Korean Job Discussion Forums

[prairieboy]

I was in Vancouver. Sleeping when my room mate pounded on my bedroom door at about 8am to "get up and look at this! Someone ran a couple of planes into the World Trade Center."

Quite a rude and shocking awakening.

[huffdaddy]

[Big_Bird]

I have no idea what I was doing. Probably still on a 48 hour train journey across China. A couple of days later (Sept 13) I popped into the Hong Kong libary to use the internet. An email from my sister contained a line about how shocked and upset she was about the 'attack on America.' What's she talking about? So then I investigated, 2 days after it had happened. If I hadn't gone to a libary, I would have found out later that evening from a chance meeting with a Texan (of all people) telling a Kiwi that America had got what was coming to her (not my opinion, so don't flame me). The Kiwi got very angry with the Texan.

[jajdude]

Staying in a hotel in Taipei in my first month at a job there. Got back to hotel just after it happened. Freaked me out. CNN in hotel.

A bit later that month Taipei was hit really hard with a typhoon, some died, power was out in hotel and most of the city for 3 days, major damage. Quite a memorable month. Also lost my passport.

[SeoulShakin]

I already wrote my story in the "where were you" thread. Saw that one first.

Kind of a crazy day.

[oneofthesarahs]

This thread makes me feel very young! I was in high school, on a band trip to the state fair. We had to get up really early that morning, so most of the bus was sleeping. My best friend and I were sitting across the aisle from our band director, making fun of his Indiana Jones hat and leather jacket. The radio was on very quietly somewhere in the background, but nobody was paying attention to it. Then my band director said, "Wait a minute, turn that up." It was right after the plane hit the Pentagon, so we didn't even know about anything in NY until a little bit later.

We still had to do our band performance that morning, but very few people were there. We had the afternoon to ourselves (the fair was still going on), but we just sort of halfheartedly went on a few rides and then spent the rest of the time standing in front of the TVs.

[Smee]

I remember the night before watching Conan O'Brien. They had the band "Idlewild," and I happened to like their single at the time.

I had an early class that morning, and I was sitting in the lecture hall for Astronomy. The speakers were playing the TV feed, though I couldn't really understand why, or get a sense for what they were talking about. Before class started, while the room was about 1/4 full, the professor told us to go home because we were being attacked. He said the Twin Towers were hit and there was also a bomb at the Capitol Building (there were all kinds of rumors about different locations at that time). I was walking back through the hall when I caught a bit of the TV report saying there was a crash in Western Pennsylvania, where I'm from. I watched that for a few minutes, but none of th details were released. I walked back to the main strip on campus, but saw that the administration building and the area around it was blocked off. Somebody said there was a bomb threat there. As I was attending the University of Maryland, a few miles outside of DC, everybody was pretty worked up. Turns out somebody had just left a briefcase unattended.

It does feel like ages ago, especially with all the garbage that's been carried out in the name of America's freedom. But it was a terribly frightening day, and I remember details of it quite vividly. The rest of the morning and afternoon I did what everybody else did and watched CNN.

[itaewonguy]

IN a hof in Kangnam and the TV was on first tought it was some movie as I glanced over at it a couple times! then I saw BREAKING NEWS! AMerica is under Attack!!! IM LIKE WHAT!!!?????
so we get up and run to the TV and are in shock! half the Koreans in the joint are watching the TV and the other half are just going on with their after work drinks! I guess Korea would have to be under attack for them to really give a shite! then again would westerners stop their conversations if planes went flying into 63 building and the heading wrote
KOREA UNDER ATTACK! half of them would say Korea isnt that somewhere in ASIA?

[Hopelessly Human]

I was working in a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Florida that Tuesday morning. The manager of the music department had this new-fangled, hand held phone kind of thing he just bought that could get streaming news: sports scores, stock quotes, everything. Wow that's pretty cool, what will they think of next?

Suddenly he says, "Hmmm, this is weird. It says a plane just hit one of the twin towers."

I was thinking it was some kind of small John Denver type plane. Then a few minutes later he said another plane hit. My heart sunk because I knew it was not some knuclehead in a single-engine two seater. This was much worse.

