Nature herself.

The only problem is, Nature isn't a person, has no emotion, and doesn't give a rat's ass about anything on the face of this planet. We might like to think we're actors in her play, but we aren't even an important part prop. We're little masses of expendable carbon-based material that will eventually be recycled back into the depths and converted into something else.

With that kind of fatalism in mind, I am curious as to what will happen around the Pacific rim next.

Earthquake wise, the ring of fire shakes all the time. Significant shaking happened in 2004-2006, most notably killing thousands in a tsunami, along with thousands more perishing in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Tonga in separate seismic shakeups. This period also includes the 7.6 magnitude quake in Pakistan.

But that doesn't mean any of it was related, according to the China Post. At least, they thought it didn't in 2006. But what about now? Are we in for another seismic rumbler of a year?

Something to keep in mind whilst booking my vacation, at any rate.