Monday, September 11, 2006

we tend to see the forest and forget the trees

Everyone knows what today is.

The 5th year anniversary of 9/11.

Please, take a step back and spare a minute or two just to meditate on how the world changed 5 years ago.

In some cases, for the better - but in most cases, things changed for the worse.
With the time difference and all, events were unfolding on Sept 11th 2001 at night in Malaysia - I remember getting a call from my then-bf saying to "... quickly turn on the tv, World War 3 has started!" and I was then among the many who were watching the tv screen, scarcely believing that what was onscreen was happening in real life and not some horridly realistic special effect of some tv show.
Even worse: at that time, KTN and CLB were in a train from Singapore to KL. They had finally managed to coordinate their schedules to come visit me over at my side of the world, 6 years after we graduated from U of I together. During their overnight journey, they knew "something" had happened, but news in the train was scarce.

Upon their arrival at the train station early morning on Sept 12th [Malaysian time], I made sure we did the happy greetings first before breaking the news to them, and handing over the local newspapers so they would know what had happened.

Being the messenger - THAT is my memory of 9/11.

And the fact that on Sept 12th, around 9am, the PETRONAS Twin Towers were evacuated due to some prank bomb threat. I don't think they ever found who was behind that prank. Pity. Because people like that prankster? They need to be filtered out of the gene pool sooner rather than later.

Anyways...

Before signing off for today, I would like to highlight the 2996 project, established by D. C. Roe, to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11. Please explore the list of tributes here. [have tissues handy]
A whole forest of people died five years ago today - please take the time to *see* the trees that make up the forest.


Peace.

5 comments:

  1. kev> yup, WW3! thanx, have corrected the post now :-)

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  2. Wonderful quote.

    I've been reading tributes all day. I don't think I can handle any more - some are really difficult to get through without your eyes welling up.

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  3. 911 was a nice thing to remember or commemorate. We should get forward.

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  4. Chanakin> thanx, that's my own quote :-) of course I'm sure many others have come up with a similar thing independently. But hey, I got props, whoohoo :-)

    Mav> get forward? well, I dunno, looks like things are moving backwards rather than forward, unfortunately :-(

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  5. I did!!

    You know I watched Oprah one day, and they talked about that they thought that every other country in the world must have forgotten about 9/11. We have not! I think about it every day, and have since it happened. So we have not forgotten, not me and the people I surround myself with anyways...

    Hugs Eilen xxx

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about two months later...

 ... hi again. This return to blogging is really not working out, is it? Actually, I am writing, three pages of mind vomit and affirmations ...