I can remember only that I was rushing around trying to check off work my high school students had completed. I looked up at the clock and saw it was just a little after noon, and I still had the majority of the class to cover. Then the building started shaking. "Earthquake!" someone shouted. You are frozen for a second. I looked up, and the light fixtures hanging from my ceiling are swaying back and forth. "Everybody under the tables! Backs to the windows!" A few students still looked around, amazed. "UNDER THE TABLES!!" I shouted, loud enough to make the remaining few crouch down. Then we waited, as the building continued to shake. It didn't stop. It was like nothing I had experienced, not like the smaller shakes I had felt these past two years. It kept going. The motion was not a violent rocking, but it felt oddly like a giant was gently shaking the foundations of the school. Back and forth we went, in this gentle, rolling motion. But it was not fun - it was unnnerving. A student began crying. Others were even talking to each other - that's how long it was going on. Later someone said it was almost an entire minute.

When it had finally stopped, we slowly got out from under the heavy tables (Admittedly, I have always been happy I have such thick, heavy tables in my room for just this reason). The pipes overhead had stilled, the fixtures no longer swaying. But my legs, for the next ten minutes or so, continued to feel this phantom sway. I kept on asking if others felt it, and a few did.

This was the biggest quake since the fabled 9/21 quake in 2000, which had been the worst quake in 100 years. It'll be fine with me if we don't have this particular experience again in the near future. Didn't I mention something about an earthquake in my last posting? A bit prophetic.

So, what do you do when you are bored? How about install an 1100 lb stone Buddha head in your living room? That's around 500 kilos for those of you in the metric world. So we bought this thing on an impulse buy in Jatujak Market in Bangkok. It was just beautiful, although the one we saw was actually a fountain. We decided to install this without water, as it's a bit too humid here in Taipei to put a huge cascade of water in one's apartment. Probably a good choice.

The installation process went amazingly smoothly. Essentially two men installed it. I was decoration. They bolted a four or five foot long piece of angle iron to the wall, and the Buddha head rests on that, while being bolted at the top. So we haven't had an earthquake in the past 24 hours, but feel free to call after the next reported one, and I'll tell you if the Buddha survived or not.

It looks gorgeous, and I'm also happy to have our living room back, as the thing laid on the floor for nine days wrapped in dirty moving blankets, displacing most of our furniture. Nice to have floor space again. It's been over 24 hours and our living room remains relatively clean!

Pictures are what you want to see, so take a gander at these. Hope you enjoy!