To summarize...

Humidity. Mosquitoes. Earthquakes. Yep, that pretty much sums up my week. Oh, and one massive - albeit beautiful - report. I just returned from the PACTEC office (where there's high-speed internet) and I sent off this thing of beauty to the powers that be. I'm sure that it will bring me, and my teammates, all the fame and fortune, acclaim and accolades that we so richly deserve. Barring that, I'm hoping for a simple acknowledgement from HQ.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff. Earthquakes. This week we've had some dooseys - all from 4-6.1 on the Richter scale. Having grown up in California I consider myself something of an earthquake veteran - meaning that I have a very well developed plan of action when an earthquake rolls in. Mostly it goes a little something like this:
1) Wake up.
2) Think to myself, 'hmmm, earthquake.'
3) Wait for it to stop.
4) Go back to sleep.
See how well that works? None of this running and screaming for me, thank you very much. You might wonder why this hasn't been adopted by most NGOs as their official plan. Well, I'll tell you why.

One of my colleagues was doing some research on fault lines and, according to some very smart people, the earthquake that caused the tsunami (8.9) put so much pressure on different places along the fault that we're in for another massive one. According to these brainiacs there might be another quake that will cause another tsunami off the coast of Western Sumatra or directly under Banda Aceh. Yes, you heard it here first.

But did that convince me to run for the door at the first sign of shaking? No, maybe if you grew up in Idaho, or Arizona, or one of those other misc. boring states you might bolt for the door. No, what it took to convince me was after yesterdays quake - while we all sat staring at each other - there was a loud pop from the second floor of the house which turned out to be a crack running across the house. My room is on the first floor. I quickly became a convert to running and screaming. I'll report back in on how this new plan is working.