the earth moved for us

I know I am about two weeks late in posting this, but at least I am posting?

All right, August 29 there was an earthquake somewhere around Chino Hills? 5.4, according to the USGS page on the quake. I’d heard numbers from 5.8 to 5.2, but I guess it’s settled down to 5.4 finally. Felt all the way to southern San Diego county (because it’s sandy there).

Where was I? With my family and Noelle’s family (sans her dad) in Anaheim, standing outside our hotel, just starting our 3-day vacation to Disneyland. Bwahahar!

Yes, we live in Southern California, what the heck do we need three days at Disneyland for? Well my brother, the one who recently has really fallen in love with Disney, never really went to Disneyland when he was a kid. Whereas I went quite often with my Girl Scout troop with our cookie sales money, and thusly got sick of it. (Mum said that it was much more crowded in the 90s, aka the Eisner years.) But now that my brother is working full-time, he has money to drag us all to Disneyland. *grin*

We didn’t just go on most of the rides there, but we looked through stores, caught some shows, and just generally took in the Disney atmosphere.

But before we got to that, we experienced an earthquake! This was the first time for everyone (I think?) that we felt an earthquake while outside. We were standing on the sidewalk, just talking about I have no idea what, when I felt this weird boom underneath my feet.

For a second I thought we were standing on a metal plate over some electrical works or something. But no, it was solid concrete on solid ground next to solid asphalt on solid ground. I automatically asked, “What was that?” and then the ground started moving sideways. :o I put my hand on my dad’s shoulder because I thought I might fall over, or maybe it was just for security, haha.

My mom asked, “Is that an earthquake?” and my dad said yeah, look at the windows of the hotel rattling. Then we noticed some hotel guests on the first floor standing outside their room.

Then it was all over, and everyone talked about what they thought and blah blah blah. Hidek and my dad tried using their cell phones, but they didn’t work. :( Worked about an hour later though.

All in all, best ride of the day! (This entry is very long and Mythbusters is on in a short while anyway, so … hopefully I’ll write up our Disneyland trip. :x)

earthquake? what earthquake?

I still love this site: Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada. It’s a bookmark that has followed me from my Internet Explorer “favorites” days, and the only .gov site I visit. XD; I also like reporting my experience of the latest earthquake in my area.

But this time I can’t! *weep* I didn’t wake up when the Chatsworth quake happened. Arrrgh.

My boss said he felt it, Mum, my brothers, say they felt it. My brothers didn’t even wake up during the Northridge quake!

Grrr, how could I not have felt it??

cactusy earthquake

Last Thursday there was an earthquake. Somewhere in the desert. Something like … east of Riverside? At the time I thought it was Mum getting really serious about her vacuuming. hah. I went up to talk with her. She asked me, “What do you think, 4.5 to 5?” I, as the inexperienced one, could only reply, “Maybe, I dunno.” And that was it.

Then Daddy called and he and Mum talked and stuff and Daddy said he was trying to go to this one website but it was down and etc. A little while later Mum checked channel 4 and they were talking about it and said it was 5.2. I showed Mum the website usgs.gov and then Daddy called again.

Later that day when we were taking paint off the porch there was no Ellen or Dr. Phil ’cause channel 4 was still covering the earthquake. ;.; So we didn’t work for that long.

The next day Mum told me Hal Fishman’s commentary on the media coverage: all the journalists and whoever else were excited and everything and took up the airwaves for hours for an earthquake in cactus land? hah! Mum even teased Daddy, saying, “You called home talking about the earthquake.”

LA, LA

I hope this entry won’t seem like I’m belittling these incidents (because God knows they’re creeping the heck out of me).

“Racially Charged Incidents Rattle L.A.” ← headline on Yahoo.

“…the inland suburbs of Los Angeles…”   “…Riverside and San Bernardino counties…” ← in that article.

Yeah, ’cause Riverside and San Bernadino counties are included in the city boundaries of Los Angeles … I mean, I understand, who outside of Southern California has heard of Riverside or San Bernadino? They have to make it so other people understand where the general area is … but it still annoys me.

This one guy said online, I forget where I read it, all cities in California are L.A. :b I wish! (Well not really…) You should know that I really like L.A. Not all of it, but I like the convenience of everything, I like how it doesn’t have that really big city feeling unless you go downtown or something, I like the diversity, I like the weather (of course) … other things I can’t think of. I plan to never ever ever leave SoCal. And, I guess considering how not like L.A. other places in SoCal are … I’m never going to leave L.A.?

Not that I’m generalizing other places … I hope not … I know there are good areas and bad areas to every place. But this is what makes me feel like L.A. is a veritable little island paradise: hearing about white supremacist groups in Riverside and San Bernadino counties; knowing Simi Valley is (or was, I guess?) a white flight area, meaning whites who wanted to get away from minorities moved there; hearing about this one mosque that almost wasn’t in Orange County because churches were protesting its existence, saying that a mosque would create even more traffic and take away more parking spaces on Sundays (or in other words … “They’re taking my flock away from me!”). I dunno.

I’ve been … sort of living in Ventura County for the past three years … well, during the week, when I attend classes, and only fall/winter/spring. The one thing I’ve noticed about myself … last semester I was amazed at every single Asian face I saw … and this semester it’s not only Asian faces but every single non-white face. o_o WTF?! Every time I see a minority I just go “Wao! MINORITY! *gawk*” >_<

So … if anyone knows of a big city with absolutely no night life and has a lot of commercialization and diversity and nice weather and everything, tell me. I want to know my options when the Big One (earthquake) comes.

Oh yes, someone, anyone, try commenting on my tagboard?

earthquake; Livejournal

This morning (in the middle of the night) there was an earthquake. And I was awake for it! ahaha. ¬_¬ Five seconds. Yes. Not rolling, but rather jolty, like the guy on the news said. :b

Another stupid thing: I want a LiveJournal. I don’t even really like the things. ^_^;; Although pretty much the only reason I don’t like it is ’cause they’re ugly, and if I were to get a paid account (the only kind I can get -_-) that wouldn’t be a problem. And they said they (LiveJournal developers) were working on allowing comments pages to have different layouts. :) So cool! The only reason I want it is to comment on people’s journals without having to be annonymous. ^_^;; I am extremely … I don’t know, spoiled?