Thanks, everyone for all the concern. I really appreciate the emails and worried facebook messages. All is fine in Beijing. Apparently, there were aftershocks felt here, but I was sleeping (of all things) and didn't feel a thing.
I have a friend in Sichuan. She and her family are fine. Another friend in Xi'An (Shaanxi Province; I'm actually going to visit her this weekend). Again, fine. They both felt the quake though.
When humans have an exorbitant amount of stress, we get zits. Often, through no fault of our own (some instinctual desire to inflict pain?) we pop them to relieve the pore of it's cloggedness.
Sichuan Province lies heavy with Tibetans. Much of the province is on the Tibetan Plateau, so many of the inhabitants of Western Sichuan are Tibetan (with the horses, the Buddhism, and the Yak Butter Tea). Could the stress of the past few months (you know, the riots and protests) have causes an earthly pimple? A little rupture of the pore that lead to tens of thousands of deaths?
Perhaps a bit of a simplistic analogy. But for an earthquake of that magnitude to happen in that location, there had to be some inflammatory cause. There has to be some supernatural explanation.
So it's the Tibetans' unhappiness. That and global warming. The Earth is not happy.
