Earthquake

Through I've had the chance to live at quite a few different places they all have one thing in common. Never, during the time where I've lived in those places, even for a fleeting moment did I feel unsafe. This is a little different in Japan, it's here that I've felt, if only for a flashing moment the feeling of being in a potentially unsafe environment.

I wouldn't say I'm the sort of person who panics, in an earthquake situation. At least when compared to others. It's strange really, the first earthquake I felt when I came to Tokyo was only a few days after arriving. I was in the kitchen cooking something (potentially very dangerous now that I think about it), with something in the frying pan. I felt a shake, it wasn't strong, just slight, but distinct enought to be felt. My first though was that it was a train. You see, our dorm, is right next to the train track, so I often hear the sound of the train rushing by. Sometimes, I think there is also a little vibration as the train passes by, so my natural instinct when I felt the tremor was that I thought it was a train. But then I noticed that the sound of the train has passed, and the tremor was a little too strong to be that of the train. I just stopped for a moment, then went on with my cooking. "Oh, it's an earthquake I though". Somehow, I have kown that this country often had earthquake, and since it wasn't very strong, I just thought it was a normal thing. Little did I know that at the same time, some of my friends on the adjacent building was already in panic, rushing out of their room and approaching the emergency stair case. Maybe it was my lack of knowledge of earthquake, or the assumption that I held that in an earthquake prone country of Japan the buildings are built to withstand such quakes, I'm not sure. But I did not feel any panic \, at all, rather unusual for a guy who's felt an earthquake for the first time I'd say when I think about it now.

Since then I've experianced many more earthquakes, and maybe it's because my knowledge of earthquakes and the situation of Japan with relation to earthquakes, or the fact that recently earthquakes here have been unusually frequent and strong, did the though come across my mind of how potentially deadly it could be. I could say that the one that really shook me up was one last month, a 5 with it's epicentre very near to Tokyo. It was a Saturday afternoon, I was at the lab alone, getting ready for my presentation the following Monday. My friends were at a seminar, in a new building on the other side of campus. I had attended the seminar in the morning, but decided to skip the afternoon session since I've already listened to the topic once before, and had work to catch up on. I was listening to music, doing my work when I felt my seat start to shake. The tremor was stronger than normal, and it started to shake harder, I immidately unplugged my earphones, deciding weather I should go under the table, or run out of the building (our lab is on the third floor). Our building is pretty old, and it's condition shows it. As the shaking increased, the glass begin to rattle harder and harder with the blinds crashing on to it. Something crashing hard against each other, I bended and though if it gets any harder I'll have to take the cover of my table, and brace for the worse. At that moment it flashed through my mind. "Is this the beginning of the end?", and then just like that it stopped. I became calm. I waited for a while, making sure that it really had stopped. I got out walked to the corridor, there was just one other guy in the building. He also came out of his building, a western guy with blond hair. I looked around, I looked at him, he looked at me. We said nothing, he continued on his way, I continued on with mine, as if nothing has happened. But ofcause something did, we both knew it, but maybe both of us didn't want to say anything at that time. I got back to work, sitting on my computer seat. For a couple of hours after that I though I felt small shaking. I say I thought because I didn't know if there really was a quake, or just my imagination. Was it an aftershock? Or did my mind make it up. I didn't know.

After a few hours, my friends came back from the seminar. Their first words was "are you alright?".
"Yes", I answered simply.
"When the earthquake came I thought this building would probably be quite dangerous, it's quite old," one of my friends commented.
"It did shake hard indeed" I answered.

I worked a little while longer. We discussed about what each person was doing when the quake came, we checked a website, and found that most trains had stopped indefinately. I left a little early that day, going out to eat with my friends. We had made an appointment before the quake, and at that time I didn't know weather I was going to go, since I wanted to finish my work. The quake made up my mind for me, I was sure I wanted to get out and eat with my friends.

I think I've lived a full life all in all. If something would have happened, I think I wouldn't have been sorry about the way I've lived up to that point. I've balanced my life as well as I could. I looked at my friends and wondered. Are Japanese so used to earthquakes that they simply don't feel anything about a quake anymore? They continued to work that night as if nothing had happened. I'm not sure what was going throught their mind. The incedence didn't change the way they lived at all. I would have though that in a country where such unpredictable incedents were so common, that the people would live their lives to the fullest, enjoy every moment of it. That they continued to work on a Saturday night after such an earthquake supprised me. I don't know what they are thinking. They are used to it? Or what would they say if I asked them

"How would you feel if you had died today? Would you say that you have lived your life to the fullest?"

