I try not to blog work-related subjects, so this post is not about work, but some thoughts rising from a workplace accident.
And it is a major accident-a giant crane across the street smashed into our office after collepsing on another two buildinga last night. I did not think too much of if right after I read the news and flood of emails from the office, since nobody in the office gets hurt. I worked from home most of time since the summer and only come in once or twice a week. Then I realized how close my cube is to the window from which the crane crashed into. What if it happened during business hour, and on Wednesdays when I usually go to office? And what if I was not transferred from the old cube which is so close to the window that I could have been hit right from behind, and it happened in the wrong moment? Then I said to myself, wow, you survive another death threat.
When I said another, it sounds way too dramatic, since I never have been in life-or-death situations. Since I left my home country and pursue new life abroad, I started to get that kind of survivor mentality from time to time-like “it could have been me at the wrong time and wrong place”, like “it could have been me if I visited WTC two months later”, or “it could have been me if my flights landed at De Gaulle airport the day the roof collapsed”. I am hardly a world traveler, but I wonder if the true one will feel stronger sense of survival as he set his foot in one more strange place in the world. More over, when tragedy happens to our friends or to people we don’t know, we felt the pain and sorrow for them, there is a small voice whispered in the heart: “it could have been me”. Every extra day we are granted in the world feels like another day the death’s negligence to let us go, if you are as pessimistic and grateful as me.
update: one man in another building is confirmed dead in the accident.