I was in my apartment making lunch in the early afternoon when the room shook.
I dived under a table in the living room. For 40 seconds, which felt much longer, my mind went empty.
But I knew it was an earthquake. We had gone through one five months before, a 7.1-magnitude quake on September 4 that shook the city severely but caused no deaths.
I could not believe that this could happen again and in a much more tragic way: the death toll reached 155 people yesterday, with more than 200 missing - including 90 international students trapped in a language school, many of them known to Asian circles in Christchurch.
My apartment - indeed, my street and most of my immediate neighbourhood - were undamaged. We are in the western end of the city, the least-affected part of Christchurch.
But many other Hongkongers who live in Christchurch have had to make difficult decisions about whether to leave the city or not.