In Between Panels

Saturday, October 09, 2004

An earthquake struck last night at 10:37 pm while we were having our Artists' Den meeting at Starbucks. The place was packed and we were huddled together around two tables talking about something, I was watching Lyndon draw one of his comic ideas on his sketchpad when I felt kind of queasy from a subtle shaking that lasted some 5 seconds. I thought it was kind of strange to feel that way so I turned my head up and looked at the crowd towards the door to see if anyone felt that. The term didn't occur to me at first then another subtle shaking happened again that lasted some 30 seconds or something under a minute. I don't know who said it first but the attention of the people were drawn towards one another to see who would make the first dash towards the door. The lamps and the picture frames hanging on the walls were noticeably moving from side to side for quite a while even after the minor tremor. After the minor quake, the women on the table beside us almost ran out in fear of a collapsing building. I was already clutching my back pack just in case the rest of the group would follow suit. But we did no such thing, we talked about it but we didn't get out of the place.

We were still excitedly talking about it and the past other earthquakes that happened when Az came in through the door. He was riding on a public transport and "sadly" missed the earthquake. As much as I wanted to bring up the subject of increasing tremors in the past century alone and making a segue to biblical prophecies and stuff, I thought it wasn't the time. We made final plans for tomorrow's bingeing at Lico's house before heading for home some two hours later.

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