I was actually shocked yesterday morning when one of my friends in China told me about the news. He told me he felt like on an ocean when he was sitting on a chair in Microsoft Beijing office when the earthquake waves reached Beijing from Szechuan. My first instinct was that he was kidding and asked him how HUGE would the earthquake be since Beijing is as far from Szechuan as Toronto is from Vancouver. He said: "It is 7.9-magnitude quake, dude".

 

12,000 are dead to the minute. Period. And the death roll is still increasing. Many of them are teenagers. The earthquake strikes when they are sitting in the classrooms, learning. Those young lives didn't even get a chance to bloom. The thought on those lost young lives saddens me deeply because I could well be one of them, lying in the debris, if I was 20 years younger.