What a Week

Here's hoping tomorrow will be better than last week. What started off as a wonderful week turned into the most surreal event in my life.
Spending 3 days in Dosa with Kingfish was awesome. Nothing like Migas, mountains and 36 hours of gambling to start a week.
Monday was a student holiday. I had a meeting to attend early that morning which finished early. Needing to purchase some adapters for my China trip, I popped into a Radio shack to check out the goods. It was a blustery day in the Hub, so much so, I had to open the door the the store for this little elderly lady. After asking the hired help where the adapters were located, I proceeded to look over my choices. I hadn't noticed that someone else had entered the store.
Getting back into town late the night before, I had a chance to catch the late local news around 11:30. I had seen a story about a Radio shack in town that had been robbed on Saturday while I was out of town. Being in the situation I was now in, that had entered my mind but it just didn't seem to click. My attention was raised when I heard a voice at the counter say, "GIVE ME THE MONEY!". I looked up, noticed that there was someone at the counter with something in his hand...what I thought was maybe a cordless screwdriver. Since I was close to the door and had not noticed anyone else enter, my first thoughts were that this was an employee from the back playing around, joking about the other store being robbed over the weekend.
This all changed. I had actually looked away from the situation when all of a sudden I hear a loud "POP"! I immediately turned back to see the person with his hand raised in the air, gun pointing upwards. I dropped to the ground behind the self where I was looking for the adapters. I was actually behind the robber so I could not get a look at him. But a million things began racing through my head. Could I make it to the door? Do I need to let him know that I am there? I don't want to startle him. Would anything I do make it go from bad to worse? Could I get to him to stop what was happening? Would he kill us all?
It seemed by the time that I tried to process all of those things, he was out of the store. As I rose up, I noticed that the elderly lady that I had helped in the store had been no more that 3-4 feet away from where the guy had shot the pistol. She was not looking so good. As I approached her, she said that she couldn't hear anything. The police and EMS arrived quickly as did the wife, who had been just across the street at the meeting I had just left.
It appeared that the same guy robbed a cleaners on Wednesday and was apprehended that afternoon.
I leave for China on Thursday. It's weird, but I somehow feel as though I will be safer there than here.