It's a tough time for the people of Christchurch, but the people are even tougher.
"Anyone hear what magnitude the earthquake was?"
"6.1? 6.3? But pretty shallow, eh?"
"Yeah."
For anyone watching the images of yesterday's devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and not familiar with New Zealand, that laconic conversation between two men in the centre of the city might have seemed a bit strange.
But it's actually fairly common. As common as the tremors that the country to be called the Shaky Isles.
Earthquakes are a part and parcel of life for many of its inhabitants.
The CBD of the nation's capital, Wellington, was formed from reclaimed swamp uplifted during a massive quake in the 1800s.
It's a running joke that Parliament sits on this land and another earthquake there might do the country some good.
The numbers also tell a tale.
I well remember one earthquake in the early 1990s. I was enjoying a beer one Saturday afternoon in the western suburbs of Christchurch, and I suddenly felt a bit woozy.
Like the others around me, I put it down to the alcohol. It was actually a reasonable shake, around 5.4 or something from memory.
We all just shook it off, and got on with the festivities.
A friend of mine's home survived the September quake unscathed, yet there were huge cracks either side of his house, and extensive damage to his neighbours' properties.
Yet they, like him, were philosophical about the damage. It was bound to happen some time, they said.
Just as many rural Australians prepare themselves for the inevitable bushfire, or those up north expect cyclones, without always really thinking about it, so it is with Kiwis and earthquakes.
I lived for the best part of 38 years not further than 200 kilometres of the faultline that slices through the country.
About 10 years was spent in Christchurch, which, despite the beer incident, I never really felt was likely to be where I ever felt "the big one".
Much of the rest of that time was in the foothills of the Southern Alps, that gloriously scenic and often deadly mountain range that in many ways defines New Zealand internationally.
It also is quake central, though the deaths that occur there are not from those, but of mountaineers on the easily-underestimated peaks they try to scale.
The New Zealand building code deals with earthquake risk just about better than anywhere else in the world. Earthquakes with a magnitude in the high-7s have come and gone, with damage to be sure, but little compared to elsewhere, and even fewer in the way of fatalities.
What makes yesterday's quake worse, apart from the shallowness, was that many buildings were still in the process of being repaired, or hadn't been fixed at all, after the much larger September earthquake.
The death toll and the extra damage are really what's going to test resolve.
The last major body count was in Napier and surrounds, on the east coast of the North Island, in 1931. After 256 people died, the city was rebuilt – giving it its unique art deco look - and life slowly went back to normal.
Between then and now, the "worst" quake was one in the remote South Island West Coast town of Inangahua, where three people died in 1968.
A lot of the talk from my Christchurch friends yesterday was that they had had enough and wanted to move elsewhere.
Some were still reeling from the damage to homes and businesses after last September, which hadn't been fixed.
It's a natural reaction, but one I think that will fade as time marches on.
Christchurch and the surrounding Canterbury province have been the home of many a legendary rugby union star, with toughness the trademark.
Think Alex "Grizz" Wylie, the former All Black player and coach. Or Robbie Deans, the present Wallabies mentor.
They were characterised by their no-nonsense approach to both sport and life. Most Cantabrians like to believe they're like that as well.
Christchurch people are often characterised by the rest of the country as spectacularly parochial, seeing the city as the centre of the world.
That attitude is (sometimes correctly) the subject of derision elsewhere, but in times like this, the belief will ensure the city will bounce back better than ever.
Kia kaha, Christchurch.
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