Earthquake Hits Eastern Sumatra

First time I'd ever been in a swinging (ok, make that swaying) building. Quite amusing, actually, to be honest, from a totally personal point of view. There I was typing away on the computer when the whole world started to shake a little around me. I thought I was giddy, perhaps insufficient sleep or stress from the upcoming meeting, but I hadn't suffered from stress-induced giddiness in, like, a million years, if ever, so there I was closing my eyes and quietly and slowly leaning back in my chair - thinking a few minutes' sleep would be enough to shake off the giddiness.

Then the chair started shaking and that was when I got REALLY worried - worried that I was seriously hallucinating, that is.

Thankfully there were other human beings around and they affirmed upon my enquiry that I was not going mad or suffering a serious loss of blood to the brain; in fact, they had initially looked at me like I was insane, since they were rushing to evacuate the building and there lay yours truly snoozing, to all intents and purposes, in his comfortable office chair.

Anyway the entire population of the office decamped to the field outside and then adjourned to the nearby (low-level) canteen for lunch as the earthquake passed.

After a while staff began to whip out their respective O2 XDA's, Palm TX's, and other similar devices to access the Internet in the hope of discovering more about what was obviously an earthquake, probably somewhere in Indonesia. Amazing isn't it, that nowadays we have come to expect so much of cellular telephone networks and broadband wireless Internet access. In the end the first word of the earthquake came from good old fashioned television. Channel News Asia reported the earthquake long before BBC News and AsiaOne picked it up. One day some bright young Channel 5 executive is going to create a screenplay based on this and call it The Evacuation of Shenton Way or something.

Familiarity breeds contempt. The aftershock came around 2 hours later, when we had all returned to the office. This time we half-heartedly made it all the way to the lift column and then decided, en masse, to turn back for our all-important meeting. So nobody evacuated.

At the commencement of the meeting, our senior colleague stood up (the swaying had stopped, thankfully, it was starting to give me a headache) to announce that the building was safe, so long as we all stopped working whenever it was swaying. Somehow I found that very funny.

News of the earthquake can be found here: Earthquake News from the BBC

LMT