Martine Rolls: Fighting to get past the horror

Martine Rolls is flying to Amsterdam with Malaysia airlines in a few weeks and she is'nt changing her plans.

I received an email from House of Travel on Sunday morning. The airline had made a slight change to my online booking. Instead of flying MH17, the kids and I will be flying MH19 on August 10.

If you have seen the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend's front page, you know I am about to leave for Amsterdam, via Kuala Lumpur, and that I knew a couple on board MH17. In the story on Saturday, it said that out of respect for the couple's family, I declined to disclose their identities.

As journalists, we know the stuff we write about affects people's lives. Now I know that when it affects you personally, it's hard to shake off.

I decided to become a journalist when I was 23. At the time, I could picture myself as a writer for National Geographic. Get a degree in journalism, followed by cultural anthropology, do a photography course and you're off to travel the world, I thought.

It didn't quite work out that way and, after graduating, I started a job as a reporter. While working for a regional paper in the Netherlands, I think it was in 2000, a Concorde crashed a few minutes after take-off, killing all 109 people on board and four people on the ground.

What I remember most is that it was a slow news day. Everyone in the newsroom was scraping around for a half-decent story and there it was. It was horrible. I left journalism soon after and have moved back and forward since.

Since 1996 my career has moved between newspapers, magazines, communications, a bit of PR in between, then tourism marketing here in the beautiful Bay and in the meantime I learned how to make websites work.

For the past year I have been working on news again, but only pro-local positive community stories for Bay News. I always say to people my days of chasing police cars and ambulances are long gone. I enjoy working on good news stories and I know people like to read them, but unfortunately our world isn't always a happy and positive place.

Since the senseless incident trending on Twitter as #MH17, I can hardly think of anything else. I can't look at photos or video, or read any of the graphic reports about the crash, because it makes me feel ill.

I was glued to the net for updates on Friday, but I don't look on news sites any more and I can't watch the story on the evening news.

There were 298 people on board, 193 of whom were Netherlands nationals.

Eighty of the passengers were children. My friend Nanda has lost her father and stepmum. Their young boys have lost their nana and granddad. That is hard to comprehend.

When my friend's husband Regan spoke to 3 News on Sunday, he said: "I did actually think, 'Where's the Russian embassy in New Zealand? Should I go there? And then I thought, 'What's the point? What's that going to do?' I can't understand who's going to win from this, you know."

You can find the video on the 3 News website under the heading "Kiwis mourn Dutch grandparents killed on MH17". I have sent the link into the world with the hashtags: #nowords, #justshare, #MH17.

Malaysia Airlines offered to waive all fees if we would decide to cancel or change our flight, but I'm not changing anything.

I'm not going to let this terrible tragedy stop me from living my life. In a few weeks' time, we are flying to Amsterdam with Malaysia Airlines and it'll be fine.

Martine Rolls is a Tauranga writer and digital strategist - www.sweetorange.co.nz.