I felt the earth shake under my feet....

As the news now tells us, what we experienced last night was a lateral earthquake measuring a 7.5 on the Richter scale. It was pretty deep underground, hence no tsunami warnings or strongly felt aftershocks (if any at all.) Judging from the complete normalcy this morning, damage was minimal and there are no reports of injuries, etc. In fact, this morning I got a text message from my friend Mel who lives in a high rise about 2 miles from our place, on a low floor, that read "Was there an earthquake last night?" Apparently, they felt something that woke them up. but Mel thought it was something trapped in her bathroom. Anything goes in Indonesia I guess. Being on the 32nd floor definitely made us feel strong effects and 7.5 is nothing to poo poo, but all in all the news is good. For our first, and hopefully last quake, we did well.

Our initial reaction after the quake was to get out as fast as possible. For Howie and I, that meant grabbing passports and cash and heading out the door. After getting those things, we scurried a bit wondering what else to grab, where to go and why the halls were so quiet. When we saw we had a good internet connection (at a moment I think when Howie was actually considering grabbing the laptop to take with us) we immediately started contacting friends in Jakarta to see how they were and family at home to tell them we were fine. In hindsight, we probably should have just evacuated....When we did evacuate about an hour after the quake we went to the lobby to find tons of people hanging out in they PJ's and most of them had suitcases packed. It seemed like everyone was fleeing, but not in any urgent way and for that matter, they were all using the elevator to get back up to their apartments to get their things. I do not know much about quakes, but I am pretty sure the elevator is the number one no no. We caught glimpses of people with bags of "important documents" and photo albums. Hmm...should we have grabbed more? And come to think of it we now feel a bit badly for leaving Bert, Ernie and Norman behind...what a sight that would have been. Two white people kind of dressed, pockets clearly stuffed, two turtles and what looks like a bowl of dirt with some veggies in it....

Thanks to all who emailed and sorry to all who worried. We are fine, both at work and doing well.