The Earth shook in Chile!

As you all probably know by now, there was a very strong earthquake in Chile, at about 400km South of Santiago at 3h34AM during the night of 27th Feb. 2010.
The magnitude of the Earthquake where it hit was measured at 8.8 on the Richter scale and in Santiago the equivalent strength would be about 7.0
In Chile, which is undoubtedly one of the Earth most active seismic places, we have to go back 50 years to witness such a strength. The 1960 Valdivia quake, one of the strongest in the whole history of recorded seismic activity was measured at 9.5.
7.0 is equivalent to the Dec. 2009 quake of Haiti.

When it hit, I was asleep in my apartment, located on the 12th floor.
SCARY!
This is the word.
It's really hard to describe the sensations and thoughts that went through my mind during the 2 minutes that lasted the quake. That's a very long time and the movement of the building were extremely impressive! Mother Earth is one strong mom!!
Right after the first quake was over I jumped out of my bed, got dressed as fast as I could, grabbed a torch light and my phone and ran down the 12 floors by the emergency staircase.
One thing I forgot to grab was a sweater so it was a bit chilly waiting down there on the street with all my neighbours (a couple of them didn't want to leave their apartments though, so strange!!)

About 1h30 after being down there, listening to the radio and trying to place phone calls without success, I raised my head to see my 3 friends Caroline, Vincent and Benoit! What a relief!!
They came by car to check on me and we all then went to look for or other friends to check on them. Fortunately they were all sound and safe!
The 4 of us went to the house of Vincent (another one) which has the great advantage to be much closer to the ground!!!
The electricity came back pretty quickly but phone service was really hard to get. after about 7 hours we could use Internet and send messages and call our families to let them know we were ok!
We spent the whole day there, very tired from the lack of sleep, stress and the aftershock, plus all the subsequent smaller quakes that we experienced throughout the day, each time running in the garden for safety.

About 14 hours after the first quake I went back to my place for 20 minutes to grab some clothes and check out on the consequences of the quake. You can see some photos here. Nothing much really. Only a couple of lamps and glasses broken and one big scar on the wall in my living room.

After that we headed back to Vincent's house to spend the night.

So we've been very lucky!! Not the case for all of Chile though. Lots of older houses and buildings got seriously hit, including some of my friends' place. Down South the situation is without any doubt much more serious. Even in Santiago, in the older areas the damages are much worse.

After a good night's sleep, today everything seems quiet again.
Let's hope it'll be this way for a very very long time...

Happy Birthday to me!!

Today is my birthday!
Had a little celebration yesterday with a couple of friends. We went out to Bellavista, ate, drank and danced the night out. I'm a bit fuzzy about some of the details though....
I emptied quite a few bottles of alcohol to celebrate... 17 in total.... All by myself!
What!!?
How!!?
Are you crazy?
I guess a little ;-)
I actually did not drink any of this but I emptied all those bottles in the sink! Just did.
I have been contemplating leading a healthier lifestyle for a few years now but it's always been up and down. I had my periods where I would eat well, not drink.... and others... well where I would do pretty much the opposite.
Since a couple of weeks I started again trying to eat better and drink better too and I've been reading / viewing lots of information on internet mainly concerning food and health, trying to determine what would be the best possible diet for me.
Here's a link to a video that made quite an impression on me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&feature=player_embedded#

there are much more and I might start sharing some of those now and then.
I am trying to eradicate refined sugar from my diet since. On the day I watched this video I grabbed all the soft drinks in my house and pourred them down the sink.
Today I decided that I should not drink alcohol anymore and I thought then that the first step would be to get rid of all the bottles at my house. I didn't want to give them out as I think after all this is not a very elegant thing to do and I do not want anyone to drink them (how selfish ;-) )

The other good side of this is that I have more space on those shelves in my kitchen cabinet to have awesome nutritious food instead! I was a bit short of storage space so it will help!