Shaken and Stirred

Yesterday was a day full of excitement. Not all good excitement mind you. Yesterday we had two earthquakes, the first one at about 3 pm was a 4.2 and the second one at about 8:16 pm was deemed to be only 3.9 in magnitude.

This is earthquake country and the last big one that hit this area was in 1989, 22 years ago. Whereas the major faults around the globe had big ones lately, we still haven't. It is inevitable to have a big one. One is expecting it, but also fearing it.

Living in this region certainly makes one always on the lookout for the big one. The first earthquake happened when I was at work, near the epicenter (Berkeley). Our building shook once or twice, but not the sideways shake, I thought it was the up and down movement, which was scarier. Now our building made so much noise that nerves were rattled more than anything in the building. This reminded all of us that well we never had the big one.

The irony of it is yesterday was statewide earthquake preparedness drill. Every gov't offices and schools performed safety drills a few hours before the first one.

I recovered well from the excitement of this shaker, but the second one was a bit more difficult to get over with in my case.

We were dining in Berkeley, of all places. Who knew there would be another quake after the mild one earlier this day. We were having a good time getting together with friends who moved in the area from New York 3 years ago. We knew each other from church but we didn't really see each other outside of church functions until last night.

We chose to eat at TASTE OF HIMALAYAS, which is a Nepalese and Indian restaurant. The food is superb by the way. But this post is about the temblor so I'd forego the food descriptions.

We were done with our dinner when the quake hit. Everyone inside the restaurant paused and you could see that no matter how savvy these people are having lived here and experienced the shaking, you could tell the nerves have been rattled. Mine was definitely frazzled. My heart skipped a beat and I felt ill :). I was thinking was this going to be the big one. Because the shaking took longer than the first one and more noisy.

I couldn't wait to leave the restaurant and go home, which is about 15 miles away. I was worried that mom felt it and panicked, that something fell on the floor, glasses broke, and that the cats were spooked.

Luckily when we got home mom had no clue what just happened. Neither did she feel the first one. Good thing. And the cats seemed to be behaving normally.

Now this calls for preparations for the big one. While we always keep a case of bottled water in the garage and we have some first aid kit, we don't have the emergency preparedness kit. That is the next in line. We also must have food set aside for when we couldn't cook. It's scary. And I'm still frazzled.

You can't blame me. I had a big one experience. I was in the Philippines for the 1990 earthquake that hit Central Luzon. That was the scariest experience of my life and I don't want to repeat that.