All things

I was thinking of writing some sort of epilogue to my travelogue, but that might take a bit more time. I need to go through the photos first. The final photo count is 2001 shots over 11 days -- 6.7 GB of jpeg images at maximum resolution. I'm not that crazy. Wedding photographers typically shoot up to 1000 shots in half a day.

I went to hear Joni Eareckson Tada speak at Wisma Eagles earlier this evening. What an inspiring message of perseverance and purpose in the midst of suffering. She is a living example of joy and strength overcoming depression and disability. Despite being a quadriplegic after a spinal injury in her teens left her totally paralysed from the neck down, she has risen above the gloom of self-pity and bitterness, and radiates an inner joy and abundance of life.

It is when we are weak that God can truly display His strength. The rest of the time we are just too caught up in our human pride and self-sufficiency that we think we can live without God. Joni reminded us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5).

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). In ALL things. Good and bad things.

Well, for me, "all things" includes being hit from behind by an Altis. And most ironically, it happened as I was on my way TO Joni's talk. Argghhh. It was along Jalan Tujuan right after the Kesas flyover into USJ. Sigh. I was stuck in the usual stop-and-go USJ crawl. I braked because the car in front of me braked (like, duh). Obviously the guy behind wasn't paying attention, because I heard a loud "thud", the car got thrown forward a bit, some of my CDs were strewn out of their rack, and for the first time in my life, the inevitable happened... my car was rear-ended by an Altis driven by a Mr K. He was nice enough to get down and assess the damage. In order not to hold up the traffic, we pulled over to the inner road in USJ 2. It turns out Mr K lives in USJ 2, of all places. I think he was trying to change lanes to get home when he hit me, coz the right front of his car hit the left rear of my car. My car bumper was pushed in a little. The lights were not broken, but it's a bit loose now. The boot lid looks OK. The left rear fender is probably knocked slightly out, coz the gap between the boot and the sill on the left is wider than on the other side. Sigh. It's no consolation that Mr K thinks his car sustained more damage. Credit to Toyota though, nothing external was broken on both cars.

I got Mr K's number and address. He offered to pay for the repair (yeah, like, he has a choice?!). It was too dark to fully inspect the damage. I hope there's no major internal damage. The car is just 7 months and 2 days old... Tomorrow I'll see what the mechanic can do. I am a bit wary of getting the entire bumper resprayed... unless he can do a good job of matching the colour. You know, sometimes a cheapskate touch-up is worse than just leaving a few scratches alone. Mr K hopes that the repair bill won't be too high. I just hope he learns his lesson. I guess this is part of life. I just didn't expect to happen to me. What an irony. First, I got whacked, and then I got to hear a sermon on enduring hardships. Sigh. Amen.