Hi, folks. Just a brief (maybe not) update from the land of the rising sun. The money quote is that we're all fine (that is, me and all my loved ones, as the saying goes) so far, and we're keeping a close watch on the news.
I was actually in Shanghai (beautiful city, not sure I'd want to live there) at a seminar when the quake happened. It took a while to get a reply to my messages home. The office mail server was up and I got a fairly quick response from my assistant. Everyone was fine and they had evacuated the building and were waiting for the all clear. It took longer to hear back from my wife because the cell circuits were jammed (and are still hit-and-miss now, a week later).
I was scheduled to fly back Saturday morning and the flight went as scheduled. I found out later I was lucky because many had been canceled. Anyway on Monday we had an office meeting and were told we'd be closed for a week. Except for me and another guy, because we were going to have scheduled, rolling blackouts. I have to shut all the network equipment and servers down before each blackout and bring them back up again afterwards.
That was the theory. Monday afternoon I took everything down a few minutes before the scheduled outage and ... nothing. Our power was not shut off. I waited a couple of hours and then brought everything back up and ... nothing again. Some things just didn't work right after that. (I've since diagnosed that the call manager server and the router are hanging on start-up. A couple of engineers will arrive to sort that out.)
Apart from the work stress, the trains have been running at 50% schedule, meaning I never know when the train is going to arrive and when it does, it's packed to the gills. And the stores quickly sell out every day of everything imaginable. It's my impression that people are hoarding, rather than that we're having actual shortages. Ditto for gasoline (which is not such a concern for me).
Today the US Embassy announced it was offering to transport home the families of US government workers, and advised citizens in northern Japan to leave. This is, according to the Embassy, out of concern for "potential health hazards" from the Fukushima No. 1. The Embassy is also offering flights to Taipei and Seoul for those unable to book a commercial flight.
I may be in denial, but so far it looks to me like I can tough it out. Total radiation exposure to date in Tokyo has amounted to a tiny fraction of what I'd get in a single flight to New York (and let's not even get into chest X-rays).
The media are focusing pretty much on the Fukushima thing and scarcely reporting on the fact that the figure of 10,000 missing from the quake / tsunami is just a wild guess. They still, a week after the fact, don't even know how much they don't know. The final death tally there could easily double.
We've had some aftershocks. Some have been real doozies. One had the epicenter quite near Fuji-san and nearly shook the entire country. They seem to be calming down but I've noticed at least two today. (It's gotten so I'm imagining them and have to ask those around me if it's really shaking.)
Threaded Mode
