Luckiest thing - Page 4

On January 15 2010 12:39 gchan wrote:
True stories:

In late 2004, I was scheduled to fly to Phuket with my family along with my uncle, aunt and cousin. Our original booked flight was December 23, 2004. One and a half months before then, my cousin had an opportunity to go to a camping excursion with his Boy Scouts troop which would fall on the dates December 20th to December 23rd. He really wanted to go, so we delayed our flight plans by one day to December 24, 2004 at 11:00 AM (we were flying out of Hong Kong). On that morning, while preparing to leave to the airport, we received a phone call saying that our flight had been put on hold. The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake had just struck off the shore of Indonesia and there were tsunami warnings for the entire Indian Ocean region. We never went to Phuket, and later, when I googled the hotel we were supposed to stay in, it was completely devastated.

In July 2005, while I was driving home one day in Los Angeles 5:00 PM traffic, I happened to catch a pocket of no cars because of a freeway split (the freeway was expanded from 5 lanes to 8 lanes for like half a mile). While driving in the third lane at 100 MPH (admittedly, I was a reckless driver), I tried to cut into the second lane at the same time somebody in the first lane (the fast lane) tried to cut into the second lane. He was slightly ahead of me, so was caught in his blind spot. I braked, but the front left tip of my car clipped the back of his car, and I started losing control of my car. My steering wheel locked as my ABS kicked in, and I spun out. Spun out 540 degrees rightwards across 4 lanes of Los Angeles 5:00 PM commute traffic on a major freeway. At one point, I was facing the cars. Luckily, I was still in the pocket of empty cars and I hit no cars as my car careened off the side of the freeway. Also, luckily, construction teams had recently installed cement wall barriers along the sides of that part of the freeway (it was an ongoing construction project). My 3,500 pound car slammed into the side barrier at 70+ mph along with rotational force impact. My car hit so hard that it bounced off the wall 7 feet and pushed back the concrete barrier back 1.8 feet. If I had not hit the concrete barrier, my car would have rolled over the downhill incline next to the freeway. When the dust was settled, I walked out of the accident with one 1.5 inch superficial cut from airbag damage on my left arm. It pays to have a safe car (I drove a Honda accord).

One month later in August 2005, because my car was destroyed, I was going to carpool with my friend back up to the Bay Area (Northern California) to start the new semester. My mom didn't really want me to bother my friend, so she forced me to buy a ticket to fly up instead. On the drive up along the 5 freeway, my friend was involved in an automobile accident. Both he and his father died. I was supposed to be in that car.

Three near deaths in less than one year puts a bit of perspective on life.

Bonus: Of the 7 years I have been eligible for jury duty, I have been summoned 6 times. From Google, the odds of being picked for Jury duty is 17% (of course it varies by region), 0.17 ^ 6 is 0.0024%.