While out in the car last night I flicked through radio stations. When the autoseek found a nice clear one I noticed a new read out in my dash panel. In the bit between the rev counter and speedo where there’s a little panel of date/time/estimated fuel left/radio station frequency I noticed flashing words “ALL” “I WANT” “BY” “[can't remember]” “HOT HOT HOT” “SUMMER HITS” “ZM ZM ZM” – what the ?? I flicked away from that station immediately. Because a) I didn’t want to be distracted by it and b) I didn’t want to condone this nasty behaviour in a car. When I stopped later, I went back to the station and it constantly prints stuff out “POLLY” “N” “GRANT” “BACK MONDAY” “HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND”. Kind of a cool gimmic and in some ways, not necessarily the radio station’s fault. Obvioulsy Audi can cope with this kind of radio text or whatever it is and while I would *never* slag off Audi I don’t think it’s a particularly safe thing to have in a car. Maybe you get used to it – perhaps I was just suffering from first-timer’s wide eyes.

7.56am I was paralysed in the corner of the bedroom looking at our not so sturdy kitset bookshelf swaying back and forward, photo frames toppling over, hearing other random crashes around the apartment as we were struck by the latest of a series of earthquakes. It was a 5.5 – the biggest yet. I was freaked. Upstairs in our apartment other photo frames fell down and chopping boards fell over and pictures were shaken crooked on the walls. I keep telling myself I have lived through a 6.3 quake, that being the Edgecumbe earthquake in 1987, but it doesn’t help that there’s recently been lots of earthquakes following the tsunami in Asia.

I guess at times like this it’s good not knowing a whole lot about how the earth works because I can latch on to the opinion that it’s better that the earth release pressure points and that after the deep sea earthquake that shifted coastlines and caused tsunamis that all techtonic plates are just gently readjusting … possibly a load of bullshit but it’s my way of calming down. Still, the only thing I’ve been able to do at work so far today is fill my water bottle and reorganise my pen pots.