Ah, that's too bad. I can't really imagine what it would be like.

There were floods in Thailand, which felt surreal as I didn't see any of it first hand.

When I heard about it, I just kind of sighed and wondered if you guys would ever catch a break.

Earthquakes are the worst. My cousin and her husband live in Christchurch and I don't know how they cope. I think they are just used to it. But it's a really shitty way to spend your Christmas. And I've heard all the shops have to shut by law so that they can be evaluated by engineers and declared safe to reopen which is going to be really crap for people who were still buying presents and need to buy food and for their families. I hope you can make the best of it and have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year.

The earthquakes themselves aren't so bad, it's just the uncertainty that comes with it all. If this was happening in a less populated area, it'd be fine and dandy, but it's happening right underneath a city of 400,000 people.

In the February quake this year (the worst one, 200 people were killed) everything that was going to fall over pretty much did so then... The CBD was shut down so that they could demolish unstable buildings, and it's still mostly closed, and will be for some time yet.

But the really stressful part is when it comes to people's homes... some areas suffered from either rockfalls, or awful liquefaction (basically, liquid sand that is pushed to the surface from the force of the quakes) cracking floors and warping foundations. The land where this is happening isn't really fit to rebuild on at the moment, so they divided the land into zones, and some people whose houses are relatively undamaged are having their properties demolished. It took over a year for a lot of the zoning decisions to come out, and it's been very stressful for people not knowing if it's worth repairing their houses or if they will just end up getting bulldozed anyway. And getting insurance right now is a nightmare, so it's even more difficult to buy and sell property.

And of course, we have no idea when the shaking will stop, so there's that too. A lot of people can't move on with their lives and it sucks.

Flooding is nasty... I'd hate to lose all my old drawings and paperwork just like that, and the clean up would be so much work. I've never been in a flood before, although there's been a fair bit of it in this part of the world lately, the Brisbane floods got a lot of coverage here - the speed at which the water became dangerous was pretty freaky.

I was kind of surprised you heard about it Alvin... did it make the news in California? It's hard to tell whether people are even aware we had an earthquake, after Japan we kind of got overshadowed a bit... with good reason, though.

And yeah, SJ... we are used to it, now. It's just getting really tiring, and we though we were through the worst of it... everyone I seem to talk to, even just in passing, was looking forwards to the christmas break so much - the entire city is just exhausted.

The news here crossed to Cal Wilson the comedian, who is from Chrsitchurch although she lives here now. But she's back over there with her family now and she was saying her brother is a structural engineer and he'd just got off work for the year yesterday and about to go on holiday and now he's had to go straight back to work. And the same is going to be true for all the emergency services etc. Just a bunch of people who really deserve a break and had plans, it really couldn't have come at a worse time.

Oh, the twitter trending topics in NZ are pretty telling...

I wish stop people would stop saying Kia Kaha though. It's Maori for "be strong" but we've heard it so much lately it's more gratingly repetitive than it is encouraging.

Everyone in the workforce has been working their hardest to keep themselves on top of what's been happening... Even in retail and hospitality the effects have been severe... Having to clean up broken glass and china for the 5th time isn't going to be making anyone happy. And neither is trying to make up for the time that's been lost due to closing down from the quakes, and dealing with staff being stressed/not sleeping.

Even the building industry, which you might think would be booming, is floundering. No-one can get new insurance cover for houses at the moment, and a house isn't insured til it's fully built anyway. Skilled builders have been leaving in droves because there's no work, we definitely are not in a good position for when the rebuild actually kicks into gear.

The only industries that are really doing well out of this are the construction industry and restaurants... or at least, the ones that are still operating. Because a lot of restaurants are still inside the inner city cordon and aren't reopening elsewhere, the number of options for dining has reduced dramatically... so the ones that are operating are run off their feet.