Yes, it's a cliche. But I'm sure if you were in my situation many of you would think about that question seriously. I'm not suggesting that I'm any more correct in my way of thinking than they are. Or maybe constant earthquake threats from a young age has gotten many Japanese used to it. Yes, it's unavoidable. Yes, worrying about it doesn't do anything, and I agree and I'm not the kind of person who thinks over it either. But once it a while, I'm sure such incidents will make a lot of us think of how we've been living our lives. "There is more to life than work," is a common excuse for some who simply do not want to work and slack off (including me sometimes), but yes, there is a truth in that phrase.

I had often wondered how people could live in such a country with such terrible potentially deadly environments weather it's tornados, earthquakes, or terrorism. To a certain degree, if it does not happen too often and isn't too deadly most of us will get used to it after a while. It's amazing when you think about it, that humans are able to adapt phychologically to the environment, the Israilies for example. In case of Japan everyone knows that it's only a matter of time before the next "big one", but when? It's impossible to know, so yes, till then we will live our lives "normally", yet a little more cautiously. There's nothing we can do about it to stop it, though we maybe able to do a bit to make our chances better at surviving through it if it happens. But maybe more importantly is that we should realize how fragile humans are, and how easily or suddenly our life can be taken from this world of ours...

That's life...

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Recently I've gotten to read quite an interesting book:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

The book is basically trying to come up with a theory of how "epidemics" start, weather it's in fashion, crime, or diseases. The interesting thing I found about this book, was not really the theory of the so called "Tipping Point" though. The idea didn't seem so revolutionary, and although the author makes some good arguments, there were also many others which could be disputed. The main problems I found with many of the ideas is the lack of conclusive evidence, in many cases, I felt that the outcome of certain theories were not very conclusive. In any case, that's really besides the point.
The interesting part about this book, I felt, was actually the many experiments about sociologists and anthropologists which were mentioned within the book. One theory I found interesting was related to crime, a theory so called, "Broken Window" theory. The theory basically states that crime is a result of chaos, and chaos is the result of the environment. It bascially says, for example that if there is a "broken window" left unfixed, people walk by seeing the window, and over time start to assume that since the window isn't fixed, that no body cares enough to fix it. This is the supposed start of choas. Then, seeing as it seems no body cares, some people (basically those who are prone to commit crime) will start to break more windows, and if those were not fixed, more and more windows will be broken, and this will be the start of chos, of crime. The author then uses the example of the massive drop of the crime rates in New York, starting from the subway system, in which the head of the subway system started to clean up the system by repainting the cars from graffiti. This ofcause seemed absurt at the time, as the people question why the railway would bother spending so much man power, money and time in cleaning up the train bogies when people have nearly stopped using the subway because of the high rates of rape, murder, and armed robbery in the subway. Spend the money on more security the people demanded, and so on. This was the first of a series of steps to bring down the crime rate in the subways.

The part I felt that was interesting is that I would have agreed with those people if I was in the same situlation. I would probably be puzzled at why they would spend that much money on cleaning the trains instead of getting more police, security etc. It's very interesting, since it made me realize even more clearly, sometimes, how little I understand many things in life, and I question myself weather I have been right in condemning authoroies sometimes on their actions. Could it be that they knew something more? Well, at least this doesn't seem to work with most Thai authoroties, I'm afraid to say that I don't believe most of them do not have such insite though maybe a few do.

Another really interesting theory I found was about emotion being contagious. That is to say, that emotions are not only an expression of the inner feelings, but also can be passed on. Not only that, but how much certain acts or external words only can be passed on from on to a person. A good example is the following paragraph I quote from the book:

..."Have you ever thought about yawning for instance? Yawning is a suprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word "yawning" in the previous two sentences - and the two additional "yawns" in this sentence - a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I'm writing this I have yawned twice. If you're reading this in a public place and you've just yawned is now yawning too, and a good portion of the people watching the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever-widening circle.
Yawning is incredibly contagious. I made some of you reading this yawn simply by writing the word "yawn." The people who yawned when they saw you yawn, meanwhile were infected by the site of you yawning - which is the second kind of contagion. They might have even yawned if they only heard you yawn, because yawning is also aurally contagious: if you play a audio tape of a yawn to a blind people, they'll yawn too. And finally, if you yawned as you read this, did the though cross your mind - however uncontiously and fleetingly - that you might be tired? I suspect that some of you did which means that yawns are also emotionally contagious.

The incredible thing about this is that when I was reading this, I yawned and I also had a fleeting though that I was tired. The author was right! Then later in the book the author goes on to mention about how experiments have shown that some people have the ability to infect others with emotions just by looking at others! I found this very interesting, along with a few other tidbits in the book. It's given me new found respect for sociologist and anthropologists. What about you? Did you yawn when you read the sentences?