Lucky to be safe. Lucky to be alive
This is lieu of the Serendra car explosion that happened the other day in front of Fullybooked.
To put it simply, I missed two explosions here in the city, twice. In these two instances, I could’ve been at the blast sight during the time of the explosion and could’ve gotten hurt. Or worse..killed. All because of simple decisions such as when to eat, I avoided being in the danger zone.
Lucky instance #1
The first one was the Glorietta 2, explosion back in 19 October 2007. I was in Makati with my friend April. About 15 mins before the blast, she asked if I wanted to go for lunch already. I remember looking outside and saying I was lazy because it just seemed too hot. But then after 5 mins, my hunger got the best of me therefore, I told April that, yah, we should go.
Our usual route : take a jeep along Makati avenue, get down at Landmark, walk a little and enter Glorietta 2. It normally took us about 15 mins to get there.
As we rode the jeep that day, the traffic was abnormally bad and there were sirens all over. There were police on their motorbikes and firetrucks rushing in the same direction – towards glorietta. Something was up. Amidst the mounting chaos, I received a call from my mom. “Where are you? A bomb exploded in Glorietta. You better stay clear of that area.”
My hair stood up. If it wasn’t for our laziness, April and I would’ve been at the area of the explosion site when it blew up.
Lucky instance #2
Some of you have heard about the car explosion in Serendra just the other day (15 Dec 2009). For those of you who don’t know, you can check my previous post about it.
I work on High Street which is right beside Serendra. For lunch, my colleagues and I usually walk from our office to Market Market, passing by area where the explosion happened. On the day of the explosion, I would’ve been walking along that area if not for a proposal that I had to finishing.
About 12nn, I was thinking of finishing the proposal after lunch but decided against it. Whilst typing away, we at the office heard that thunder-like boom and wondered what it was. When we looked outside the window, we saw guards rushing towards Fullybooked. My colleagues and I went down and discovered that a car had exploded.
Though the blast was not strong enough to kill anyone more than 5 meters away, there may have been shrapnel or other little pieces of whatnot that may have injured the bystanders. Have I gone out for lunch earlier, I would’ve found myself in that area. I may have potentially gotten hurt.
Bottom line
These stories aren’t really dramatic. Yet, the possibility of my presence at the explosion sites during those events makes me think… “damn I’m lucky”. Who would’ve known small decisions such as “I want to eat now” or “I’ll eat later” can change things. This does not apply just to those two incidents but rather, to things in general.
How many instances in our lives did we avoid danger by just making one little decision? Unless the avoidance of harm was as obvious as my experience, we’ll never know. Maybe because you decided to make one turn too early, you avoided a lurking stranger with malicious intentions. Maybe this and maybe that.
The bottom line is, if you are safe and alive… thats something to be thankful for.