"Please calmly run for your lives"

On Thursday morning I woke up to an alarm and thought that morning had come way too early. It turned out not to be my alarm clock, and not to be morning. At four in the morning the building started shouting, and it said: "There is a fire. Please calmly run for your lives." So I grabbed my passport, my external harddrive with my photos, and the work laptop (because I am just that nice to my employer to save their property), put on some clothes and then calmly ran down the stairs (I live on the 9th floor) and stood outside with a lot of other people for an hour or so.

It luckily turned out to be a false alarm, so the building and the rest of my stuff, is still doing fine. While waiting around outside, I figured it might have been a good idea to bring all my banking stuff too. Trying to access my Japanese bank accounts without the proper papers may well be quite difficult. Accessing my Swedish bank without my current props would require physically going to Sweden.

While standing around waiting, I at least got to see some of my neighbors. It seems many work nights, so there were not that many people standing around. It was also a chance to see them without heavy layers of makeup, since most people were standing around in their pajamas.

While waiting, I e-mailed a friend and explained that I had "避難" (evacuated) because my house had a "火事" (fire). When I was allowed back into my apartment, I was not very sleepy so I decided to do the hip thing and update Facebook and Twitter about my daily life. Then I wrote "家事です。落ち着いて非難しなさい" instead of "火事です。落ち着いて避難しなさい", which reads the same but means something very different. I blame being very tired and the stupid kanji prediction of Windows (my cellphone defaulted to the correct kanji) since I have never used the word 非難 but have used 避難 many times and would expect it to default to that (excuses excuses...). So instead of "The house is on fire, run for your lives" it became "Housework is ongoing, make sure you complain"... Though since the fire alarm is only spoken Japanese, and since there was no fire, I guess it could be that it was warning us about housework.

Getting the flu, and your apartment on fire

I had the flu last week and have not had time or energy enough to do anything blog worthy. It was the first time in many years I got influenza, and it was a long time since I shivered this much. I was shaking like crazy for two or three days. But I was busy at work (had presentations to do etc.), so I spent my days there (at least it is warm), taking extreme care to not infect anyone else, and slept the rest of the time. Now I am fine, though I still cough quite a lot.

Tonight, at 3:16 A.M., I was woken by a Japanese voice screaming: "There is a fire on the first floor! Please calmly run away!" So I calmly put on some clothes, grabbed my passport and my external USB hard drive, and escaped out into the very cold and dark night (minus 9 Celsius). Apparently my neighbors were less enthusiastic, and most took the elevator downstairs (I, following the proper procedure, took the stairs from the 9th floor).

After a few minutes, a fire truck arrived. After a few minutes more, a police patrol car and lots of police men also arrived. A fireman said that it looked like a false alarm, they could not find any fire or smoke. After about 30 minutes, they managed to turn off the alarm, and everyone returned home.

I guess it was a good chance to see my neighbors without makeup, though it was too dark to see much. Two people had animal pajamas (tails, ears; pajamas shaped like animals or cartoon characters are popular here though I thought they were for kids) so perhaps they work for some karaoke place? Since it was 3 in the morning, most people in our building were probably at work, and not so many neighbors were around to be looked at.

Anyway, good thing the place did not burn down.