Counting Our Blessings

Yi Lin has just put up a post on a rather traumatic event today.

And it just brings back to mind all the times our friends and even strangers comment about how lucky we are to be doing this trip.

And we always reply that luck has got nothing to do with it. It took us 2 years of scrimping and saving, the loss of one job (mine, since I had to resign), the knowledge that we will come home without a cent to our name and a whole lot of courage to go ahead with this trip.

Today, I shall take my words back, and count my blessings instead.

We are lucky because:

1) Though we were beset upon by 3 robbers, none of them were armed. There are fellow hostellites that have also been mugged at knifepoint, some more than once!

2) We had lost only a camera. Painful, but not irreplaceable, in the grand scheme of things.

3) Photos that were lost in the camera can still be taken again, because all the pictures were of Bogota. Oh, and don't bother trying to check for compromising pictures of us online. There are only pictures of food we ate and locations that we visited.

4) My mother-in-law had the foresight to insist on travel insurance. Let's hope the insurance company will accept our claim even though we are still overseas!

5) We had the company of a Spanish tutor at the hostel with us to make the police report. Without her, we would probably have had to play charades or Win, Lose or Draw with the police.

6) Most importantly, Yi Lin is safe. I keep thinking to myself, should I have fought harder? Wasn't there an instant where none of them were running yet? Could I have tackled someone? Do a leg sweep? If I had at least fought with one of them and apprehended him, could the rest of the culprits still be tracked down?

In that split second that I was facing all three thugs, I suddenly remembered this old Jackie Chan movie. One of the older ones in the Police Story series. Jackie was strolling with his girlfriend, acted by Maggie Cheung in the park when some hooligans tried to disturb them. Jackie (of course) whooped their asses and they ran away, and he chased after them. It was only later that a hysterical Maggie was telling him that he should never have left her alone in order to chase the thugs.

No, thinking back at all that happened, I still believe I made the right decision. Give up the camera, hang back, let them run away. Fight them and I would have endangered my wife.

That, I cannot and will not allow.