Earthquake
When I was waiting outside my office building for my driver to pull up our Honda Accord to pick me up for commuting home, as I do every evening around the same time, I saw a few of my colleagues just stepping out from the building. One of them asked me whether I felt the earthquake or not. I didn't, I must be in the descending escalator when it happened. Later on another colleague told me on the phone that the quake was, though minor, obviously felt, with squeaking noise from around the building. He was on the phone with me while evacuating down the stairs from our office on the 26th floor of the building, no doubt along with many others. As my car passed through other office buildings along the street, it was clear from the assembling crowds that the shock was commonly felt in the region. I immediately felt my nerve that it could be ominous of some disaster from somewhere or, even more horrifying, some major calamity yet to approach right here and soon. I called home but was relieved that my wife reported nothing.
It did not take long for us to realise from the news that the earthquake was from Benkulu, West Sumatra, with a 7.9 magnitude, so huge that it was also felt where we were in Jakarta, apparently also in the neigbouring country of Singapore. It brought on a flashback of memory of my own real-life experience over 12 years ago in Kobe, Osaka, West Japan. It was a major quake of a similar scale, in this supposedly vibrant, cosmopolitan, foreigner-friendly but quake-free town. It happened at around 5am on 17 January, 2005.
But my sense of portent rewound my recollection of past images to an afternoon even two weeks earlier than that fateful date, when I was still in Hong Kong, sitting on a sofa in the clinic in our office building, waiting to see a company doctor. All of a sudden, I felt this sea-sick kind of dizziness brought on by a slight rolling of the building, like a vessel floating on a sea not too rough. Enough looks of surprise - more than shock - exchanged within the clinic just before everybody sprung up for evacuation from the building, no doubt with the disbelief in mind whether this was really happening - in Hong Kong. I did not know at the time, of course, that I would experience a real quake much more severe and seriously life-threatening in a place far away from home in just two weeks' time.
It was my first night moving into a new place of residence in Kobe, about 45 minutes commuting from my office in Osaka on an average day, as I was told - a timing I could never verify after all. I only stayed in that apartment for that first and only one night. I moved in, to my vague memory now, when it was approaching midnight, after a late night meal with my boss at a restaurant nearby. He also lived within the region - Rocko or something like that. We arrived on the same flight from Hong Kong earlier in the evening and decided to fill the stomach before settling into our separate new homes in this foreign land, feeling excited about the new life ahead.
I was pretty knackered already when I set foot into my new home, and tempted to hit the sack right away. But perhaps being spurred on by my buoyant mood about this new found surrounding, though also mixed with a tint of reservation about its possible hauntiness, and my subconcious anticipation for a year-long journery of adventure into the mysterious Japanese culture of eroticism, I chose not to sleep yet, but rather dissipate my spare energy for the night with unpacking. So I enthusiastically hung up my clothes from the luggage into the wardrobe, unpack my boxes of personal belongings which had been shipped to the apartment before my arrival and, funny enough, even wired up my hi-fi set so as to play out my beloved music to quench my thirst for some good melody to fill out the hollow emptiness pressing to my audible sense. It was almost two in the morning when I finally resorted to my new found bed and mattress and passed out.
But not for long, probably no more than three hours. I was woken up with a heart-thumping fright by my ferociously rocking bed, the rampantly gyrating building and the horribly grinding and ear-baffling sound, not unlike those reflected from the runway upon a jumbo aircraft taking off. To my instinctive thoughts of ghost and earthquake combined, I yelled out loud and, with a horrid anticipation of the building collapsing any time soon, I clutched on tight to the headboard of my bed, straining my whole outstretched body bouncing on the haunted bed until the whole motion subsided, perhaps after a minute, more or less. Then I released my grip and huddled myself up into a shrimp-like curl into my blanket, as if its coziness could really protect me from any catastatrophic fatality.
The monster stirred again, with no less ferocity. I could do nothing but remain curled up and shiver under my blanket, again mentally expecting to plunge from the 4th floor to the ground and suffer the breath-taking shock of a roller-coaster kind of free fall before a fatal impact, and possibly being crushed to tatters amidst the chaos of rubble. How desparate I was at the mercy of nature! But I realized I was still intact as the quake subsided again, though losing the sense of time, and my wit woke - I have to run for my life before it strikes again. I hesitated but summoned enough courage to get off my bed and crawl over to the adjacent room where the wardrobe was, still under the wrap of my blanket. Only then I realised that the whole place had turned messy with all fallen objects, all dropping noises no doubt muffled by the demolishing sound of stone grinding during the quake. I quickly searched for my passport I remembered having kept in the inside pocket of a jacket hung up in the wardrobe. No doubt I must have picked up my wallet as well, though I do not remember all details by now.
I dashed to the main door for my life, still desparately hugging to my protective shield of a blanket, and ran and jumped down the flights of stairs to the ground floor, until I found myself confronting a door of emergency exit. My heart picked up a beat and I sensed an instant of apprenhension - not sure whether the door was locked or not. But it readily gave way to my pushing force and I felt an immediate sense of relief and salvage, despite the predicament of being in my pyjamas attire with my ridiculous though mentally reassuring blanket in red, which I was perfectly conscious of.
