It has been one helluva day.

After being evacuated from the twelveth floor emergency exit of my office twice in two hours, standing under the sweltering heat of the sun in my business coat while fearing for my safety, it no longer qualifies as being exciting.

It all started with a gasp from the News department. Then people crowding behind me, and more collective noises. Being the curious cat, I stood up to see what the commotion was about.

"Can't you feel the tremors? This is an earthquake!" someone exclaimed.

I focused myself and immediately felt the disequilibrium in my head. It was like a gentle rocking to and fro but caused me such discomfort I had to sit myself down just as quickly.

Within ten minutes, there was an internal page by the building security to "head for the nearest emergency exit and evacuate the building calmly".

And so I spiralled-trooped down all twelve flights of stairs in my mighty high heels, wondering if this could qualify for a gym workout.

I was disturbed when a guard announced with a loudspeaker within ten minutes of our reaching the lobby that the building was safe and we could all go back to our offices. How can you ascertain the safety of a building that was rocking just moments before without calling in an engineer to perform safety checks? And didn't they know that tremors never occur independently?

Nonetheless, I headed for a quick lunch before going back to the office for my client training.

Halfway into the training, the tremors came again, in greater intensity and longer duration. This time, you could see the plasma screen move and objects moving on the table and I could literally feel the building sway.

"Should we end the training now? Looks like this is pretty serious..." I asked the obvious.

Then came the evacuation annoucement again, and so we hastily packed our belongings and headed for the nightmare of an exit.

This time round we lingered at the open space near the office a lot longer, not convinced that we should risk our lives for the work we left behind.

Thank God our colleagues in Hong Kong and Tokyo were quick to help us manage the workload when we were away, and many of them were concerned for our safety and there was a flurry of IBs asking checking that I was okay and asking if anyone got hurt.

I can still feel the quake when I close my eyes.