Earthquake update

I came in to work this morning and logged on to receive a few emails asking if I had been affected by the earthquake. I have to confess to asking "what earthquake ?" until I looked at the BBC News website and found out that Padang in Southern Sumatra had been badly hit yesterday. Latest estimates of the number of deaths vary from 75 to 200 depending on which news service you look at but there are also thousands trapped so the toll will have risen even further by the time you read this.

Since I arrived here, I have felt two very slight tremors although I managed to sleep through the most significant quake here (it happened at about 2 am). If anyone is interested in keeping an eye on things in my part of the world, bookmark this link :   http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/10/125_-10.php To find Maumere, look for Ende (about 150km WSW of here) on the map. Maumere is on the north coast in the large bay at the thinnest part of the island (just where the red arrow in the copy below is pointing to).

Recent earthquakes (if any) are indicated by a yellow square (or blue for larger quakes - there's an example of a yellow one on the top right of the map above ) which you can then click on for further details. I've added this site to my list of "favourite sites" which appears on the left hand side of your screen, just scroll down a little to find it. 

On a different note, today is 1st October so I took a quick look at my blog hit statistics this morning and was pleased to see that in September it had a new monthly record of exactly 1400 (the previous highest was 858 in February). I am guessing that this is related to my decision to try and post more frequently (16 posts in September as against 7 in August) rather than a huge influx of new readers ! So, thanks for keeping on reading and I'm sorry if your inbox is being filled up by alerts from Feedblitz. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, you'll find a place near the top on the left hand side to allow you to "subscribe" - this means that you will receive a short notification by email whenever I add a new post.