London bombs!

This is not directly related to Bambini. However, its just too BIG a thing not to record in our blog.

Many of our friends have earlier emailed, smsed or called us to check if we were alright. Just want to give thanks to God that both of us are indeed safe and sound and not very affected by the series of explosions in London earlier this morning (London time).

YL was going to take the underground tube to school at 9am. A train had arrived and he was about to board it when there was a message from the PA system to say that they are shutting down the whole underground service and the station itself, because there was a series of incidents. He tried another nearby tube station but it was the same and he even saw explosive experts patrolling the area.

At that time, I was surfing the internet and there was newsflash about the blasts in London. We were horrified to hear of so many explosions throughout central london business area. The images, statistics and reports that were coming through the tv and internet gave us shivers. One double-decker bus was ripped apart by a bomb, one bomb exploded in a litter bin and there were several explosions in the various underground tube lines. A lot of the less injured commuters came out of the tube visibly shaken with a lot of soot on their faces...

We were just glued to the tv and everything appeared so surreal. You see, just a couple of months ago, there was a docu-fictional show that was staged to show how London might respond to a similar attack...My mind was going, "is this for real or is it just another drill"??

We continued to monitor the situation from home via tv news and internet. Thank God we are staying just outside central london, and are therefore relatively unaffected. We had also found out that all our friends and colleagues in London were physically unaffected by the incidents. However, we still felt rather upset.If this was one year ago, I might have been affected, as I would have been travelling down to school to write my MSc thesis in one of the school libraries near Russell Square tube station (one of the station that had been affected by the blast). And the timing of the blast might have well affected me as that would have been my travelling time!! Thoughts like these made us feel really thankful for just being alive.

We're really touched when we received so many smses, emails and telephone calls from friends and families to check if we are alright. We need to continue to pray that the situation will become much better for those Londoners and tourists who are caught in the blast and that there would be as few fatalities as possible and a sense of normality restored to London soon. In a way, London has subconciously become our "second" home, and it just distress us to think of what the families and friends of those who were injured or worse, killed, in this senseless incident must be going through now...

Its strange that just yesterday, the whole of London was celebrating how they have clinched the honour to host the Olympics in 2012. Today, the sense of jubilation has suddenly been replaced by such tragedy and confusion...

Life is totally unpredictable. We all need to cherish TODAY.