8.8 Tremblor Rocks Chile

My heart and prayers goes out to all the victims of the catastrophic 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile last night, followed by already more than 60 aftershocks, 50 of them with a magnitude of 5.0 or higher.

• Saturday's epicenter was just a few miles north of the largest earthquake recorded in the world: a magnitude 9.5 quake in May 1960 that killed 1,655 and unleashed a tsunami that crossed the Pacific.

• Saturday's temblor comes about six weeks after an 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated parts of Haiti and killed more than 220,000 people. The Chilean quake, at magnitude 8.8, was 700 to 800 times stronger.

• Coastal Chile has a history of deadly earthquakes, with 13 quakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher since 1973, the USGS said.

• A tsunami warning for Hawaii was lifted Saturday afternoon. Waves of 3 feet were recorded at the city of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, but were lower than expected, and no damage was reported. Meanwhile, tsunami activity was reported on the island of Tasmania, according to officials in Australia.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/27/chile.quake/index.html

The Pillars of the Earth

Just finished reading Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth." This book is amazing. The story takes place in England (and parts of Europe) during the twelfth century when the lands were plagued with war, lawlessness, and the growth Christendom. It's filled with adventure, love, revenge, violence... Not a dull moment from beginning to end, except some parts when he was explaining about architecture and engineering of the cathedral. This is totally recommend to anyone and everyone, unless you hate 1000 page readers.

Year of the Tiger

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!! Hope the year of the tiger will bring you strength, courage, and passion!

Dream - Eggplants

In my dream a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my hands were dry and cracked with white lines everywhere. I've never seen hands this dry before. These white spots started forming into little white chunks of dried up flesh, but grew bigger and bigger and bigger until POOF! They became huge eggplants!! WHAT THE HECK?! Eggplants were growing out of my hands and they just kept coming!! I showed my friend. "LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME!!! I HAVE EGGPLANTS GROWING OUT OF MY HANDS!!!!" My friend shook his head and smiled. "Oh don't worry about it," he said in a casual tone. "My hands do the same thing, but I can do that with playing cards." He showed me his palms and wudduya know. White clumps of dead flesh became playing cards, sort of like Gambit from X-Men, but a lot grosser.