Friday night in Cali, Colombia, and I’m having a quiet one with a few
beers and some cable TV. I live just a few blocks away from La Sexta,
the strip of dance clubs that’s ground zero for nightlife here in the
“World Capital of Salsa”.

It’s 11:30 at night, just as the clubs are starting to pack ‘em in,
when suddenly:

BOOM.

Louder than thunder, coming from just those few blocks away. The lights
go out. The TV flickers and dies. I’m left with half a beer in a totally
dark room and suddenly, growing in the distance, the sounds of sirens
approaching.

They’ve finally done it, I thought. The bloody FARC just blew up a
nightclub. There’s bodies strewn all over the street, bottles of
aguardiente and rum suddenly forgotten in the stampede to get out in the
open before another one blows.

I suck on my beer. Now’s my chance, I thought. Maybe this is the story
that will finally get me that foreign correspondent gig, something in
the pages of the Guardian or CNN or a byline with AP or Reuters. It
might even get air time — I could see myself now with that little
microphone attached to my shirt collar, trying to sound grave and
sufficiently baritone for an international news audience. All I had to
do was get up, put on some shoes (there would no doubt be broken glass,
and I was wearing flip flops), walk about 500 meters with a camera and
notebook and start collecting anguish-infused quotes from people with
limbs blown off.

I sat on the sofa and slowly, meditatively drained my beer. I listened
in the darkness. The sirens were getting louder. What if another bomb
were to go off? Do I really want shrapnel implanting itself in my fine,
northern european features? How badly do I really want to see blown up
bodies, anyway?

I put the empty beer bottle on the floor next to the couch, got up off
my duff, and trundled off to bed.

The next morning the power was still off. Over breakfast one of my
roommates exclaimed, “Bloody incompetent morons. Did that f—ing
transformer blow again?”