Then we turned on a radio, and someone even went to the Best Buy next door and bought a tv, but we couldn't get a good reception in the store. So we just listened to the radio.

Oh, and this was Sarasota, Florida. Who remembers the significance of Sarasota, FL on that day? Emma T. Booker Elementary school, The Pet Goat, the lean in whisper.

We didn't know what the hell was going on, but we all knew where the president was at that moment, which added to our paranoia. Are they targeting him as well?

Actually the first thing I thought of after the scond plane hit was my sister, because she works in Manhattan. So I called her at her office, and amazingly I got through to her. Her office is in Midtown Manhattan, so she wasn't too close, but she said one of her collegues saw it from the window. She's on the 34th floor.

The bookstore was dead that day, but we had a few customers. We stayed open the whole day. I kept walking around saying, "Sell those Reader's Advantage cards! (that's what their membership card was called then) It's very important!"

My roommate and I both pulled into our parking lot at the same time (something we had never done before), around 5:00pm that evening. I said to her, "Life as we know it is over." Then we went inside, and together we watched the images for the first time. Tears in our eyes.

[thepeel]

I was laying in bed listening to undone, the sweater song, while I prepared for a stats exam when the call came. I never went to class.

I visited WTC South Tower on August 28th, 2001. Creepy.

[SuperFly]

I was channel surfing and playing with my new puppy.

[Snowmeow]

I was in this 3rd year math class in non-linear stochastic processes (FAR over my head) around 9:30 am when I first heard about it from my professor. Rushed home after class to watch the news.

[IncognitoHFX]

I was in Grade 11 I think. We found out in homeroom class, and basically spent the entire day watching it unfold on CNN regardless of what class we were in/supposed to be in.

The only person who didn't care/was completely indifferent to it was my Math teacher, who only seemed to care about Cartesian grids and donuts.

[Tiger Beer]

I was in Hong Kong visiting some people. I had no clue about 9-11 until a day or two later. The day of 9-11 someone mentioned an airplane hit the world trade center in NYC, but I blew it off thinking it was a single plane and a small accident not worthy of further inquiries or interest.

I use to live in Manhattan from 1998-2000 and my apartment shared the same subway as the WTC. Later when I did watch footage, some of it was filmed right right on my cross street of Chambers (I lived on Church Street on the corner of Church & Chambers).

Also, my ex-girlfriend worked in a building that directly faced WTC. She saw the entire thing from their office windows!

[SeoulShakin]

I posted this in the other thread, but since it seems to be dying, and this one still going, I'll post it here too.

I was at University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was in line in the cafeteria, when one of the cafeteria workers (with one eye that always looked sideways) said "did you hear about the towers in New York"? I hadn't, so she just pointed at the tv. I took my sandwich to go. I went to the new building on campus with a huge screen, which was tuned to CNN. The room was full, with silent people glued to the screen. All my classes were cancelled. I stayed there for hours.

On my drive home, I was glued to the radio, and heard about the no-fly restriction. My friends caught themselves always looking up, to see if they saw planes. We were told if we saw them, to pray, because they aren't supposed to be in the air.

Many US flights were sent to Halifax instead of their original US destination. It left many people (mostly American, but some Canadian, and other nationalities) stranded in Halifax with nowhere to go. A great number of people in the province opened up their homes and their hearts to those people, and gave them a place to stay until they could get on to wherever it was they were going. We were thanked by those people profusely.

About two years later, Bush came to Halifax. I was late for an exam, because half of the city was shut down to motorized traffic because his motorcade was coming through. They shut down half the city, so that we couldn't know which route he would drive to where he was giving a speech. I remember many University students protested outside Pier 21, which is where he gave that speech. As I was running up the road (had to park my car quite some distance away, since I couldn't make it to the Uni. parking lot), Bush drove past me. I was slightly bitter that I was late for the exam, so I didn't stop to send him my good graces .

2 years after 9/11, Bush came to thank Halifax for opening their homes up to the American people during this tragedy. Better late than never I suppose. But I'm sure he met with people and had other business to take care of as well. Halifax isn't that big, and for him to come here just for that, seemed odd. Perhaps someone knows why he was there?