Student
Derek Pan

Terror attack

Last Saturday on the road Rooseveltweg I encountered a bomb attack.

I was cycling and listening to the audio of Dutch for Dummies. Suddenly one unidentified flying object, a so-called UFO, flashed across the space between my hands, and landed on the bike path with a splash of water. Another one followed up in less than a second and heavily dropped near the first one. ‘What the f@#$!’ I shouted on the bike in a falsetto voice, and instinctively continued riding ahead: I was too panicked to stop, definitely. They were two water grenades hurled from the apparment on the side of the road. It was a terror attack, wasn’t it? Luckily I remained physically intact. In retrospect, I found two interesting questions worth a discussion. First is a self-assessment of my response. Based on the tit-for-tat rule, I could not have done better: it’s no harm to cast an F-bomb back for two water bombs, right? Further, I chose to go forward instead of stopping for criminal search. It was brilliant decision by instinct: I would have been hit easily if I stood still there. What a good example for the Chinese thirty-six stratagems, from which it’s said that the best one is running away! Nevertheless I’m more concerned with a second question: what if the target of this prank was not me but a non-Dutch newcomer? Within my imagination, that sounds like the worst pathetic welcome for them during AID 2012. Thankfully the leg-puller(s) at large found the right person to practice their throwing skills. If I were the author of ‘Dutch for Dummies’, I’d like to add one more chapter in it, ‘Playing Dodgeball’, which would be a simple but helpful training guide for the reader to be either an agile ball dodger or a qualified hurler. Vid of the Week: Dodgeball Lesson 101

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