Today is the 7th anniversary of the Thailand Tsunami…

…and 7 years since everyone thought I’d died that day.

That’s because I was going to be on the beach in Phuket on Boxing Day 2004 when the Tsunami hit at 10.58am (3.58am GMT). And I still struggle to this day with the ‘random’ events that lead me away from the Tsunami to a place of safety.

Rewind to November 2004 and I’d just resigned from the corporate sector with a vision to tackle systemic unemployment and poverty. I’d also decided I was going to ask my girlfriend to marry me and I’d ask her somewhere abroad – and Thailand was the chosen destination. An itinerary was created that would have taken us to Phuket on Boxing Day.

Before leaving for Thailand I visited a chiropractor for pains in my neck. He asked me what I was doing for Christmas and I excitedly shared my itinerary – and as soon as I said Boxing Day Phuket he stopped and said I shouldn’t go there. Head East instead. He couldn’t explain why – just a feeling.

Being a logical person a feeling wouldn’t change the plan so off to Thailand we went with everything still in place. The night before we were due to travel on to Phuket a random stranger started to chat with us and asked where we were heading. When I said Boxing Day Phuket he said the same thing to head East.

Discounting this second person again (why should we change course?) we headed off to Phuket the next day, but this time the feeling was mine. An overwhelming sense of not continuing our journey to Phuket – and then, remembering the two suggestions to head East, we did. Onto an island called Kao Tao.

We never knew the tsunami hit until 7 hours afterwards. We both called our parents who of course thought we had died as they knew we planned to be in Phuket on Boxing Day – only we knew our last minute change of plans. I was numb knowing how close we came to being there – and also because of the ‘random’ events that helped us to survive.

Was it divine intervention? God working through those strangers to influence our direction away from the Tsunami? How could it – I was an atheist, had been since I was 16 after by brother died. God doesn’t save atheists…does he? And of course there is no way I’m more important than any of the 300,000 people who died that day.

Or was it lady luck? But how did those strangers know to suggest we go East as the Tsunami only devastated the West coast of Thailand? And also my own overwhelming sense of not going to Phuket?

It’s hard to believe 300,000 people died that day. So many people and we would have been there also. I resolved to go back home and never give up on the mission to tackle systemic unemployment and poverty no matter how hard it would get. I’d ensure this chance to live on would mean something.

That resolve was really tested four years later in 2008 when I was pushed into poverty for 12 months because a business defaulted on £75,000 they owed us and the development of Whitebox Digital froze (see blog ‘From a rich lifestyle to eating in soup kitchens’).

I could have ended the pain I was in that year at any time – just decide not to continue tackling systemic unemployment and poverty, close down the company and go back to earning a high salary and re-obtain the rich life I’d left behind in November 2004.

But I couldn’t do that. And there’s 300,000 reasons why I never could.