Whoa! I’ve just experienced my first earthquake!

Yesterday evening, i was rained in at the office, praying that the electricity would not go out and chatting over the ‘net with a friend and colleague i Finland (hi, krisku!) when everything started to vibrate. It didn’t take a genius to realize what was happening, but what i could not know is whether this was the beginning of something cataclysmic or just a shake. Anyway, it felt like sitting in a building-size moving jeep with no windows. A large building should not shake, according to my senses and understanding of stuff. Well, nothing came down and nothing broke. Even the electricity stayed up. It was exciting and only slightly unnerving.

Today i checked USGS and reported my experience there. The quake was 6.8 Richter in magnitude and 519 km away from its epicentre, it “felt like a number four”. Fact is that while i’m writing this, i feel tiny tremors and have to look at the water bottle beside me to see that the water level is moving and that its just not me imagining things…