Tuesday 13 September 2016

You say "Earthquake", I say "Icebreaker"!

In my last post I waxed lyrical about being the world's worst correspondent.
This is not the most desirable trait for a girl who has many friends living Far, Far Away. And the longer I go without contacting someone, the guiltier I feel, and the harder it becomes to reach out.
I mean, mawkish apologies are just NOT a sexy way to start a conversation.

Happily, every now and then, the universe lends a hand!

Yesterday, in Gyeongju, South Korea, there were two earthquakes.
No, no! Stay with me! I'm not a total monster! For starters, no one was seriously injured.
The first  quake was a 5.1 and the second, less than an hour later, was a 5.8.
I can hardly stress enough how unusual this is. Korea is not in a traditional earthquake zone and in the five years that I lived there, there was nary a tremor.
Well, not strictly true. Three years ago there were two small quakes, but I missed those ones as well, as I was in Ireland at the time.

(Gasp!) Wait! Is that it?! - Is Korea having withdrawal symptoms whenever I leave the country?!

But I digress.
Gyeongju, the epicenter, is only an hour north of Ulsan, my old hometown, and two hours north of Busan, another city chock full of friends and acquaintances.
So when we got the news, Ms.Amused and I grabbed this golden opportunity with both hands and lit up Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk with concerned enquiries.

Depending on our target audience, the messages ranged in sensitivity from:

"Honey are you ok? You're apartment is quite high up, I hope it wasn't too scary!"

to

"Hey bro, you still alive?"

Admittedly, we're not going to be nominated for a Booker Prize anytime soon, but we had been granted a conversational opening and we ran with it.

Contact initiated! All systems are go!

So the moral of today's story is: "Keep watching the news, kids! You never know when you'll be handed the perfect excuse to reach out and call someone!"

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