I was in an all-day meeting at Canary Wharf, so missed the whole thing. It was weird to find the entire place totally deserted.
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Asleep in Costa Rica. Neighbor called me and told me to turn on the tv. Couldn’t believe it. Happening live. Crazy time.
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I think that when it happened, it was nighttime in Korea, so I was probably in a PC bang (Internet cafe), and I don’t think I learned about it that night. I think I found out about it the following day at my hagwon (cram school).
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Oh, that’s exactly how I learned about Princess Diana’s death a few years earlier.
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We had holiday because September 11th is the national day of Catalonia.
I remember we went out in the morning and we had just arrived home and were having our afternoon snack when the TV news were broadcasting live feed after the 1st plane hit.
While I was munching on cold-milk with toasted cookies, I saw the second one hit live and I remember at first it felt like I was watching one of those documentaries of train crashes were they show footage.
But even though I was young, the dread came to me not long after.
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I was in the computer lab, finishing a lab report before class. That room was usually empty that time of day, but I found myself getting crowded on both sides.
Looking up, i saw that it was standing room only. Looking over at the next screen, I caught on, then tuned in just as the first building dropped.
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I am 11 years old at the time, and I was in PE class, in Houston, Texas. I started to notice that something wasn’t right about the day when the regular teachers were there, but they were still wheeling in the TV carts everywhere. If you didn’t already know, a TV cart usually means a substitute teacher is present. I noticed that most teachers not in PE started to gather around the TV’s but they weren’t educational, it was just the news, so I couldn’t be bothered to get a reason why.
About 2/3 into my school day I get a call that my mom was waiting for me to be picked up. Again, wtf? My mom had picked me up and saw she was in tears, I thought my dad had passed, but she said it was much worse. Still thinking wtf.
Finally get home and am so excited to not be in school, I’ll just do what every kid does, watch TV. However, every channel I tune into, has got this memorial message about the day’s events. There is no regular programming on any channel. Last wtf moment.
I give up and finally tune to the news channel and put it all together, but truthfully, I didn’t care. I understand what has happened is very terrible and tragic, but even to this day, it still dosen’t affect me. I can’t imagine how things were for people in NYC at the time it occurred.
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She thought the attacks were worse than your father/her husband (presumably) passing? I mean the attacks were awful of course, but who would think that?
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No love for the man in her life…
Thanks, Dear!
That was a real WTF moment for me too, lol
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I was in a Portland hotel getting ready to go to a HP meeting in Corvallis listening to the TV. When I saw the attacks, I just sat on the bed for 15-30 minutes just trying to process what I was seeing and then seeing the next ones unfolding. I remember how the first attacks were so unexpected, but as more attacks were happening that people were fighting back on the planes. We were waiting for planes to land safely.
HP still had the meeting with me as they were already in the office and we talked about everything but business.
My company advised me not to turn in my rental car and told me to do whatever I needed to do. I stayed for a day in Portland just glued to the TV. Then to avoid going nuts, I just drove to Dallas and saw some folks along the way.
I remember being proud of how New Yorkers responded and of how everyone pulled together. We were just Americans taking care of each other then without all of the divisions we have today. There were truly some brave souls that day.
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I was in business school in Singapore and the entire class was all in our small group rooms working on the homework assignments of the day. We were about 90 people in a building that had a dozen small group rooms.
As news broke, classmates went from room to room saying “something happened in New York”. We all hit the phones - 40% of us were in the finance sector, and I would guess another 20% were like me, who used to work in it at some point. I started calling my sister who lives in the Village and my ex-girlfriend who was at Lehman Brothers at the time – couldn’t get through to either at first. Got thru to my ex- who said she was crossing the street in mid-town when she saw one of the towers disappear. Finally, got in touch with my sister late that night Singapore time, who talked about the eerie calm that had descended on the city.
My brother was flying back to the Philippines from LAX, and his flight was re-routed to Tokyo for no reason that was announced. When they disembarked, there were armed marines at the gate in Narita and the passengers still didn’t know what happened (that is a crazy detour to make since Japan is not on the way from the US to Manila)
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It was the first day of a tradeshow in ATL. It was either Networld + InterOp or NetComm. Big show. Several halls. Many of the booths had what was going on displayed on the TV’s. I had about 6 people from the office there. The show went on. It wasn’t cancelled and we should have all just gone home. It was extremely miserable and a total loss. No refunds of course.
I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t visible military presence on the streets because no one knew what was coming next.
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Just got home from a morning maths class at sixth form. My mum had made me some bacon sandwiches. My mind goes back to that day often. That was a great bacon sarnie.
I don’t remember where i was. Ask me where I was when Operation Freedom Deal began.
I heard about that on the way to the Taoyuan airport, took me a while to figure out what was going on as the drivers English wasn’t great.
I was working in the office at a publishing house in Berlin. I think possibly someone heard about it on the radio and told me. Either due to mistranslation or mishearing, I thought there had been some kind (no details given at all) of attack on the world trade organisation. So I immediately assumed it was the anti globalisation movement. Anyone remember Seattle two years before?
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It was a cloudy afternoon with a bit of sun, when my girlfriend called me at work. I remember exactly to the meter where I was at that time in my old company’s factory. Of the call I only remember that I was shocked and wondering if maybe some kind of war could be coming… and that the stupid young me was only half joking when mentioning the Stahlhelm in our basement. Then went back to my desk and read the news. Went home early and spent the rest of the day with news, wondering what’s going to happen.
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Yeah, those were some pretty crazy protests.
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