Even before I clicked on the election results on the BBC website, I knew it was good news. On the homepage was an electoral map of the UK. I paid no heed to the mess of red, yellow and blue in GB, but instead fixed my gaze on Northern Ireland (NI). And there they were, lime green splashes in the north-west and south-east of the six counties. On closer inspection, there was also a little green dot by the River Lagan.
My party, the SDLP, had won three seats, holding Foyle and South Down, losing the seat of Newry and Armagh and winning South Belfast. Thousands of miles away in South Korea, I slumped over the keyboard in sheer relief. This was not a great victory, but neither was it the crushing defeat that some had expected. In the circumstances, it was the best that could be hoped for.
First, the bad news. The party's share of the vote slipped from 20% to 17%. In constituencies with a Sinn Fein (SF) MP, the SDLP is, frankly, nowhere. The Provos took Newry and Armagh with ease. They pulled further ahead in North Belfast and overtook the SDLP in North Antrim. Those looking for harbingers of a bleak future have plenty of electoral data with which to justify their pessimism.
But there was good news too. The vote went up in Mid-Ulster. In East Derry, the turncoat was defeated. Eddie McGrady won South Down at a canter. Alasdair McDonnell took South Belfast thanks to the insane decision of the DUP to run a candidate.
Most of all, there was Derry, birthplace of the party, stomping ground of our legendary ex-leader, John Hume. How the Provos would have loved to have won in Foyle. But they didn't even get close. This was the sweetest result of all. There's no two ways about it: thon Derry wans are wile discerning, hey.
What's more, there was the pleasure of knowing that the DUP and SF, along with their media mouthpieces, had got carried away in the last few weeks of the campaign. Don't get me wrong, both of the extremist parties did well on Thursday, but they didn't do quite as well as they had predicted.
In Derry, SF were "quietly confident" that they would beat Durkan by 2 000 votes. Given the actual result (Mark won by 6 000), one wonders what the basis of this quiet confidence was - one canvas of one street in Shantallow? Likewise, the DUP put out a poll showing that they were leading the SDLP in South Belfast by 33% to 18%. Again, what were the grounds for this ludicrous figure - a quick trip around Sandy Row?
Overall, under the brutal rubric of first past the post, the SDLP did as well as could be expected. If like me, you believed that Newry and Armagh was a lost cause, then the party had a chance of winning in only three seats - and it took them all. With limited human and financial resources, the SDLP concentrated activists and money where they could make a difference.
This election does not signify a recovery in SDLP fortunes (when you recover, your vote goes up, not down). Rather, it buys the party that most precious of commodities - time. Time to rebuild, to renew the grassroots, to bring through younger members of the party.
There was, to borrow a phrase, something of "the whiff of death" about the SDLP after the losses it sustained in the elections of 2003 and 2004. But, with three seats at Westminster, the party can still legitimately claim to be a "major party" in the North. The results from South Down, Foyle and South Belfast have been like a squirt of air freshener.
There is hope again.