My first ever Earthquake…and I survived!

Okay…so where do I begin? On 08/23/2011 after having a delectable lunch, I was all prepared to dial in on my conference call. Ten minutes into the call, I sensed trembling for 3-5 seconds. It’s usual to hear walking, running from the neighbor’s house. However, this time the trembling daunted me for a few seconds. Because of my meeting, I had to abandon my thoughts. Continued on with my call and before I knew it, the entire house started trembling. My conference call was unmuted at the moment. Team heard vibration on the other end. And I went into a frozen mode. My better half kept screaming from downstairs but my mind could not analyze that it’s not a ‘bhoot’ in the house. It’s a DAMN EARTHQUAKE. Get your butt off of the bed and get moving! I was too terrified and started screaming. My husband had to run upstairs; pull me up and pushed me through the stairs and out the door. When I looked around the neighborhood, I conceived it was no ‘bhoot’ and we just got banged by an Earthquake.

The entire scenario was heard by my team on the phone! We both went back in and sat together. Aftershocks are quite panicking as well so it’s better to sit near the entrance door. I believe I was shaking for the next 15 minutes. Immediately, I updated my Facebook status and in a blink of an eye, the Earthquake status’s jammed up the entire mini-feed page. CNN showed the latest news followed by all the other channels. Pentagon, White House and every building got evacuated in DC. All the networks got disconnected. The funny thing was that Facebook got updated before the media had any clue. HA…Hail to FB! I couldn’t stop myself from giggling while watching the news when the journalist said, “Tokyo must be laughing at us right now”. Well, the panic doesn’t end here. Hurricane Irene is hovering on us. Soon, we’ll feel the wave coming in on this weekend. Wind blowing us at 100 mph and rain slapping us away… Be safe and stay inside!

Lesson learnt: Live each day to the fullest…!