Is it just Paranoia???- 26th August

Thursday night there was no detective series, no comedy episodes but just the news and tracking Irene. Friday morning woke up with a back ache, didnt have a peaceful sleep, after all the facts, news kept flashing:

- First Hurricane since 1992 projected to hit New York City.
- Category 3 storm, wind speed expected around 130 mph , which means distruction.
- Governor of North Carolina declares emergency and orders evacuation in the low lying areas.
- Hurricane as big as this hitting areas of NY, NJ, MA and CT, the most poulated areas in east coast, it could give anyone sleepless nights.
- New York governor was holding off and not ordering evacuation just yet. Well I havn't heard of new york being evacuated in recent history. If you have, I am ignorant

My Internet searches gave a lot more information than the television in London, infact most people were not aware about this just yet.

I went about my meetings and review calls to keep my mind off this and again few things keeping ringing on the back of my head "to predict the path of the hurricane is not easy, specially not 72 hrs prior"

I had a saturday early morning flight and as I wrapped up my meetings on friday, Hurricane Irene was slowly creeping towards the East coast gaining momentum and size.

I closed by laptop for the day and prepared to head back to the appartment and start packing for my morning flight and as it happens most often there was one last chat i had to have in the break-out area of my office. (Break out area is the coffee area with television around)

During the course of the conversation with Romesh, we discussed potential impact the hurricane can have on East coast and he said " You know how paranoid these guys can get ". I glanced over his shoulder to take a look at the news and there it was. They had confirmed the path , Irene was going to hit New York City on Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

Well is it paranoia or are we just being to cool above some of these things. Dont think any of us back home in India has every experienced a tropical storm, let alone a hurricane. Well I decide to take a long sigh and head back to the appartment and track the flight status.