theducks.livejournal.com, swearing infrequently since 2001.

[theducks]

I refer you to my vapid comments of the Australian morning of September 11 2001, followed by the startled comments of the evening, at http://theducks.livejournal.com/2001/09/11/

I remember going into the lounge room to interrupt my mother watching The Bill and saying "Mum, you really have to see this!" "Can it wait" *changed channel* "Ohhhh..". Mum and I having visited there in 1999.

So young readers of my interblags, what were you doing back then? I know at least one of you was in primary school, which scares me somewhat.

Duck out.

And for the record, I did buy another Intel PRO/100, but threw it out (well, gave it to lathiat) the next year, when I got ADSL.

Comments

[anxiolytic.livejournal.com]

I remember watching the second plane crash live on television. I was seriously shitting myself that night, thinkin that WWIII was about to break out.

[violetsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I was watching Rove and they had a little caption go across the bottom when the first plane hit which just said like "A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre", and then I think they pulled it off air to switch to the news when the second plane hit. Or maybe it was just before.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

I was at work, in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Heard something about a plane hitting a building just after getting back from lunch, assumed it was like a Cessna or something, went into a meeting for an hour, got out and one of the towers had collapsed.

[hipikat.livejournal.com]

Went over to Echo & Wuffie's, as they were still going out and it seemed like an excuse. I was still living at home, back then. I remember thinking a rapidly mistyped caption on some footage that mentioned 'human fries' was in poor taste. Then we watched a Sliders movie (or pilot episode or something?).

[caitlen.livejournal.com]

I had a similar thing with my Mum, except it was the other way around. I was watching Bring It On (of all the things), and my Mum came down stairs to say I had to come up and watch the news because the WTC was on fire. I thought "Oh yeah just a fire whatever" but err no. Just made it upstairs and 5 minutes later saw the 2nd plane go in. Was watching it, said "there's another pla.." *boom* So, yeah. That's where I was.

[dafwarg.livejournal.com]

I was sitting in the Moon and Sixpence with a bunch of people. Sat watching it for a bit. I rang my mum and told her to turn the tv on - she swore when she did.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I was meant to be asleep (I had insanely early bedtimes right up until I my last year of high school, when I pointed out that the early bedtimes weren't helping the whole not sleeping thing). Anyway, a heap of blue and red flashing lights started outside the house (no siren) so my sister and I wound up getting up again, wondering down to the loungeroom to see what was going on outside (turned out one of the trees at the primary school had fallen across our road). Mum and dad were just staring at the TV, hadn't even noticed the lights or the tree falling outside.

Next time at school was pretty entertaining, I always got to school earliest and I was amazed at how many people didn't know about it till we told them.

[kattiko.livejournal.com]

Heard it on the radio when I woke up the next morning, and thought "oh yeah, they seem to be making a big thing out of it" then went to school and sat in my TEE geography class watching it on tv and thinking, if they're not teaching in order to make way for watching this, it must be a big thing. and then feeling rather small. But the next class was back to normal. Maths, I think, with one of those stubborn teachers determined to make us learn :P

[dilettantiquity.livejournal.com]

velvetbutter had a late basketball game and I'd gone to bed early because I didn't feel well. I remember him coming home and running up the stairs to wake me up. I remember seeing the second plane as it happened.

velvetbutter still plays basketball with pretty much the same people every week. We still live in the same house.

[belladonna.livejournal.com]

I was just starting my sophomore year of college, sleeping later than I should have to get ready for work, when my mom called me, sobbing hysterically. She told me to turn on the TV and not leave my dorm. I turned in on just in time to watch the second tower fall.

My roommate came home from class then and we sat on my floor watching TV until my boss called me to see if I would go over to work, which was maybe 250 feet from my dorm. I must be forgetting some part of the memory because, knowing her as I do, I can't imagine she'd insist that I go to work that day.

I do remember being beside myself with panic because my two best friends were at NYU and lived near there. I had no long distance plan on my dorm phone and cell phones were hopelessly overloaded so I had no way of calling out to find out. I had to wait for my mom to call me with updates.

I have another, what I assume to be, false memory of my roommate running into my work with my cordless phone and me talking to my mom on it. It was a crappy phone with nowhere near the range needed to get from my basement room to the building I was working in.

I had no internet in my dorm yet so I spent much of the following days in the library checking email and news sites. I didn't turn the TV off for 3 weeks. It was constantly on MSNBC.

[distantcam.livejournal.com]

It was a Tuesday night when it happened because I had just come home from choir rehearsal. I usually make it home by 10pm which is when a show I watched started, but being a SF show its start time was fluid. So I turned on the TV around 9:40pm and didn't turn it off until sometime around 4am.

[distantcam.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention, a couple of days later, on the ABC there was an amazing documentary. Someone had collected all the footage of documentary makers, arts students, camera people, anyone with a camera, who lived in New York and had filmed the days afterwards. It was like a video stream of consciousness that jumped from people in a park arguing about who did it and why, to foreign cab drivers talking about the absolute fear they had of retribution, to people who had finally gone back to their apartments only to find them covered in dust that they couldn't clean because there were remains in the dust and they couldn't bring themselves to move it.

