In memoriam

http://home.mchsi.com/~gcfl/attack.swf

This Flash was made by a New Yorker to remember the terrorist attacks exactly 3 years to this day.

I remember that day. My mom had asked me to turn off my radio to study. This was around 8:40pm, 8:40am New York time. If I had left it on for just 10 more minutes, I would have heard Jamie Yeo break the news that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. While the 4 planes that were hijacked crashed along with a few hundred innocent lives and the terrorists that held them hostage, I just sat there studying, blissfully unaware. Around 10, I stooped because I wanted to watch WWF SummerSlam. My sister came in my room, with a weird look on her face. I didn't ask why, I was so focused on waiting for SummerSlam to start. I turned on my radio for awhile. The music was sombre, Jamie was speaking in a mournful tone. Then I realized something was wrong. But then SummerSlam started and I turned off the radio before I learned why.

The theme song to SummerSlam was playing. I remembered thinking, "Hey! Catchy!" And then finally, tracking at the bottom of my screen, I finally realised why my sister looked weird, why Jamie sounded so sad. "The second tower of the World Trade Center has collapsed." That's what it said. I immediately switched to Channel NewsAsia. I think you can guess what I saw. And keep in mind that the TV I was watching was in black & white, so that made everything darker, more vivid. In the end, I forgot about WWF, that seemed inconsequential compared to this. An attack on humanity.

I don't care about what happened after. The distrust of some people against Islam, the wars, the economy. All I cared about was the people that died. The brave people that dared to stand up to the terrorists in one of the planes and thereby saving possibly the White House itself, at the expense of their lives. The people who jumped out of the towers to end it all, why delay the inevitable? I admit, all this made me look at my faith more carefully. But after all this, I was shocked, I was afraid, I was angry, but I was NOT surprised. With so many people hating America so much, something like this had to happen eventually. All the more unfortunate that it did happen.

To all the people affected in one way or the other by the 9/11 attacks, in other words, to every resident of our planet Earth, remember the fallen.