I see dead people

No, this is not about the movie "The Sixth Sense". This is about my day yesterday, Wednesday Aug 15. The real drama didn't even start until later on in the day, about 3:30.

I had just gotten home from lunch with Chris and doing a little shopping. I was making our bed and doing some stuff in our bedroom when I looked outside and noticed that there were several emergency vehicles (fire trucks, police vans, ambulances) on our street in front of the building across from us that were not there 5 minutes ago when I got home.

Chris and I have this sort of quasi-joke that neither one of us better have a heart attack in HK because people do not move over for ambulances here. It is actually sort of scary but people just keep driving and don't make any effort whatsoever to get out of the way. This is sort of a problem in the middle of rush hour traffic especially in the Midlevels where we live where there is a lot of traffic and relatively narrow roads.

So my first thought when I saw the vehicles was that "Gee, I hope someone didn't die because I'm sure they called 999 (the HK version of US 9-1-1) about an hour ago and they are just getting here." Then I noticed that there were a bunch of policemen standing around on the podium level / patio (this is really the ground floor for apartment buildings but then there is a bunch of parking underneath) and I thought to myself, "hmm, they have it pretty good. Just sort of hanging out."

This is where Erin Bilot would have reminded me that I am not an policeman, fireman or paramedic and I really don't know what these people should actually be doing. And it would have been well deserved because as I was looking outside, I noticed that a policeman was dragging a big black tarp (one of two) that was on the patio. Much to my very serious surprise, I saw legs sticking out from underneath. And then he pulled off the other one and there was the other half of the body uncovered. Fortunately, it was all in one piece but there is a reason that CSI Miami has bodies lying on the ground the way that it does in its episodes. It's because that's how the bodies actually look sometimes. It was incredibly freaky to see a body lying there with one arm sort of up and the other down and blood all around the upper half of the body.

I have absolutely no idea what happened because I can't find it in the paper and I didn't see any windows open at a high level of the building. I of course called Chris to tell him what was going on. He told me to stop looking but I couldn't! Oh, it was seriously so awful.

The reason the policeman took the tarp off? Well, so the forensic photographer could take pictures of course. That was all a bit odd to watch as well. I'm pretty sure I was living through a TV episode.

My luck, however, hadn't yet run out yet. At about 6:15 I caught a bus with a friend to go and meet some people for dinner. I said to her "Should we sit on the top or bottom?" but she wanted to sit on the bottom because it's just easier to get off. So we were able to get seats that were facing backward.

A few minutes later we heard a very loud thump on the bus and two seconds later we saw a massive tree branch fall behind the bus on to the hood of a very nice mercedes heading the other way. It really wasn't my day.

Everyone started getting off the bus so we followed and saw that the front of the second story of the bus had clearly collided with the tree branch. Glass was smashed in a bit and the TV screen in the front of the bus had fallen down. Luckily, no one was hurt but here we were in the middle of a very busy road in rush hour and all traffic was now blocked going both ways. What a nightmare!

We decided not to take any more chances and caught a taxi to our dinner spot. Needless to say, the day had way too much drama for me.

We have, however, had some fabulous news from the U.S. Two different sets of our friends gave birth to their babies. We are really so excited for them and so sad that we can't be there to congratulate them all in person. We have done pretty well so far about missing our friends and family but this is the stuff that is really hard to miss.

Bryan and Fran Hannon welcomed their new baby girl, Taylor Rose, on Aug 15 at 7:07 a.m. and she is just as sweet as can be (we know because we've seen pictures). Bryan says that both Fran and Taylor are doing great.

Amy and J.P. Fassbender welcomed their second child, a baby boy, Jack Steven, as well. Because of the time difference, I can't totally tell but I think he was born at 5:20 on Aug 14 and everyone is happy and healthy.

Congrats you guys! We're so excited for you! 2 down and 1 to go. We're hoping to hear the good news from the DeGraffs in the next couple of days to complete the trifecta.