‘Earthquake!’
‘What?’
‘There’s an earthquake!’
‘Where?’
‘Here!’
‘When?’
‘Now!’
‘…right now?’
‘YES!’
Pause.
‘Well, I’ll have to turn off the iron…’
That was my reaction to the fact that we were at home on a Wednesday night in the middle of an earthquake.
I didn’t even notice.
Tom had had to tell me. As I couldn’t feel it and didn’t really know how to react. I focused on what I knew, the iron had just warmed up and I’d have to unplug it if the buildings were going to shake. I wasn’t happy about this.
Coming into the next room where Tom was, I saw his look of total disbelief. It turned out to be caused not by the earthquake but by my slow and mundane reaction.
Under 30 minutes later, Tom started again.
‘Earthquake!’
Pause.
‘Earthquake, do you feel it this time?’
Silence.
I felt it. My wide eyes and ashen face showed it. We sat on the bed where we’d been trying to get Netflix working in Korea, as the bed shook, steadily and continually. Looking outside I saw the lamppost moving and the wires shaking to and fro. Should it be going on this long? I looked at Tom. He looked at me. Both unsure of our situation.
I broke the silence.
‘Should we…get out?’
‘Maybe’
That got me. If Tom thought it might actually be bad enough to leave our positions, then it was serious! As we leant forward to stand, it stopped. We leant back, looking at each other with a mixture of relief, humour and fear.
A new risk, one we hadn’t banked on. All part of moving to the other side of the world!