Hey...looky here: Free Rice went into version 2! If you don't already know, free rice is a website where you can take quizzes to earn points that are then converted into sponsoring food through the World Food Programme. Before this, they only had a simpler English quiz, but now they cover more advanced English, and other subjects like Math, Art, Chemistry, Geography and other languages. Something virtuous to do if you have some free time, or want to learn something new. For me, I still think English vocabulary is the easiest, because even if you've never heard the word before, you can sometimes guess what they mean by linking their root word to some other word that you do know. Btw...my geography sucks...maybe Asian geography is still ok, but the rest is just guesswork.

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Today, I saw an interview through a Facebook link saying that an earthquake may be more likely to happen in the following week: this Saturday up to the Monday 9 days after that, due to the pattern of earthquakes happening around the Pacific ring of fire, the beached dead fishes and the moon being the closest to earth for the past 20 years.(That date, ironically, is exactly the dates of my Spring break holiday,I guess those who are going off for a holiday further away can feel some relief) A lot of people say that it's impossible to be so precise with predicting earthquakes, but that got me a little bit concerned. Even if it doesn't happen within the next week, it is apparently still more likely to happen within the next 3 years.

So I think it's better to be safe than sorry, so since Fleet Week and the Earthquake drill last year, I've prepared a go-bag, which I put under my bed. My roommate scoffs, but I'd like to think I'm not as blithe as her. I've been doing some research about what to do in the event of an earthquake, and what goes into a go-bag. It's a bag that contains emergency supplies that you can quickly grab and run if you need to.It's not such a pain to assemble one, since most of the items are stuff you'd use on an everyday basis anyway, so just put your extras in the bag. Coming from a country where 'natural disaster' only means haze and slight floods in some parts of the city, making your commute to work such a bummer, I have a lot to learn about earthquake preparedness. This is a good site, that also has a slightly more thorough list of things to put in a go bag: 72hours. 72 hours as in emergency supplies should cover for 3 days. Oh yeah, in case of a quake, you aren't actually supposed to run, you are supposed to duck and cover, and get indoor and under sturdy furniture if possible.

I'd already had that bag for a few months now, but after watching the interview, I decided to revise it a bit. Among other things, I decided to buy a torchlight to go into the bag. So I went around looking for one. Before this I was considering buying only a book light, so I can use it to read when I feel like lazing around on my bed and not disturbing my roommate, but decided that in an emergency, I won't want to be stuck with something so small and flimsy. Back to the main story: I went to a few outlets of the local convenience store, and saw that most of the flashlights were already sold out, those left were either book lights or those bulky box shaped torchlights that look like the handphones from the 1970s-or-whenever-that-was that run on batteries the size of car batteries. I finally found some at the branch near my uni's main building, and when I got there, there was also another person buying a torchlight, one of the last 3 standard ones on sale.(So I guess after we'd bought ours, there'd only be one left for one lucky person,huh?) So I think that panic is starting to waft around SF (incidentally, there was some trace amounts of radiation also wafting around SF today, at levels not harmful to health).

Another worry is that, if Japan has a tsunami, and I think SF is too uphill to worry about that, there's still fires to worry about, because of all the ruptured gas pipes. The last time an earthquake happened, fire was one of the main problems, and destroyed all the buildings west of Van Ness Avenue. Apparently they decided to demolish all the buildings along Van Ness to create a barrier where the fire couldn't spread, that's why Van Ness is such a wide road today.Err...wait...might have gotten the geography wrong, but the story was something like that anyway. Either way, it's still worrying since even on a daily basis you can hear fire trucks all over the place. Also, the sturdiness of the buildings here are a bit questionable. Maybe not the modern skyscrapers with the tough building guidelines, but what about the older buildings with the stingy owners who don't want to take earthquake precautions and renovate?

I hope nothing happens, but there's always that nagging bit at the back of my head thinking what will I do if something really does happen. The stuff happening in Japan is like an ongoing nightmare, and that's only the radiation problem, people seem to have forgotten about the quake and tsunami rescue efforts in Japan and New Zealand, with so much to worry about.