Earthquake part 2

The first earthquake was almost subtle compared to today’s quake.  You can compare and contrast between videos (and if you haven’t seen the video of the earlier quake, I’ll point out that the chandelier in this video is the *good* one of the two in our apartment...and they came with the apartment, ok?)

This quake measured 6.1 it appears. It lasted longer and started with a series of up and down movements, followed by much stronger side to side motion.  I’m not sure what if any seismic dampening this building has, but it was vibrating like a tuning fork.  The chandelier and the building seemed to find some kind of harmonic resonance as the pendulum action of the light continued to grow long after the actual earthquake seemed to have stopped.  If I hadn’t stopped it, I got the sense that it would have continued swinging for many minutes.

Unfortunately it sounds as though there was at least one fatality, and a number of people injured.  I don’t know of any significant major infrastructure damage.  I think they’ve got a pretty strong set of seismic requirements for all buildings here.  I don’t know if they shut down the high speed rail to check out the tracks and other systems, but I did see trains screaming by as I was out riding my bike this afternoon, so if it was down for inspection it didn’t last too long. 

Make it....

....Funky!

Riding the roads of Taiwan, I often encounter funeral processions. It will be good to learn more about Taiwanese funeral traditions, because they’re obviously very different than in the US.  One thing I see regularly involves a truck with people playing drums and gongs.  Since I only hear them in passing, I don’t know if there’s a standard set of patterns/’songs’ that they play or not, but so far, most of what I’ve heard sounds cool, but pretty much the same and not too special to my ear.  But the other day, there was a funeral drum/gong truck I heard that had something that always catches my ear, no matter the kind of music - it gets called different things,  groove, pocket and even, at times FUNK.  If I hadn’t been on a divided road going the opposite direction, I would have been hard at work chasing this truck to hear more.  Sadly that wasn’t possible, but the snippet I heard was enough to make me imagine the conversation before they started to play went something like this....(but probably in Taiwanese, of course)

Well, that was fun....

First earthquake here in Taiwan... nothing too big, 5.6 or something I think.  There were plenty of earthquakes during my time in LA, and a few in Portland too, but I've never experienced one from the 22nd floor of a building.  Kinda cool sensation.

I identify with this more than I'd like to admit....

..... but I will try to redeem myself by pointing out that, fortunately, I identify with Goat too, not *just* Rat, as you might have been thinking.  This has precisely nothing to do with moving to Taiwan... I just stumbled across the scan of this strip on my computer and had to share.

Pearls Before Swine (blog), website with strip archive