On the evening of the 26th of December here in Taiwan, we were hit with a series of major earthquakes. The biggest was 7.1 on the Richter scale according to USA and Japan (and 6.7 according to Taiwan) - the biggest earthquake was actually an aftershock of the earlier 4.6 shock, which occurred several hours before.

Following the major earthquake was 9 more quakes in just several hours, all above 5. There were a grand total of 12 earthquakes in 24 hours, quite scary indeed. We're not sure if the monster managed to come up from below but he sure gave it a good try!

Thankfully and seemingly remarkably lucky, the earthquake didn't cause much damage or death. Several houses in the affected area of Pingtung fell down and many were left cracked, though there were several deaths but for such a big quake, it's amazing no more people died. We didn't feel the effects here in Taipei, which was reported to be around 1 or 2. Down south of the island though, out in the ocean, the effects were really felt. Being an undersea quake, the 7.1 managed to damage telecommunications and data cables under the water. Divers are already fixing the cables but it has been said that it may take 3 - 4 weeks for everything to be fixed.

The results around Asia on internet connection are amazing. Yesterday from Taiwan to USA, the response time (latency or ping) was almost 400ms, whereas it should normally be around 200ms or less from a high-speed connection. Today it seems like IT managers have managed to fix something or re-route data as the response time is a much better at 240ms.

We'll keep you posted on updates from Asia but it seems like data cables are already being fixed as our Internet connections in Taiwan are much speedier today.