tremor horror

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Last Monday, I was walking back to my office with my co-workers from lunch, just talking about something nonsensical when they both stopped in front of me. A bit clueless as to why they stopped, I was about to ask them if they left any of their things at the canteen when our German co-worker, Janina, suddenly asked: "Did you feel that, too?"

I could only stare at her in befuddlement. I didn't feel anything unusual.

It was only a few hours later, after I've already witnessed how the employees scampered away from our building (right after I realized that I should be feeling something shake because an earthquake just happened), how my panicked officemates trapped in the elevator and stayed in the office shared their stories, how our head office issued a half-day due to the severity of the 6.9-magnitude-earthquake-and-level-2-tsunami-alert situation, how I had to walk from Mabolo to Mandaue because no PUJs are available (and my panicking mom is calling me to come home right now), how my other co-walkers ran without their shoes and with desperation in their eyes because the tsunami is right behind us (and I looked and saw...nothing), how I gave up so many vacant seats for the other passengers to go to Liloan because they are going to die, how blessed I had been because while people were scampering to get a ride home I was actually offered a vacant front seat by a PUJ driver because I just calmly stood there and listened to all the chaos...that this day would never shape up the way I expected it to.

The earthquake had not been so severe in Cebu. Let's pray for our brothers and sisters in Negros, who are more affected than we were, and help in any way that we can.

Today, many of them had no water to use while we await for more aftershocks to happen this week. If you can, please send your help to friends who live or work nearby Negros (like what we did) so they can give your donations to agencies there that are on top of the area's relief operations. A gallon of water costs PHP40.00---imagine what you could do with that amount.

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