The sofa shook, the cat looked up at me so I knew I was not the only one to feel it. Intermediately I knew it was an earthquake. I had been in two before – both in the UK – and so I knew the feeling.
I walked quickly out of the house and stood in the yard. The dogs were sleeping on the ground and nobody else had come out of their house. I started thinking maybe I was imagining it and it wasn’t an earthquake.
I knocked on my neighbour’s door. No – they had felt nothing. So I gingerly went back inside hoping that the ceiling wasn’t going to come down on me. Then my phone started lighting up with WhatsApp messages and so I felt a load better.
It seems half the population felt nothing and the others left their houses pretty quickly. Some Chinese even slept in their cars! I think that’s a bit over the top.
I briefly worried about a tsunami because the quake was out at sea quite close to here but there is nowhere I could have gone to, being so close to the beach. So I waited for one which thankfully never came.