Someone to Watch over Me

Call it fate. Call it circumstance. Call it luck but someone may be watching over me.

How so? Well let me explain.

Sab and I were going to go to Phi Phi Island for Christmas 2004 as we were going to catch up with our Canadian freinds Gordy and Aletha. We met them when we worked in Dalian and were really loooking forward to seeing them again and enjoy some beachside action in some of natures most beautiful surroundings. Whilst in the midst of our planning for that trip a teacher at our kindergarten (Byron) talked up the benefits of going to Koh Samui which is on the opposite side of Thailand (in the Gulf). The more he talked about it the nicer it sounded so we decided to change our plans at the last minute and take Byrons advice and enjoy Koh Samui instead.

Come the 26th of December i was hungover due to a great Christmas night of watching ladies kickboxing. It was only when i made my way into the main street of Lamai that i found out about the tsunami that had ravaged Thailand and various other countries. I sat in a bar and was watching BBC World for updates when news was filtering through about what happened earlier that day and how Phuket and Phi Phi were severly damaged. Aletha was swept out of her building and into the sea and only survived because she is a naturally strong swimmer. Gordy was in the water at the time and described it as "being in a huge washing machine."

Come later that week and it was the famous Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan (i know i've spelt that wrong). After a fantastic night of dancing away with 8000 revellers on the beach, i took a speedboat back to Samui as it was only 20 minutes to get there instead of the usual hour on the slow boat. 1 month later 5 people were killed doing exactly the same thing.

After the disaster that was Taiwan my mum has kept mentioning that "there's a reason for you to be home" and maybe the events of this week were the reason. In case you (the "you" being the 2 or 3 people who only read this blog) there was a massive earthquake off the southern coast of Taiwan. Sab and I were going to work in a city called Tainan which was affected by the earthquake. I couldn't beleive it when i read about that. Were we screwed over because somehow some being not of this world decided that we weren't supposed to be there because somehow our lives would be affected because of this earthquake?

Or can you just put it down to circumstance?