Despite that phrase about the soft rains of April, here in Singapore in June there is no end in sight. I’m not so sure that there is such a thing as soft rain in SE Asia. At least Singapore is a great place to eat yourself silly. This is a task that I relish.
Staying with a friend in the Novena area has been great. There is VeloCity, Novena Square, United Square, and the MRT within a few minutes walk.
Being back in Singapore is a bit of shock to the system, but a nice shock. I’ve been exploring all the new things that have popped up over the last few years. ION Orchard is a crowded, confusing mess, but it’s starting to make sense. Sentosa is a pleasant place to read, except for the construction noises (but this is a constant hazard all over the country), but I really must keep better track of the time to avoid my current state. All of my skin is peeling off from too much sun. The intensity is quite seriously dangerous compared to the gentle touch that reaches Japan.
So, there was a wake up call this morning at 8:08 in the form of an ever nearer 6.6 quake. Fukushima caught fire which was put out. Some shinkansen lines are suspended. The metro is out during rush hour, a time of controlled chaos in normal times, but … well, just imagine a city of 14 million trying to take a train that is not running. Then, I see this bit of joy:
The Japanese government’s nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.
…
On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.
Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.
[From NHK WORLD English]
The trains came back online and I headed out to Gold’s in Harajuku. If I wasn’t so busy I would not have noticed the 6.3 of this afternoon had it not been for my exact position on my back directly below a long row of large CRT TV’s … which began swinging violently. It’s a good thing the gym took the precaution of securing those things really well!
UPDATE: As to the elevation to level 7 … apparently the danger was always at level 7, but the equipment needed to measure such things was destroyed by … what it was supposed to measure!