Early this morning, the chinese daily laying outside greeted me as I opened the door preparing for school. Not that I read chinese newspapers, my mom reads them. What caught my eyes was the number “8.5″ printed in big, red bolded letters. The first thing that ran through my mind was, Earthquake…magnitude…yeah, has to be…shit…8.5?!..last year’s was 9.0. Damn..
After school, first thing I did was to check Google News. So it seems: Yesterday, an earthquake measuring 8.5 in magnitude struck the Indonesian island of Nias, off the coast of Sumatera. It happened at 11pm local time. Well, I was in bed. No wait, I was rushing through my homework at that time. :p
Tremors were reported to be felt throughout peninsular Malaysia. Heck, we didn’t even feel a thing over here in Kuching. I guess that’s another reason to be glad that I’m staying on this massive land-mass of the island of Borneo.
At the time of writing, hundreds have been reported dead and there werent any killer tsunamis (phew). Initially, tsunami warnings were issued immediately after the quakes in the countries across the Indian Ocean. When I was on the way to my school, the radio reported that the tsunami warnings had been withdrawn. Good thing there werent any tsu-freakin-namis, or else the death toll could be much higher.
To all those who were affected by this unfortunate disaster, my feelings and prayers are with you.