Korean Job Discussion Forums

[skinhead]

shingil-dong

[huffdaddy]

bump

[ajgeddes]

I was on my computer thinking, "Wow, it's been one year since the terrorist attacks in NYC"

[peppermint]

at home, flipping channels and ironing a shirt for a job interview. (got postponed but I got the job about a month later) I happened to stop flicking for about 30 seconds on Regis and Kathie Lee, just as they got the news. Regis said something about breaking news coming in on his little earpiece, his face just dropped, and it was all news footage all the time for the next 4 days.

That image, of a speechless and stunned Regis Philbin, has been burned into my head nearly as clearly as that of the towers falling. It was so genuinely grief stricken, and from such a phony personality

[pest2]

HA! perfect chance for me to post the script I did for my advanced listening exercise today!

It was Tuesday morning. I had to get to my legal writing class at 8 am. It was a very early class, so I left my house at 715 am to get to the University in Boulder on time. When I got to class, I was still sleepy. Before the bell rang for class to begin, another student from another class came into to tell everyone, �a plane has crashed into the tower.� No one understood what he was saying. What tower? What plane? It sounded like some kind of joke. Because it didn�t make sense, I remember I made a dumb joke about it and some girls in the class laughed to be polite.

My �professor,� a retired newspaper editor for the New York Times, was grumpy and rude as usual. I remember we had an argument about the word, �commute�. She was saying that I could not use it in a certain sentence and I was saying it was OK. I remember I got online and found some writing in which it had been used the same way. She was wrong, but she continued to insist she was right. She was old and would not change her mind, so I let her think she was right and changed the word to something else.

About 5 minutes before the class ended, another student came in to say, �the second tower has also been hit and the first one is destroyed.� Now everyone was really worried. The bell rang and I walked to the student recreation building. In that building, I saw hundreds of students were gathered in front of a movie screen TV. I had never seen so many students in this place. I had never seen so many people in one place with worried faces.

I sat down and saw that they were watching a replay video of 2 skyscrapers that were on fire. I recognized the skyscrapers as the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. I began to feel embarrassed about making a joke before. It wasn�t just �at tower�. It was 2 huge towers. Next, the video showed a jet airliner 767 smashing into the second building. Now it wasn�t just �an airplane�. It was 2 big jet airliners.

At that moment, I heard a girl suddenly start crying. She said, �Oh my God! My father works in that place!� She ran out of the room crying. Some other student was saying, �My Aunt and Uncle live near that place. I hope they�re OK�. Now I understood this was a very important and terrible day. The next thing I saw on the TV was the first of the towers falling to the ground. The sound it made was like a rocket taking off. A loud roar. In the room no one was talking, now. A few minutes later, the second tower fell on the TV. The room was silent. The room and everything else in America would never be the same again.

[SeoulShakin]

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?

[davai!]

I was in Los Angeles, on the west side. 3 hours behind EST. From about 6-7 I was riding the bike at the gym, listening to some music on my walkman. It was unusually quiet there then considering that gym (Gold's/Venice Beach) is often packed at all times. I was walking out and I could see 4-5 people staring at the TV, but the TV was pointed away from me. I thought that maybe they were replaying the horrible injury from the previous night's Giants/Broncos game (Ed McCaffrey broke his leg in a couple places) but shrugged it off. As I often did, I just left the walkman on for the 2 mile drive home, having no idea what was happening. Got home, took a shower, made breakfast and dilly dallied up to about 815 when I got back into the car for my 45 min. commute to work.

I had left the radio on 95.5 KLOS the night before and when I turned it on, got this news:

"There has been an apparent attack in New York, with planes hitting EACH tower. The South Tower has collapsed, and the North Tower is listing..." It was Mark and Brian or Kevin and Bean, can't remember which comedy duo, so I was a little skeptical at first... But then they said, "we have suspended our regular program, this is not a joke"... and said, "Remain calm" over and over. But still, with all the talk, all my life, from all sources -including my engineer father- that those buildings are capable of withstanding airplane collisions, indestructable, etc. , I was just in shock. Not to mention the fact that they were just massive. Couldn't be. No.

