My earthquake experience

Today a very large earthquake hit the central part of China. Reports of the magnitude are anywhere from 7.5 to 7.8 on the initial quake. While it is still early, reports are that it caused quite a lot of damage throughout different parts of China, as such, I don't want to make any light hearted comments as it appears to have been pretty big.

At around 2:30pm Monday afternoon, I was in my office in Shanghai on the 45th floor of our building reading a document. All of the sudden I felt a little naucious, reaching for my water I noticed it was swishing back and forth in the bottle. Thinking that I was just dizzy or light headed I didn't think anything of it. About 5 minutes later a couple of colleagues of mine came over and asked me if I felt something, I just told them that I felt dizzy and didn't think much of it. One of the colleagues from California said she thought it felt like the building was swaying back and forth and said it felt similar to an earthquake. Upon further investigation (looking at http://www.usgs.gov/), we found out that an approximate 7.8 earthquake hit about 500 miles away from us at around 2:30. Let me just clarify that I truly felt dizzy, I really saw my water swishing, this isn't something that I made up after people began to talk about it. It was my first, ever, experience with an earthquake and it felt weird. Not being on the ground, I can't say that I felt a shaking experience, but being on the 45th floor, the tremors (some saying in Shanghai they were as high as 5.7) definitely made me feel like I had vertigo or motion sickness...and I was just sitting at my desk reading.

So I can say now that I was in an earthquake (even if I wasn't right where it hit), but it was definitely an experience. Also, I watched Cloverfield tonight, which probably isn't the best choice of movie after swaying back and forth in a building and being that our apartment is on the 20th floor, but oh well, I can't say that I think any big monsters will attack Shanghai anytime soon. This is probably also why this blog entry seems more like a short testimony of sorts (darn Hollywood getting in my head).