Earthquake
Posted by marshall Wed, 30 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
Last night we had an earthquake. I had just put away my laptop and gotten into bed to read when the bed began to shake rather violently and the house started creaking. It didn't take long to realize what was happening, especially when the power went out. I put on some more clothes (trying not to fall in the process) and opened the door to my room. Phil said, "stand in the doorway", and he and Tom and I all stood in our respective doorways and waited for the quake to stop. Patar -- our interpreter -- was very much afraid that it would be another tsunami, and this thought seemed to be echoed by the many locals heading for the streets. Phil guessed that it was about a 6.0, and reassured Patar that if a 9.0 hadn't knocked over this house, something like this quake wasn't going to. He appeared to be right, as even the digital camera that I had set on a ridge on the dresser didn't fall.
With no power (and thus no phone or Internet), we eventually headed back into our rooms and went back to sleep. When I woke up this morning, the power was back on, and I got on-line to check my e-mail. I had several messages from people asking if I was OK. Apparently the earthquake was an 8.7, and was the big headline in the news. Joy King (IT Director at MAF) had gotten in touch with the Meulaboh folks, but no one had heard anything from Banda Aceh and they had no idea if something had happened to us. I wrote back to the various concerned parties, letting them know that we were all OK.
The cafe opened early today in an effort to accomodate others that would be wanting to contact people, but it wasn't overwhelmingly busy. Phil figured he could manage the cafe, so after lunch, Tom, Patar, and I went to the Air Serv house to see if we could get their connection up and running. Based on the testing that Phil and I had done over the weekend, we were able to get the connection up and running fairly quickly this time. So now Air Serv has a broadband connection at their place too.
We went home right after closing the tent at the end of the day instead of sticking around for dinner, since earlier in the day I had been told to expect a call from WMBI in the evening. As soon as we got back to the house and plugged in the VoIP phone, WMBI called and put me live on the air with Dad. We talked for about six minutes, although it felt a lot longer than that to me. Lara managed to get an MP3 of the interview from the station.
After I got off the phone, we talked to the guards, and they went out to get some food. They came back with a good supply of mie goreng aceh (Aceh-style fried noodles, pronounced "mee GO-rang AH-chay"), nasi goreng aceh (Aceh-style fried rice, pronounced "NAH-see GO-rang AH-chay"), and cane (pronouned "CHA-nay"), an excellent bread made with rice flour and egg with loads of sugar. The cane in particular is great stuff. The guards put out their mat on the front patio, and we all sat out there and ate together. It was a good time. It was Phil's last night in Banda Aceh, and I think he quite enjoyed spending it outside with his Acehnese friends.
