Yay I ran for my life!!!!!!!

[molested_cow]

I don't have a tv, so when I saw that the internet news is saying Tsunami Warning, I was like.... ok.

I am in Taitung, Taiwan, right on the coast. The earthquake was first rated at 7.9, so the US issued tsunami warning to places include where I am. Then, they dropped my location when the magnitude for dropped to 7.6. Ok, I am thinking if I should still bail to higher ground till everything is fine. So here's my logic. If I ran and still get caught by disaster, that's my luck. If I stay, when I could have bailed, and get caught in the waves, that's my stupidity. So I made the obvious choice.

So here's the things I did in sequence:

- I took a ****. No seriously! The waves may be coming at you, but god damn the **** is HERE! Imagine running for your life when it's like knocking on the doors? No good. So I took care of that right away.
- Then I packed. Camera first(except the tripod)! True story.
- Then I packed water, canned meat, instant ramen, towel, bread and a ski jacket (light weight but warm).
- It's pouring outside, so I put on my rain gear on.
- Jumped onto the scooter and rode to a spot not too high but enough to see the coast well, then wait out while I was chatting on FB and whatsapp with my friends and sis about how lol this is.

Then after the warnings cleared, I headed back.

When I first got news of the warning, I quickly notified my neighbors, and they were like... nay it's not coming.

So it didn't. Taiwan is right on the edge of a really deep ocean trench so the chance of tsunami hitting is really small, but I didn't want to take the chance.

In the end, my sister said the tsunami that hit the Philippines was only at 16cm..... and I was thinking... (insert penis joke here).

So that's my uneventful event tonight. Time to hit the bed... shouldn't have had that beer earlier.

 

[Jaemie]

I would have run, too! I experienced a 7.9 firsthand in 2001 in El Salvador. Rolling streets. Collapsed towns. Not fun. Glad you're okay!

 

[pgriz]

Uneventful is good.

Because if life is just too routine, you can remember that we are all sitting on some slag that is floating on hundreds of miles of molten rock, part of a planet that is circling a star that occasionally blurps trillions of tons of hot charged particles in various directions, and we share an obit with a collection of little rocks, mountain-sized dirty snowballs, and occasionally, even larger rubble piles left over from long ago. But don't lose any sleep over it. No-one gets out alive. The trick is to make it meaningful while we're around.