On a Friday afternoon earlier this month,
Bloomberg's Ruth Carson was monitoring Asian markets
and hoping for calm ahead of her weekend.
Truth to be told,
I was hoping for a very quiet Friday
because it was a public holiday here in Singapore on Thursday.
But boy, it definitely didn't end up that way for sure.
Ruth covers the foreign exchange market from Singapore.
And on that particular Friday,
an Asian currency that rarely makes headlines started to surge.
The Taiwan dollar, at around 11.30 local time in Taipei,
it jumped by about 2%, but it didn't just stop there.
By the time markets had closed,
the Taiwan dollar was up about 3% higher against the US currency.
To put things into perspective,
it was the single largest one-day advance since 1988.
This is a normally incredibly sedate currency.
Something had clearly blown up.
The blow-up put market watchers globally on high alert.
And on Monday morning, the surge continued.