The world shakes...

It's the message that you don't want to receive, but is necessary. "Massive earthquake here, we are all ok but Chch is devastated".
This was what I got, 10.30pm when I was travelling home on the metro from my last class. The thoughts that were streaming through my head had a nice logical reasoning to them, which I would attribute to my scientific left hemisphere, processing and weighing. This message is from my Mum, so I assume "all" means my direct family. That is good news. But Chch devasted? That doesn't sound so good. However, Mum can be prone to over-exaggeration, so maybe it isn't that bad. But she wouldn't want to scare me too much as I am overseas so it could well be accurate, and so many of my friends live in Chch. Conclusion, get on the internet pronto, but there is not internet at my house at the moment, so get off the metro and find an internet cafe.

6.3 - that doesn't look too bad. We have aftershocks bigger than that here in Chile, so hopefully it was just Mum's exaggeration. The light of the day after, in the office on the internet reveals the horror of the truth. Mum wasn't exaggerating - it is devastation, and death, and the earth really does seem to have moved.

People here don't seem to understand. How can they not understand?? It seems they hear 6.3 and write it off as a storm in another land (as admittedly I did to start), but for me, waiting to hear from the other side of the world about friends trapped in buildings, other peoples' parents, and friends seemingly missing, the pavement seems to be tilted upwards, and I am one of those poor people struggling to push through the dust. The photos become like some torture session that I oblige myself to sit through every morning and every afternoon, and the wait is long.

Two weeks later it seems that all my friends are going to live, but the axis on which they live has been forever altered. And I think everyone waits in dread for the "final list". There only exists about two degrees of separation in Christchurch, and it's close relationship with Ashburton only moves the separation one degree further. It seems like the world shook just a little too close to home.