There was in fact already a small crowd building up with intermittent exchanges in both Japanese and, to my pleasant surprise, English. Of course, Kobe was a merry haven for expatriates and - as I eavesdropped and soon picked up from the commotion of conversations - a quake-free zone for the past 80 years. Welcome to Osaka, Vincent.
It did not take long for us to realise from the news that the earthquake was from Benkulu, West Sumatra, with a 7.9 magnitude, so huge that it was also felt where we were in Jakarta, apparently also in the neigbouring country of Singapore. It brought on a flashback of memory of my own real-life experience over 12 years ago in Kobe, Osaka, West Japan. It was a major quake of a similar scale, in this supposedly vibrant, cosmopolitan, foreigner-friendly but quake-free town. It happened at around 5am on 17 January, 2005.
But my sense of portent rewound my recollection of past images to an afternoon even two weeks earlier than that fateful date, when I was still in Hong Kong, sitting on a sofa in the clinic in our office building, waiting to see a company doctor. All of a sudden, I felt this sea-sick kind of dizziness brought on by a slight rolling of the building, like a vessel floating on a sea not too rough. Enough looks of surprise - more than shock - exchanged within the clinic just before everybody sprung up for evacuation from the building, no doubt with the disbelief in mind whether this was really happening - in Hong Kong. I did not know at the time, of course, that I would experience a real quake much more severe and seriously life-threatening in a place far away from home in just two weeks' time.
It was my first night moving into a new place of residence in Kobe, about 45 minutes commuting from my office in Osaka on an average day, as I was told - a timing I could never verify after all. I only stayed in that apartment for that first and only one night. I moved in, to my vague memory now, when it was approaching midnight, after a late night meal with my boss at a restaurant nearby. He also lived within the region - Rocko or something like that. We arrived on the same flight from Hong Kong earlier in the evening and decided to fill the stomach before settling into our separate new homes in this foreign land, feeling excited about the new life ahead.
I was pretty knackered already when I set foot into my new home, and tempted to hit the sack right away. But perhaps being spurred on by my buoyant mood about this new found surrounding, though also mixed with a tint of reservation about its possible hauntiness, and my subconcious anticipation for a year-long journery of adventure into the mysterious Japanese culture of eroticism, I chose not to sleep yet, but rather dissipate my spare energy for the night with unpacking. So I enthusiastically hung up my clothes from the luggage into the wardrobe, unpack my boxes of personal belongings which had been shipped to the apartment before my arrival and, funny enough, even wired up my hi-fi set so as to play out my beloved music to quench my thirst for some good melody to fill out the hollow emptiness pressing to my audible sense. It was almost two in the morning when I finally resorted to my new found bed and mattress and passed out.
But not for long, probably no more than three hours. I was woken up with a heart-thumping fright by my ferociously rocking bed, the rampantly gyrating building and the horribly grinding and ear-baffling sound, not unlike those reflected from the runway upon a jumbo aircraft taking off. To my instinctive thoughts of ghost and earthquake combined, I yelled out loud and, with a horrid anticipation of the building collapsing any time soon, I clutched on tight to the headboard of my bed, straining my whole outstretched body bouncing on the haunted bed until the whole motion subsided, perhaps after a minute, more or less. Then I released my grip and huddled myself up into a shrimp-like curl into my blanket, as if its coziness could really protect me from any catastatrophic fatality.
The monster stirred again, with no less ferocity. I could do nothing but remain curled up and shiver under my blanket, again mentally expecting to plunge from the 4th floor to the ground and suffer the breath-taking shock of a roller-coaster kind of free fall before a fatal impact, and possibly being crushed to tatters amidst the chaos of rubble. How desparate I was at the mercy of nature! But I realized I was still intact as the quake subsided again, though losing the sense of time, and my wit woke - I have to run for my life before it strikes again. I hesitated but summoned enough courage to get off my bed and crawl over to the adjacent room where the wardrobe was, still under the wrap of my blanket. Only then I realised that the whole place had turned messy with all fallen objects, all dropping noises no doubt muffled by the demolishing sound of stone grinding during the quake. I quickly searched for my passport I remembered having kept in the inside pocket of a jacket hung up in the wardrobe. No doubt I must have picked up my wallet as well, though I do not remember all details by now.
I dashed to the main door for my life, still desparately hugging to my protective shield of a blanket, and ran and jumped down the flights of stairs to the ground floor, until I found myself confronting a door of emergency exit. My heart picked up a beat and I sensed an instant of apprenhension - not sure whether the door was locked or not. But it readily gave way to my pushing force and I felt an immediate sense of relief and salvage, despite the predicament of being in my pyjamas attire with my ridiculous though mentally reassuring blanket in red, which I was perfectly conscious of.
There was in fact already a small crowd building up with intermittent exchanges in both Japanese and, to my pleasant surprise, English. Of course, Kobe was a merry haven for expatriates and - as I eavesdropped and soon picked up from the commotion of conversations - a quake-free zone for the past 80 years. Welcome to Osaka, Vincent.
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