now back to our regular programming

about earthquakes,

specifically the Christchurch Earthquake and

how to personalise this experience for you,

our home viewer.

Coming up on our programme today is a true and harrowing story

of a friend of Mags who works(ed) for the Yellow Pages

and the importance of reading those boring forwarded group emails.

We will call Mag's friend Justin

(because that's his name).

Justin was in his car,

which is a little sewing machine of a thing,

in the Smith City multi-storied carpark building

parked in his reserved work carpark

when the 6.3 Christchurch earthquake hit.

He was also in Christchurch.

(that was a joke cause this is an amazing story that should be celebrated)

Not long before the earthquake Justin had received an email,

one of those forwards,

which gave tips on what to do if you were in your car

in a multi-level carpark building during an earthquake.

How convenient.

Having read this email Justin would have forgotten about it

but it's funny about how the information in these things stick in your head.

The earthquake hit at 12.51pm

it was very close to the city

it was very shallow

those things make a huge difference when we talk about earthquakes.

As Justin sat in his car and the earthquake hit

he remembered to put his drivers seat right back,

to lower himself,

and to open the window of the car

just as the email said to do.

I'm not sure how that worked in real time

but during earthquakes time changes

and when it's your survival time really changes.

Justin avoided being crushed by the collapsing floor above

and the one above that.

He was able to wiggle out the window

considering his car is now crushed

you know that's no mean feat.

He was able to get to where he noted the stairwell was

but realised he forgot his phone.

(for those of you, OK one who said to me about my missing friend

"she may not have her phone with her"

all I can say is

"are you fing mental?  nobody in Christchurch goes anywhere without a fully charged cellphone at all times because we understand and have experienced the panic of the 7.1 earthquake in September so we make sure our phones are working and with us at all times!"*

 sorry about that, but really????)

Back to Justin,

he went back for his phone,

found his phone,

got back to the stairwell to discover

he was trapped in the building
so went to the roof

and gathered with others there.

Nobody was that coherent and an escape route was not apparent,

in fact I can't remember how they got down but I think it involved

climbing onto roofs and lowering oneself type stuff.

And now watch this article from Aussie TV

This is where Justin was

and the workplace is his.

Double click on the screen for a better view.

@ Yahoo!7 Video

That he survived is a miracle,

that he survived in one piece is a miracle,

that he was able to get home relatively quickly was a miracle

(quickly that day was more like six hours compared
to the normal hour).

Justin was able to call his wife Rachel
and she tried to get to him

but the problem with earthquakes is that where you are seems to be the worst area

but it often isn't and nearly everything is damaged.

You can only see what you see.

There is no information so getting places is hard.

Google maps do not update to include earthquake damaged roads.

Some nice people gave Justin their car

so he was able to drive to safety and his family.

He didn't know them and probably still has their car.

Justin is physically fine,

and understandably mentally struggling

but he is strong,
has good support and is getting help

and will be fine.

Everyone here had their own personal earthquakes

and we all respond differently,

we all respond our own way.
Some had narrow escapes,
some were already traumatised from the 5000 plus aftershocks
some sail through it without any effect.

There is no right or wrong

it just is.

Considering I hate going in carpark buildings without having one fall on me,

I don't blame him if he never sets foot in another one.

I hope his parallel parking is up to scratch.

*I didn't actually say any of this to her, she doesn't get it, that's ok, no point in making her feel bad because she doesn't get it.

driving

to work is always interesting.

Ok I lie, for the most part the 40 minute drive flys by

as I race across the Canterbury Plains

and is broken up by my changing radio stations and switching CDs.

Now to sound completely ungrateful,

I get a new work car in the January and

horror of horrors it has a stereo that holds only one CD

instead of the six I'm used to.

You know this means I will have to join all the cool kids and get an ipod.

I've clung to CDs like John Cussak clings to vinyl

I have no idea if he does but he embodies the type of person who would.

Anyway as I flicked between stations the other day

I landed on a weird,

would say random but is any morning radio DJ anything but random??

conversation that Polly, Grant and New Hot Guy were having.

To be fair it was just Polly, the males are there as her fall guys.

Polly was going on about that woman

who is a mate of Jennifer Aniston's who was going on

about what a stink bum Angelina Jolie is

but using stronger terms than that.

Polly was banging on about how it's not cool for women to not like other women

but then she said she hated women who hated other women

which is what Polly is doing, so does she hate herself?

I'd venture a yes to answer that question.

Luckily the demographic ZM caters for are not sophisticated enough

or their hearing is damaged enough

that nobody took particular exception to Polly's hypocrisy

or maybe not luckily cause really it was another

example of the brain dead drivel that passes as entertainment these days.

It is rather hot this evening so am in grumpy mood

even though Lucky refuses to believe I ever have grumpy moods,

I do.

Merry Chritmas everyone!

Please note that author of this blog does not condone nor care about anything that Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie or any other women does in the parallel universe of entertainment, what ever form it manifests itself but does like to point out poor reasoning when she can be bothered or it's too hot to post a sensible post about her own rather dull life.

boyracer

I think I may be a boyracer.

New car is a brand new Hyundai little hatchback thingy - ok I can't be a boyracer as I can't be bothered to;
a) remember what kind* of Hyundai it is,
b) get up and go out to the garage and check.

You'd think I'd make an effort to remember, as my workmates are the kind of people who remember the model (man! *I had to really think what the word was there, I was going with edition, kind or issue, model wasn't not on my list) and they are girls (except for CEO and Dunc that is it, though I haven't seen them around scary things like mice or snakes. Did I tell you I love working in an agricultural environment (Officially I'm an agricultural manager) because the gender roles are blurry in reality but we play at pretending women are girls and men are men). Mind you I just learned what a header is - Oti I blame you for not teaching me that one.

I'm impressed by my workmates.

They remember all sorts of things that are kind of blokey. And one does nice things for me like making my hair appointments and reminds me when it is and then rebooks it for when I forget to go (I was in a very important meeting with my CEO at McDonalds (not with McDonalds, just AT McDonalds and it was in Christchurch so about an hour away from Methven), my first executive lunch with NZYF!). I love that she did that, even better was she did it without asking. That made my day. Thanks so much C-Lo!

P.S. Had an interesting blogging experience the other day, actually a while ago but I've been digesting it. A long, long time ago I was going to blog about something really personal but that some (read: five) of you know about. Mainly because, according to my theory, the person I was going to blog about isn't likely to waste time reading my blog or blogs at all. But it turns out they do. That could have been unfortunate, really unfortunate for a multitude of reasons.