Tremors

Yesterday, I felt earthquake tremors for the 1st time in my life.

I was seated at my desk doing work when suddenly my colleague and I heard someone racing past our work stations towards the door. This 'racing' colleague is a feather-weight lady who was thumping down the isle because she was rushing to a meeting. (Running to a meeting at the last minute is common here because officers in charge of items which are scheduled to be tabled to Management at review meetings will often be informed to go to the conference room only when it is their turn to present their item.)

Just as I looked up from my laptop, I suddenly felt the carpeted floor sway a little. My feet were both flat on the floor because I was seating close to the edge of my chair. So the swaying was very distinct, almost like the way the ferry would always feel whenever we 1st step onboard it at the pier. A little wobbly.

I instinctively moved my arms back from the keyboard and held on to the edge of my desk, to stable myself. The seasick feeling became a little more pronounced as I shouted aloud to my colleague in the next work station, "Why is the floor moving ah?! And my chair and table too?!" Even WY and WF's drawings which are pinned on the front partition of my work station seemed to be swirling left and right!

My colleague thought that I was joking and probably meant to joke about the racing colleague who had just gone past us, and replied, "No lah, it was J running lah!" I became a little more uncertain and asked even more anxiously, "No lah, it cannot be J. She's already gone out of the door but my chair is still swaying!!" This time, I held on to different parts of my desk, just to be sure.

Then just as suddenly as it had started, the tremors stopped abruptly. The floor stopped swaying and the desk felt still once again. But the seasick feeling lingered on... and on.... By this time, my colleague had come out from her work station and was looking at me curiously and asking, "Are you ok?"

I was ok, yes, except that the seasick feeling was making me a little nauseous - not exactly like wanting to vomit but somehow, like something inside has churned a little and made the head a little "gong gong".

The weird thing was that my colleague is usually much more sensitive to slanting floors, tilted table and chairs, and 'jerky' driving etc, all of which we both call 'motion-sickness causes'. This time, however, she didn't feel anything amiss. I told her that she is very fortunate not to have felt the swaying, it wasn't nice a feelingat all.

It was only minutes later that the office maintenance people sent an email to everyone to clarify that there was no building works being carried out in the building. One officer responded to that email and attached this:

Latest update
METEOROLOGICAL SERVICES DIVISION, NEA
TREMOR IN SINGAPORE
INFORMATION ON SOURCE EARTHQUAKE
______________________________________________________________________________________
Serial No.: 2
An earthquake was detected at 11:49am, 6 Mar 2007 in CENTRAL SUMATRA, approximately 430km from Singapore. The magnitude of the earthquake is 6.6 on the Richter scale. The epicentre is located at latitude 0.4 South and longitude 100.4 East.

Later that afternoon, my other colleagues started to ask around if we had felt the tremors earlier. All agreed that they still felt a little seasick even though the floor was no longer swaying. I still felt a bit "gong gong" as the exchange went on.

Some colleagues who were passing by also chipped in to describe the crowds they had seen gathered outside People's Park and how Capital Tower had evacuated the offices in the building. It must have been quite a buzz elsewhere.

Soon after that, CP called to tell me about how the tremors had been in Yishun. R also smsed to ask if we had felt the tremors. He said that HPB had also evacuated everyone from the building!

When I called Mother at home, she said that she hadn't felt any tremors at home. Her headache was more the OL nex door, not any earthquake in Sumatra. Sigh, that headache won't stop any time soon, I guess.

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From the media reports, we learnt that there were 2 rounds of equally strong earthquakes yesterday, but I had felt it only the 1st round.

I was just thinking, the 2nd round of tremors must have come at a time when I was still feeling that lingering seasick feeling and so, for better or for worse, I had been blissfully unaware of the repeat tremors.