Update. Updated.

It has been so long since I have updated. And I will – though I have made nothing of immense excitement happen to me of late. I have stopped trying - it’s winter, I live in a shaky city and I work 40 hours a week. Excuses done - I will keep going I promise!

The spirit of Christchurch has of late taken on a whiff of resignation. There are those who feign indifference to the always constant threat of aftershocks, those who laugh in the face of natural disaster and those who have left the city they called home for a relatively safer place. Most however are living in a state somewhere between over it and under it (the table that is.)

It’s hard not to be anxious when the room you are in starts swaying suddenly or you woken up at 3am by the sound of the earth roaring, then rushing through the foundations of your home causing it all to shake uncontrollably. I can now tell a 3.5 from a 4.7 and I usually hear an aftershock seconds before it hits.

I think the hardest thing for the people of Christchurch is like so many experiences, it’s hard for outsiders to express genuine empathy when they have no experience of the occurrence. People assume the one earthquake is all you get, they don’t know that aftershocks happen regularly and can be more terrifying and cause more damage than the original quake. They don’t see how thoroughly depressing it is to walk through your home suburb and instead of green fields, and lovely surfaces there are cracks or liquefaction; or in my case in Sumner, giant containers lined all along what used to be one of the most picturesque roads. People have lost their homes, people are still using chemical toilets and boiling water and there is no CBD anymore. Can you even imagine how weird that is? But in this world it’s a case of same old shit, different country. There have been over 7000 aftershocks since Sept and we are all so tired of it.

Reading that make it sounds like I’m complaining and that’s not at all what I’m trying to get across. Maybe I just needed to hoc it up, spit in out on to digital paper to get it off my chest.

We are zombies here now. Half awake, half asleep in a post quake world wondering when, if it will stop. Will more damage be done or can we start living our lives again?