granted

11th floor. midnight. gaming. who is shaking my chair?!?! please stop! the curtains are shaking, my housemate's table is shaking. everything is. tremors.

when i started feeling the tremors last night, i felt curious, and i wanted to stay on a little bit longer. it's something we don't experience every day. i was amused by the trembling and shaking and the 'unstableness'. now that i think back, i was taking my life for granted. the thing which amused me may cause my death. it's like having this split second of euphoria when driving at high speed and wham! crashed, die on the spot. it was really exciting to feel the building shake, but then again, i took my life for granted. i thought things will be safe and nobody ever thought that the building will collapse (it never did though). i could have died experiencing the moment of high. anything could happen at that time. stupid me.

when i realized how serious the situation was, we started rushing out of the house, to the ground floor. at that time while descending the stairs, the only thing in my mind was: I DON'T WANNA DIE THIS WAY! ANYWAY BUT THIS! in the end, we had to wait for a few hours for things to clear up. the fire brigade, the police. things settled down pretty well. so that's my first experience of a teeny weeny earthquake. i wonder how the real one would be...

i wasn't the only one taking life for granted. almost all of us, malaysians, take our safety for granted. people taking their own sweet time smoking, putting their best effort to look good before coming down, taking their own sweet time walking down. it's not our fault though. we were only trained for fire drills. from kindergarden until secondary school, we only had fire drills. for 12 years, i have been nurtured to think that only fire is dangerous. we only practised on fire drills. no precaution taken on tremors and earthquake. maybe because of that, i thought that everything will be fine when i first felt the tremors. hey, it's just a tremor, not a fire... but no, things are more serious than what we, malaysian students know.

i think from now on, 12 years of fire drills and fire drills alone won't be adequate. we'll have to prepare for tremors, earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, and god knows what next natural disaster. when these things happen, only one thing can be in our mind - fear. not amuse, not curious, not anything except fear. do not take life lightly.

as an ending note, i really enjoyed that feeling! it was like once in a lifetime experience! (i won't wanna feel it anymore!!) but it's really nice. the split second of high and adrenaline rush was seriously fun! :p