Nine-Eleven After Seven
Since everyone is reminiscent of this particular day, I too felt that I should try to write down my answer to, "Where were you when the first plane crashed into the first tower?" I figure that it would help to write it down before I forget in my later years.
I was late for school, driving down Birchmount Road, late for my first day of 4th year (i think - hahaha). Anyhoo, listening to the radio on the way to school through the rush hour traffic and my morning karaoke session with the radio was interruped with late braking news of a plane that crashed into a tower in New York. As I got downtown, the second hit.
I parked and entered Syd Smith - the Arts & Science building that was my home for 4 years and also a hub for uoft students. We had some new plasma tv's put up that summer so of course, everyone was packed in there checking out the ongoing news broadcast of the situation. I looked around to see people in shock, people emotionally affected, people mildly interested, people indifferent.
I had 4 classes back to back that day. 10, 11, 12, and 2.
By my 12pm class, everyone was talking about it and professors were trying to keep us on track with the usual syllabus reviews and intros. Streets were starting to clear up around the campus and there were talks of closing down the school for the rest of the week.
I stuck around for my last class, only to find out at 2pm that it was cancelled. Toronto, apparently, was rumored to be the next hit because we had the CN Tower. Who has beef with Canada? Honestly???
Anyhoo, I made my way down to my dad's office at Yonge & Dundas to pick him up and go home. Crazily enough, everyone had evacuated - and I mean everyone. The Eaton Center was closed off. Yonge Street was completely deserted. It was the most eerie thing to see when the most busy street in the whole Greater Toronto Area was cleared out at 3pm. It was a bit of a Vanilla Sky moment except with a lot of sun.
Didn't think it was that much of an emergency but urged dad to go home early anyway. School resumed as usual the next day of course. TV coverage of the tragedy was 24/7 and there was a feeling of uncertainty in the air. It lingers still and of course, air travel has never been the same.
Last year on 9-11, Andrew, Kris, Kev, Danny, Leo and I were shaking off the wedding stuff because we had it up to our eyeballs and went to catch a Jays vs. Yankees game. Needless to say, NY won and they brought their firemen & police with them too. I guess we had to let them win right??? At least, that's the excuse I'm making for the Jays because NORMALLY they're much better than they had played that day =P
I was late for school, driving down Birchmount Road, late for my first day of 4th year (i think - hahaha). Anyhoo, listening to the radio on the way to school through the rush hour traffic and my morning karaoke session with the radio was interruped with late braking news of a plane that crashed into a tower in New York. As I got downtown, the second hit.
I parked and entered Syd Smith - the Arts & Science building that was my home for 4 years and also a hub for uoft students. We had some new plasma tv's put up that summer so of course, everyone was packed in there checking out the ongoing news broadcast of the situation. I looked around to see people in shock, people emotionally affected, people mildly interested, people indifferent.
I had 4 classes back to back that day. 10, 11, 12, and 2.
By my 12pm class, everyone was talking about it and professors were trying to keep us on track with the usual syllabus reviews and intros. Streets were starting to clear up around the campus and there were talks of closing down the school for the rest of the week.
I stuck around for my last class, only to find out at 2pm that it was cancelled. Toronto, apparently, was rumored to be the next hit because we had the CN Tower. Who has beef with Canada? Honestly???
Anyhoo, I made my way down to my dad's office at Yonge & Dundas to pick him up and go home. Crazily enough, everyone had evacuated - and I mean everyone. The Eaton Center was closed off. Yonge Street was completely deserted. It was the most eerie thing to see when the most busy street in the whole Greater Toronto Area was cleared out at 3pm. It was a bit of a Vanilla Sky moment except with a lot of sun.
Didn't think it was that much of an emergency but urged dad to go home early anyway. School resumed as usual the next day of course. TV coverage of the tragedy was 24/7 and there was a feeling of uncertainty in the air. It lingers still and of course, air travel has never been the same.
Last year on 9-11, Andrew, Kris, Kev, Danny, Leo and I were shaking off the wedding stuff because we had it up to our eyeballs and went to catch a Jays vs. Yankees game. Needless to say, NY won and they brought their firemen & police with them too. I guess we had to let them win right??? At least, that's the excuse I'm making for the Jays because NORMALLY they're much better than they had played that day =P
Comments
When I got to my first year physics class, Angus comes up to me and is all "dude, did you hear about the World Trade Centre??!?" And I'm like, "The which?"
Angus: The WORLD TRADE CENTRE. The Twin Towers?? No? *sigh* It's these two towers in New York...
Me: Oh. No? What?
And he gives me all the details, which explained alot about the flags and newspapers really. Nothing was cancelled or closed, but after a week we were SO sick of American TV re-runs of it, because that's pretty much all that was on... Like seriously. ALL THAT WAS ON.
I wonder if the same thing happened in Australia, would American TV cover it for weeks on end? I actually doubt it because they think that they are the center of the universe - but what do you think?