Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

I was reading the newspaper when I got the drunk, dizzying feeling. My whole world started to sway like a giant crib. Initially, I thought that I was drunk, and got up to fetch a glass of water to cure the hangover, and I nearly lost my balance when I remembered that I didn’t drink any alcohol the night before. Finally, when my grandmother started swaying too, I was convinced that it wasn’t just in my mind: we were shaking!

According to the National Environmental Agency, Singapore is located in a seismically stable location, though we are in geographical terms near a fault-line, so the quake must have come from a fault line near us. A quick check proved correct.

There was a 6.3 near Palembang, Western Sumatra, and the shock-waves of 2 on the Richter scale could be felt in Singapore as well as Malaysia. Not very scary for the poor people living along the fault lines, but if you consider a country that isn’t prepared for an earthquake, it was something major to see water oscillating in a cup, and walking like a drunk on the 16th storey of a 30 storey building.

What stopped me from panicking was the fact that even poorly built attap houses could withstand a quake of magnitude 3, so a building with a solid foundation should be pretty much just see-sawing without much effect. I was more worried about the resonance forces that ripped apart the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

Eventually, the shaking stopped, and life resumed as usual. Nothing fell from the shelf above my computer: as you can see, they are all perched precariously at a great height.

Procrastination stops me from sticking super-glue on the under-sides to keep them down, just in case tremors of higher magnitude ever strike. Maybe I should stick some sticky tape underneath?

[tags]earthquake, sumatra, singapore, tacoma narrows[/tags]

Filed under: General