This is New Petchburi Road, Bangkok. It’s where I live. You’ll notice that it’s a dual carriageway with three lanes of traffic in each direction. There are ocassional footbridges for crossing, but the closest to my apartment building is a good 200-300 metres away.

Unfortunately the closest convenience store (and ATM) to my apartment building is directly across the street. I’ll often wait for a break in traffic, dash to the middle of the road, hop onto the central reservation, and wait for a break in traffic in the other direction to complete my suicidal (but more efficient) road-crossing.

Today I hopped onto the central reservation during rush hour, in unwieldy flip-flops, slipped, and fell backwards, head-first, into oncoming traffic.

“So this is it, I’m going to die”, I thought.

Somehow, I did not, and escaped with barely a scratch.

The thought that (according to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, at least) there are now a higher-than-usual number of parallel universes in which my head became an unpleasant stain under the wheels of Bangkok traffic today, is a sobering one.