feeling their pain...

At precisely 2.30pm there were loud sounds of sirens mingled with car horns from outside. I went to look out of our balcony window and saw all the cars, bicycles, carts and even pedestrians were standstill. Didn't know it was 2.30pm but looked at my watch and realised that that was the exact time the earthquake struct in Sichuan Province. It was a moving scene. I don't think I can even comprehend how the victims feel especially parents. They're only allowed one child and put so much into that one child.

It was my first earthquake experience. At first I thought it was my pregnancy hormone - why else would I suddenly feel as though the world was moving apart from me? Then I realised the lights above the dining table were swaying just like our apartment building and then realised that this isn't pregnancy hormone but is either builders were messing about in the basement or an earthquake. I did think that if the swaying went on for another minute I was going to get Tom (who was having his nap) out pronto but as it was the swaying stopped so I called our landlady Jenny and asked her if she could call the management office to see if they were doing any work in the basement. [They put notices up but can't read Chinese so it would go unnoticed if they were]. Anyway, Jenny called back to say that it was infact the aftershocks of an earthquake perhaps from the one that hit Taiwan the day before. I switched on CNN and there it was the breaking news saying that China was just hit by a massive earthquake.

We were lucky that we are 950miles away from the epicentre - James and even our landlady who worked on the 3rd floor of her building didn't feel any movement. Only us who were on higher floors felt it. I could only imagine then the kind of damage there must be nearer to the epicentre and we now know what the people in Sichuan had to and are dealing with.