About 5 minutes to 3pm local time, Jakarta experienced an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale. At first it was 7.4 but later it was down graded to 7.0

I was at home in my office (upstairs) doing some data entry work on the computer when suddenly I felt this really strange sensation.

We tend to think that an earthquake is usually violent, rumbling, noisy...but this one wasnt so.

I was typing away and very suddenly I felt this "giddy"' sensation and I thought I was having some kind of a dizzy spell.

I grabbed the corners of my desk and suddenly realized that the room was actually swaying....not violent....almost gentle swaying which increased for about 20 to 30 seconds and diminished again and finally died down completely. I cant put an exact amount of time from beginning to end, but I'm pretty sure it was not more than one minute.

Of course being the coward that I am, the first few seconds I felt this little wave of panic and I couldnt let go of my desk....lol.

After a few seconds, I thought of my cats and raced downstairs to check on them.

All the chandeliers were swinging quite wildly and took about five minutes after it was all over for the swinging to come to a full stop.

My poor cats were terrified, ...but settled down quite quickly and were mesmerized by the swinging chandeliers. They looked funny all of them with eyes to the ceilings and I was trying to imagine what exactly they were thinking.

I sat down and turned the tv on and waited at a local news channel for the "breaking news" which came about ten minutes later. Not knowing where the epicenter was, I was very worried about a tsunami.

Jakarta is a coastal city on the northwest of the island of Java and if the earthquake was as strong as I felt it was, and the epicenter was off the north coast, I was gonna head for the hills....lol.

So far only 15 people have been killed and hopefully this will be all.

I'm fine...I felt a little bit shaky for a few minutes afterwards..what I would call my very own "after-shock"....lol