Wednesday 12 December 2012

The after-thought prelude

Yesterday was the first time I have dialled an ambulance after hearing tyres screech on the bitumen three metres behind me, hearing that collision of metal on flesh and turning around to see a figure sliding off the bonnet of the taxi. A businessman and the driver in a bright turquoise turban stepping out, the latter repeating 'it was a green light? It was a green light!' nervously.

He was running across the road when his iPod fell and he became distracted. His point of contact with the windscreen was his head, at thirty kilometres an hour, but it was the lower back pain he was most concerned with. He was conscious and could feel all four limbs. I feel bad for the taxi driver, nit all should be clear from a legal side of things.

When remembering back to his first words as he rushed out of the vehicle, you can't help but marvel how people automatically do rush at their own defence as if from fear of retribution. Conditioned by society, and reminds me of the story of how so many passed the hit-and-run toddler in China out of the desire not to be implicated legally. Similar stories occur in Vietnam, apparently. It is the musings of how we as westernised Australians of Asian-heritage would fare raised under those circumstances that lead to the below topic, after a fashion... and the most likely outcome is that we wouldn't even know any different. That in itself is so scary. How much of ourselves would we still be and how much would we owe to the external environment? Hence below.

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