I got on the 405 Northbound and the calls started coming in. I called home to tell my roommates. "Turn on the news!" "What channel?" "ANY channel!" My RM, Seth, who incidentally had called me about 8 days prior, from the rooftop deck on WTC2 just said, "It's just not there. There is only one......"

Called the boss from work, and there was no plans to call off shooting (the PBS TV show, "Madison Heights") so I drove on. On the way, someone had put a sign on their car,

"Osama Bin Laden, you have just awoken a sleeping giant." Damn, where had i heard that name before?????

Got to Delfino Studios (Sylmar, where the 405 and the 5 meet) just in time to find out that the Pentagon had been hit, and that there were planes heading towards CA that weren't responding to the mandatory grounding. WTC1 was still up, spewing black smoke from the top and surrounded by grey dust all around the bottom. A minute later it went. The top 10 floors listed over with the antenna falling sideways. I just cried out, "that antenna is going to kill someone..." Then I was thankful the tower fell straight down.\

Knowing that those were 24 hr. a day buildings (that didn't even have lightswitches!) my initial estimate of dead was 10000. Was thankfull that I was off by a lot.

We completed our day's work that Tuesday as planned, you know, "The show must go on...." I drove home at about 6pm, and saw maybe 25 cars on a 20 mile stretch of some of the busiest roads in the world. I would love to watch that episode we taped that day to see the actors' faces. Everyone there was just a zombie.

Cried myself to sleep that night after an exhausting 5-6 hours of watching the news coverage. The Spanish channel replayed the jumping that CNN, et al would not repeat, and I was glad to have seen that, if for nothing more than a little closure. I lived at the time right up the beach from LAX and the week of no airplane noise was more than a little eerie.

I actually lost that job b/c I had just started as a fill in for my friend who had planned a month in Italy starting 9/15. She was too scared to go, so she decided to work instead.

There is more, but I'll stop there.

My heart goes out to the families of all of the people who lost their lives that day.

[Jeweltone]

I overslept that morning (unusual for me), and my mother burst into my room suddenly, saying, a bit angrily, "We're at war!" Not fully awake, I blearily replied, "What did I do?"
"Get up!"

Still not understanding, and wondering what I had done to piss her off, I stumbled out into the living room, just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. I got dressed and ate breakfast, still glued to the television.

My grandmother, who had Alzheimer's, stared in disbelief at the events unfolding. To her, each time the footage of the the planes hitting the buildings was played, was a new experience. Later on in the day, with an absolutely clear mind, she said "I don't want to live to see another war." She had seen both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and now a new war.

I did go to work that day. A new semester at the California high school I worked at had begun, and the freshmen class were all present that day. Unfortunately, the new TV cable system had some quirks, and our building could only get the Puerto Rican News Channel, albeit very faintly. The teacher and I both spoke reasonable Spanish, so we translated for the students as the events unfolded. I worked in a Special Education program, but these students were incredibly intelligent (most had very mild learning disibilities). All of the students were intellectually capable of understanding what was going on.

One Hispanic girl, a very cute and artistic little thing, translated along with us as best she could, but soon her voice faded away. Instead, she reached into her bag, and pulled out a "Tigger" stuffed animal and fiercly clutched it to her chest. She held back the tears, but her face was haunted. That is the image I will carry of September 11, Jessica clutching her Tigger doll.

I was fortunate that I did not lose anyone. My artist cousin lives in Brooklyn, and sent us photos of the events. His wife worked in WTC 3, but called in sick after getting halfway to work on that fateful day. She was very lucky.

[Tokki1]

I was in Gecko's. The MP's came in and told all the GI's to return to base.

Then it was watching buildings on fire on Korean TV. Good times.