The first earthquake in my life

For a Singaporean, experiencing an earthquake for the first time in her life is a really uniquely scary thing. Not to mention, two earthquakes that happened in a short interval of 8 minutes. And to add on to it, strong earthquakes with epicenter near to Tainan (Richter 6.7 and 6.4 in Hengchun and Pingtung).

The first earthquake struck when I was watching VCD in my room. The first thought that I had at that time was," Oh shit, is this an earthquake?!". And I sheepishly hurried out of my room to look for my roommate (who was in the TV room at that time), hugging tightly to my tortoise doll. My roommate seems dazed and when she saw me, she assured me and told me that the past earthquake was a pretty strong one. She asked me to mentally prepare for smaller tremors, but told me everything should be fine. Hearing that, I went back to my room, thinking that if this is a strong earthquake, then maybe it wasn't that bad after all. It's true things were shaking horizontally, and I felt a bit giddy, but overall, I thought it was milder than I expected.

Feeling relieved, I went back to my room to resume watching my VCD. Eight minutes later, another earthquake struck. And it is NOT a tremor. Books placed on the table were trembling. The door next to me was rattling loudly. And everything seems to be shaking. Feeling really frightened, I ran out of the room again. And halfway down the corridor, the lights went off and girls started screaming. I have to grope around in the dark for about 1 min before the back-up generator was powered up. Electricity! Life saver! Whoever invented electricity is a genius...

Everyone was scared, foreigners and locals both alike. The security broadcast over the PA system and asked us to be careful of tremors. I quickly packed up laptop and passport into my bag and ran downstairs. Phew...this is definitely an experience.

I was pretty amazed that everything rebounded back so fast. 1 hr later, when I walked down the streets, everything seems so normal. In fact, I was pretty amazed how fast I recovered from my trauma. Like what they say, I am the "lucky" one. Everything that can possibly happen, will happen to me. Damn.