Faulty Terrorist Attacks are Beautiful

One morning, I woke up to the sound of loud cracking noises outside my window. They then became awful booms with piercing gun shot sounds in between. It was way too early for me to wake up for a work day but I was too frantic to even think about that because I was scared out of my pyjama pants!

I quickly searched my mind for the 10 minute "training" we had back in high school when it was the beginning of the post 9/11 era and everyone had to learn how to react if there was a possible bomb threat in the building. I immediately went into Code Red mode, which was simply finding a place where I could crawl underneath to protect myself, assumingly, from the ceiling crashing down on me.

I'm in China so my furniture is bare minimum in my flat. I obviously couldn't crawl under the couch or the coffee table. I had a table - but it's a folding table so you couldn't really hide underneath it. My flat is a loft so the first - and only - thing I could think of when I first heard those sounds was to hide underneath the winding stairs that led up to my bedroom.

I look back now and I think it must have been the one of the most ridiculous scenes I've ever been in because I was in such a state of panic and I was just grasping to these skeletal steps, which probably wouldn't have protected me from a collapsed ceiling anyways!

Seconds - which felt like several minutes - later, I peeked out my window and after seeing nothing on fire or traces of smoke in the air, I concluded that some idiot thought it was funny to play with fire crackers to wake up the whole neighbourhood. I found out later from my boss that people in China regularly use fireworks for weddings, special occasions and moving days. I guess I got a new neighbour.

Since then, I've been feeling all crummy about fire crackers because they seem such a nuisance but tonight, after a day's work and a dinner with a colleague, I was on my bike and on my way home, a burst of colours lit the sky on my street and it was beautiful, especially since I was so close to the lovely scene. I stopped cycling and enjoyed the array of multi-coloured splashes until the end, which was when I realized that they echoed the sounds created by the fire crackers that made me go Code Red the other day.

I guess fireworks - or should I say, fire crackers - ain't so bad after all. After all, I am in living in the birthplace of such inventions! :D