The Accident (plus Prologue: The Chinese Invasion)

Ok. Here goes the second attempt at reviving my almost defunct blog. I KNOW I haven't blogged since July. I just spent the last hour blogging when I finally finished and then promptly lost the entire entry. Why? Well thats a question I would really bounce back to bleeding blogger.com. Can somebody please tell me why my default blogger.com page is entirely in CHINESE. Chickadee China the Chinese Chicken. My desktop is a victim of the Chinese invasion. Now, I know I'm Chinese, but that doesn't give blogger.com the green light to assume that I'm Chinese and can read Chinese, because frankly, I CAN'T.

I think those last couple of sentences broke some obscure record on number of 'C's in one breath. Anyways, I must have clicked on some button that I thought read "Publish Post" in Chinese but really meant "Junk this piece of crap", so thats how the story goes.

gosh. I hope that first paragraph right there doesn't qualify as seditious comments.

back to serious business.

THE ACCIDENT September 16 2005 (well I guess if you really wanted to be technical about it, it would be September 17. 1am in the morning)

I just drop off Eugene and Eriko at the Swissotel Merchant Court. It's pouring buckets. I'm pretty fatigued after not getting a good night's rest for the entire week. I'm cruising along Hill St at about 50 or 60 when the taxi (it's always a taxi, isn't it?) in front pulls to a stop to give way to an ambulance pulling out of Hill St Fire Station. I slam on my brakes...and this is where my memory is pretty fudged, but as best as I recall, the brakes don't respond the way I thought they would and WHAM! Car crumples into the taxi. My bonnet's crushed like an accordion. The passenger side door doesn't open anymore, and I scramble out of my car, thinking that it was going to blow any second.

Standing in the rain, I think I took a momentary break from my shell shock to appreciate the melodrama of the situation. Drenched, stunned into silence, with made-in-Bangkok Toyota junkheap before me. To sum up in a word: surreal. Something I had often toyed with in careless daydream or fretted over in anxious paranoia had actually happened, but nothing had gone the way I had thought it would in my imagination. No life flashing before my eyes. No fear. No pain. No blood. And in my world of messed up priorities, the first thought that came to my mind: No car for the weekend. Dammit.

In retrospect, I have one thing to say. I am so thankful that I am not the only person I have to depend on. I mean, if this self-centred, immature, spoilt brat that is myself was all I had to count on, my sorry ass is so screwed (pardon the graphic metaphor). In the seconds before full-blown shell shock set in, I managed to sputter out over the phone to Wenni--whom I figured to be the only person still awake at that unearthly hour, and serendipitously turned out to be news broadcaster non pareil--that I had gotten into a bad accident. Before I could say Chickadee Chinese Chicken (yea it's still on my mind), I had my friends all ringing me up to see if I was okay. I think I owe you guys big time. Seriously, THANKS. Not just for the concern, but more importantly, I think you guys really helped to put things back in perspective. That maybe, just maybe, the fact that I was still alive and breathing with my legs intact was more important than not having a car for the weekend. Sometimes, it's strange but it takes someone else to say the obvious and slap you back into the real world. so yea, if you guys ever get into an accident, just give me a ring, I'll gladly lend my car.