{"id":1255,"date":"2010-09-08T23:21:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T11:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=1255"},"modified":"2010-09-08T23:21:34","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T11:21:34","slug":"living-on-the-back-of-the-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/09\/08\/living-on-the-back-of-the-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"Living on the Back of the Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening, I flew out of a Melbourne spangled by lights, and back across the dark Tasman Sea to New Zealand. We arrived in Christchurch at midnight to misting rain and a city that has been riven by over a hundred aftershocks from the 7.1 earthquake early Saturday morning (NZ time)—several of them major earthquakes in their own right.<\/p>\n

It was hard to see much by night, but the friend who met me at the airport (the same friend who secured my fallen chimney on Saturday) drove home past the cordoned off central city and past neighbourhood shops so damaged that many of them were marked for demolition today. One corner, already cleared, was a sombre eerie sight.<\/p>\n

I have been told that in Japan, which like New Zealand is traversed by faultlines, they describe life in the earthquake zone as “living on the back of the dragon”. I was woken today by another 5.1 earthquake, which at that magnitude is something more than an “aftershock”. And today—as I cleaned up the breakages caused by the first earthquake—was marked by a constant series of tremors. Living on the back of a restive dragon indeed—and more than a little disconcerting.<\/p>\n

The damage we have sustained so far has been minor, aside from the chimney, and even taking into account the chimney there are others who have suffered far more. I was very mindful of this all day, especially as news came through of even more demolitions in the cordoned off central city—and a walk past my favourite corner bar, just a little place where “everyone knows my name”, showed the whole building marked with the words “Not OK”. Meaning not structurally ok, which suggests that it, too, will almost certainly come down, maybe even as early as tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But on a less sombre note, given little damage sustained, this is what the writer’s study looks like, when the dragon has tried to crowd its way in.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening, I flew out of a Melbourne spangled by lights, and back across the dark Tasman Sea to New Zealand. We arrived in Christchurch at midnight to misting rain and a city that has been riven by over a hundred aftershocks from the 7.1 earthquake early Saturday morning (NZ time)—several of them major earthquakes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}