When I went downstairs this morning, the old guy w…
When I went downstairs this morning, the old guy who sits at the door told me that my motorcycle fell over in the quake. “There was gas and oil everywhere!” he kept repeating. Sure enough, I saw scratches all up and down one side. At least the rear-view mirror was still there. I was late getting into the office today anyway because of the cordioned-off area around the Taipei Financial Center construction site. I saw cracks in the walls of our building as I walked up the stairs. The elevators still aren’t working. The cracks looked more serious the higher I went, exposing gleaming metal underneath the fractured plaster.
My cubicle on the 6th floor was in poor shape. Everything had been dumped on the floor. Office Turtle’s bowl had been smashed into shards. Water and pebbles littered my desk, but Office Turtle was nowhere to be seen. I cleaned up all of the broken glass, mopped up the water, rearranged all of my things, and then scoured the room until I found Office Turtle hiding underneath a desk in the next cubicle. I guess he had a real adventure this weekend exploring the office. I plopped him into the Vampire’s Bowl o’ Shrimp. I figure he’s due for a little playtime there until I can get a new bowl for him. Maybe a plastic one this time.
After my desk was all squared away, I decided to have a look at the upper floors. As I went up, more and more desks had collapsed and more lighting fixtures were hanging down. All of the desks on the 12th floor, all management, were toppled, computers strewn everywhere. The PR head, Mark, was lamenting the destruction of a 100-year-old vase that lay in little pieces on his cubicle floor. I climbed over broken furniture to the other stairwell and went up on the roof to find that the huge air conditioning unit had bounced off of its base. So we have no water or AC today, not to mention no LAN, so no work. At least some of the windows are open now.
There are supposed to be strong aftershocks in the next two weeks, so I plan to stay well away from the Taipei Financial Center, as there are two more cranes up there that could come down at any time. The PR department is going to have their work cut out for them with that project, even though the building itself came through the quake just fine. I wish I could feel as sure about our building.
