Did The earth Move For You? (or not?)

Earthquakes are interesting occurrences. My first experience was in Greece when I was standing in my kitchen and the cooker started to shake and move across the floor. It was truly scary.

I think it was scary not just because it was my first, but because it was 'qualitatively' different from the ones we get here in NZ; the 'shake' seems to happen in a different direction

This morning we had this one, magnitude 4.9, Thursday, August 16 2007 at 7:56 am (NZST), 40 km north of Nelson. I was sitting at the computer and felt a small shake and a slight waving of the 'high-rise' I live in. Sometimes the shaking and waving are quite 'interesting' and the CD's fall out of their stand but, apart from my imaginative ponderings about what would happen if we had The Big One (similar to Vancouver, we are, apparently due, sometime, for A Big One) they're no big deal, really. The NZ shakes and the Grecian shakes seem to be in different planes, not quite as straightforward as up-and-down as opposed to side -to-side, but different somehow.

Anyway, this morning was no biggie.

This afternon we had this one:

One side of the office felt the shake and the other side didn't; how weird is that? I heard the window-frames complain but I felt no movement of the floor. A blonde ten feet away freaked out; I know I may have explained the whole issue in one adjective but I don't think so because one of the other people on the same side of the office (come to think of it, a bleached blonde) also felt significant movement but one of the 'real' blondes (a male) on my side of the office felt nothing but, like me, heard their window-frames complain.

So, the questions remain; is earthquake sensitivity a function of geographical location (which side of the office) or a function of gender or a function of 'blonde-ness'?