Shaken

The tremors on Tue had affected us in office. Where was I then? In the toilet.

I was meeting Celena for lunch @ noon. So about 10 mins before 12 I went to the loo. When I was still on the bowl, suddenly I felt I was spinning. My 1st thought was "how come I feel so giddy??" Then I wasn't sure whether it's the building or me because I couldn't see clearly the 3 walls of the tiny cubicle.. seemed like the walls were swaying! Thank God I'd just finished my business & I got up to see the water in the bowl was swirling. Then what appeared in my mind was "earthquake in Indonesia? Or our building collapsing?!?!" What I feared most was the latter as the few of us have always doubted this old building, based on some past experiences.

Thankfully I was still calm enough to flush & wash my hands. When I reached the office entrance (no I didn't run frantically), I saw my colleagues rushing out. When Claris saw me she asked me to evacuate immediately. In a split second I wanted to go & get my bag but with the advice from colleagues I headed straight to the staircase. Only then I felt the tension.

When we were going down the stairs, 1 of my colleagues slipped & accidentally pushed the other 2 in front of her. I was shock to see the 3 of them fell right before me & quickly helped 1 of them up. But we're still not moving... & then I saw a pair of legs were laying on the floor. It's our near 60 y.o. receptionist. Poor lady.. she must have already gone wobbly & the fall had aggravated her fright. As a result all the people (including our neighbours & students upstairs) were being jammed up there. So I used up almost all my strength to get her up & half-carried her from 5th level to ground floor. A big relief when we finally went out of the building. Quite drama right.

Very soon after, we got news that there's an earthquake in Indonesia. After some minutes of commotion, we went for our lunch together. Thereafter, though much to our reluctance to return to the office as we didn't trust our building, we still went back around 1.40pm.

Then about 10 mins later, we got the 2nd round of tremors which lasted only less than 5 secs. Very coincidentally, it happened just when I was about to go to the toilet again. We're so ready to evacuate again but ended up only 1 colleague ran down. But according to this colleague, many of our neighbours went down after the 2nd round. So are we the gungho ones? Me? Definitely not.

Apparently, my toilet story became the joke of the day. Ok at my expense lor. So I also gave my sound advice to my female colleagues for that day - "bring your handbag along when you visit the loo".