In Reply to: Difference is posted by rfernandez on Sunday, 2. October 2005 at 09:01 Bali Time:
yes, we did just carry on but no more really than Madrid did. or Bali too for that matter. i was in Bali in May and i remember Ketut, our driver and friend, saying he wasn't worried about getting caught up in another bombing, but mostly about not being able to feed his family; he said it had become a real fight to get work. the balinese carried on too, because what else do you do?
after London was hit - we all knew it would be, it kind of gives you a weird invincibility mentally because you know it might happen to you in the underground one morning, so why try to second-guess fate? - of course it was terrifying. so many of us were a hair's breadth away, knew people who just missed it, etc. when we planned to go to Bali, my partner's parents found it very hard, because they have never lived with this constant threat; in a small french suburb, you feel "safe". and even those of us who "grew up" with the IRA - it didnt feel exactly the same. a telephone warning isn't much, and it is no consolation to their victims but...the carnage just wasnt on the same scale.
i hope and pray that Australia will never have to feel this way, that they will never have it as part of their daily "maybe" that their bus journey might be targeted. but anyone who decides not to go to a place that has (now twice) been hit by bloody terrorism, aimed at them, has all my understanding. i personally wouldn't hesitate to go...life is too short, and i live off travel. the idea of dying on my miserable daily commute, when i am doing nothing particularly special...it is so mundane, so banal, i find it worse.
each day we wake up we are lucky. that is something i learned a long while back. perhaps when we live somewhere "safe", we forget this. life is fragile. we get to choose some things (i could leave London), but not others.
please, make the decision that is right in your own hearts. your life is precious, there is no right and wrong. I am just so desperately sorry that this has happened.