Whakatane rocks

When Alice and I were living in Taiwan we experienced the occasional earthquake in our apartment which was on the 5th floor. The building itself had 11 floors. Obviously I am not too sensitive to these sorts of vibrations as on several occasions Alice said to me `Can you feel the earthquake?´ First I thought that she was kidding me. But when I noticed the circles on the surface of the water in Alices drinking glass I believed her. A couple of times I also woke up during the night when there was a bigger earthquake; the bed rocked and the closet swang impressively. For somebody who is not experienced in earthquakes it is not a very comforting feeling to sit in the middle of an apartment block when the walls suddenly start to swing back and forth  - especially not for one who lived most of her live in an area where natural disasters of any kind are almost unknown (Praise the Oldenburger Country...)


When we later moved to New Zealand I was prepared to expect earthquakes there as well. And it wasn't long after we moved into our new house that the walls were swinging and the floor vibrating. And so I said to Alice, `Oops, that must have been an earthquake´. But Alice, who was used to earthquakes for her entire life, explained `Na, that was no earthquake, that was just a truck passing by on Domain Rd´.   And we had this sort of dialogue more than just once in a while...it seems that Domain Rd is build on sand dunes, which wobble rather a lot.

Two days ago there were about 13 earthquakes within less than 24 hours in this area, which is a lot even for a country that is used to earthquakes. Two of them were so intensive that they woke me up in the middle of the night. Lying in bed in such a situation I suddenly knew how the Gauls felt - refering to Uderzo & Coscinny - when they feard that the sky would fall onto their heads - whereas I would have contented myself with the ceiling and the roof. However I still wasn't sure whether it was an earthquake or passing trucks on Domain Rd.  And I asked myself how many passing trucks and how many earthquakes I would have to experience to be able to tell as accurately as Alice, `Ah, that was just a truck passing..´