If anyone knows the documentary I'm talking about I would really appreciate it if you could tell me the name of it as I would like to see it again.

[velithya]

I was in year twelve, and I woke up that morning and my parents were watching it on the news. When I went to school a bunch of girls in the year 12 locker room were crying and hugging each other. It didn't seem real.

[loic.livejournal.com]

I was sleeping. My housemate asked when I woke up "have you ever seen the view from the top of the world trade center?" "the what?" "those tall buildings in new york?" "what?" I spoiled his joke.

By the time I woke up the towers were down. They were recommending against taking public transport anywhere so I skipped work and watched TV. Pretty quickly it became clear that CNN was freaking the fuck out while the BBC were acting like a real news station. Haven't really watched CNN since.

[aphrodite.livejournal.com]

I was on IRC, talking to someone in the Eastern States and they had it on the TV before we did... so I was hanging out in front of the TV until the coverage came on.

I was also working at the West at the time so I went in really early the next day, we were so busy

[loie.livejournal.com]

I was living in Texas. We got up in the morning and went to school (yes, I was in primary school..) where we found all the classroom televisions were on. At that point, the first plane had gone in, and we were all watching saying what a tragic accident it was.

When the second plane went in, I remember there being dead silence and then complete chaos as all the kids in my year went completely nuts. We kept watching for awhile, but our teacher turned it off when people started jumping out of windows (one of my most graphic memories as a child).

Then we heard that NAASA (which is pretty much right in the center of Houston) was being locked down as a possible target for germ warfare. Hysterical parents started picking up kids from school and we were made to sit under our desks for most of the afternoon.

All in all, it was a terrifying experience. Seeing footage of it still upsets me. :(

[theducks.livejournal.com]

That is pretty intense.

[loie.livejournal.com]

I just read over what I wrote. I guess it does sound intense. I didn't mean it to sound quite so dramatic, more just a recounting of events XD

It's not like I'm permanently scarred or anything..

[silne.livejournal.com]

Hubby and I (well that was when we were just living in sin before we were even engaged) were watching Sandra Sully on the TEN evening news and waiting for some form of Star Trek to come on TV. Might have been waiting on Voyager? Maybe it was the final season of DS9. I don't really recall any more. Watched the second plane go into the tower completely live and then stayed up unable to sleep until after 2am.

[auntpol.livejournal.com]

I only found out in the morning (I guess I went to bed early as a year nine?). Mum got me up at 5am to watch the tv. It seemed kind of...odd but I didn't see how it really effected me, until my mum started sprouting stuff about how it was going to hurt Australia as we are allied to America blah blah blah.

I don't remember feeling much emotion, really.

My year nine sose (studies of society and environment) teacher made us write something in our work books so we would have something to look forward to.

Everyone SUDDENLY wanted to read the west australian in the library, I think just to see the pictures.

I remember our RE teacher telling us that it was sad, and a lot of people died, but what is sadder is that worse things go on in the world every day, but because it isn't america, they don't make even the front ten pages of the paper. That's what really hit me about the event.

I guess it didn't hit me emotionally because I didn't know anyone in America at that stage.

Ironically, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathon Safran Foer is one of my favourite books.

[auntpol.livejournal.com]

blargh *look back on (not look forward to)

[singularity.livejournal.com]

I was awake and online at the time watching some tv when it all started.

[luyer.livejournal.com]

I was on a flight to the US. Well actually a flight to Canada, but it ended up in Hawai'i instead. The people who greeted us at the airport weren't too friendly at all (military), and we ended up spending a day locked in a departure lounge watching TV news. When they let us out, I went to the movies with a girl I'd met on the flight, and we saw Apocalypse Now Redux; ended up sharing a hotel room with her as the hotel that Canada 3000 had arranged a discount for us at was at capacity and encouraging people to share rooms.

But the end result was a discounted stay in a hotel in Hawai'i which was pretty decent.

My plans for the US were somewhat changed however. My girlfriend was staying with friends in Seattle and was to meet me in Vancouver, I'd come down to Seattle and we were to be flown around on corporate jets of the parent company of one of the Australian telcos (at the low, low cost of a visit to their mid-west HQ). However, all corporate jet fleets were grounded for the two weeks we were there. So instead we hired a car and drove to SF and back. American flags everywhere. Even the US-Canada border crossing was an ordeal. Security was extreme and yet completely broken (eg. additional scans for hand luggage and checked luggage which were separate, with an hour plus line in between in which you had access to both items).

[luyer.livejournal.com]

Other highlights of the unexpected Hawai'i visit:

- Canada 3000 arranged a tour of Hawai'i for us.

- At the same time we'd been forced down in Hawai'i, the Cisco annual sales event was there and Cisco many Cisco reps didn't get to leave before the planes were grounded, so I caught up with some of them.