Author: bonwag

Just time for a quick note; I’ve been told to get to the airport and get in line for the first flight back to Australia; leaving JFK tonight (Sunday 16th). This is my only chance today, so I hope I make it on. Otherwise, there’s a long night ahead!

Now that America’s day of Prayer and Remembrance has passed for the victims of the terrorist attacks, talk here is turning to war. It’s the next logical stage in the grieving process, of course. (I hope they can hold it off until I’m back home, because it just means more uncertainty in the air).

I have a tentative airline booking for Australia for tomorrow night, so I hope that pans out; Airlines are only just getting back up and running, but they say their schedules in the US will never get back to normal. There’s already talks of huge layoffs at the airlines, so I guess the ratbags have won this round.

America is building up to some sort of battle. I can’t imagine it will be anything like we’ve seen before, and I can’t imagine how it can be done in such a way to sate the growing rage of Americans. No one’s dared contemplate it, yet, but I can’t see how anything less than the public execution of the guy everyone thinks is responsible will be enough.

People are no longer gathering around TVs and absorbing every word of the broadcasts, like they used to. At least in this hotel, people are playing golf and attending wedding receptions, with a passing glance at the TV sets. There has been no news today; no survivors rescued, no new bad news, either. More flags line the streets and halls, and the weather is finally back to brilliant. The word ‘normalcy’ is bandied about on the news broadcasts a little more frequently. But there’s still smoke where the towers should be. Once that’s gone, and the space where the towers used to be is sky….

A slow day to report; other than washing. For once in my life I had programmed my business clothes baggage to perfection, and now I have an extra couple of days. My greatest fear is that I’ll be called to go to the airport before all my washing is dried!

It’s now more than 24 hours since I was supposed to be boarding a flight to Perth. My Palm Pilot keeps updating me on where I should be; I had programmed reminders for each of my flights, so each time it beeps, I’m reminded how far I am from home right now. I hope I get a final booking before it reminds me that I should be in Perth.

I wish I was. Ainslie has had some bad news about her sister’s health, so I should be at home to give her support.

Only a day late, but counting.

American flags and rosettes line the streets here, as the US prepares to observe a national day of Remembrance and Prayer.

The tide is also turning. People are turning off the TV and turning away from the sustained horror of the whole story. Sadness upon sadness; as people turn to the TV and the walls of New York to post pictures of their missing loved ones and make impassioned pleas for their return, they are all starting to blur together and people are turning to each other for support and comfort.
It’s starting to rain outside the hotel window now. That can’t be helping the rescue effort.

Our training course is complete here; people have wedged themselves into whatever vehicles they can find and planned a circuitous route out of New York, back to their homes and family in all corners of the US.

I’m still waiting for word of my return flight to Australia; I may not be getting out of the US on Friday evening as originally planned. I might have to find some ground transport to the other side of the country and try to find a flight in Los Angeles (suspect characters are still trying to use NY airport and getting arrested). As far as I know, they are still tightening security at the airport, but I’d prefer to be late than *late*, if you know what I mean. Maybe a road trip across the US might be interesting. I wish it was a sightseeing run, rather than an exodus.

The US is now just terribly, terribly sad. The reaction has gone beyond outrage and fear to just numb, gut-wrenching grief. People are slowly realising that if they haven’t heard by now about their friends and family, they won’t. Stories of heroism on the flights which crashed cannot pierce the darkness of these days.

I find myself an imposter here. While I share in the grief of the many nationalities of people who have died, I don’t know the words to the songs that the Americans are using for comfort. I don’t know what it’s like to look at the New York skyline and see a hole there. I don’t feel like I’m a part of all this. I do know I’d rather be anywhere else than here: where people are escaping to the comfort of their homes and families and finally switching off the pervasive TV coverage in weary resignation. I am forced to continue following the events, because at the moment I’m a long way from home and no-one is able to help me get back right now.

I’m glad I was able to contact my families in Australia soon afterwards the events, and that my colleages in Australia have been sending me emails mixed with relief and sadness at the events.

At the moment, the training sessions – which have continued with grim determination over the last few days – are petering out as people become concerned with their own transport plans back home. I haven’t felt like lightening the training with jokes like I normally do. As the final day finishes, some people have already hired cars and left for their US locations, while others compare notes about their international flights and gambling on which one will actually take off.

I’m not sure my Friday night flight is happening at this stage, so I may be spending some of the weekend here.

To all who’ve offered help, thank you. I’ll do my best to figure out what the heck’s going on here and take any opportunity I can get to get home. I’ll let you know.

CNN.com has been one of the main sources of news about the attack for those of us who’ve been following it in the US. Also useful: New York Times, ABC News, MSNBC and the BBC.

A lot of people have been worried about me, if the calls reaching home are an indication. Many people in Australia hadn’t known exactly where I was staying, but everyone’s fears have been settled. I’m safely an hour or so away from the disaster, in Islandia, which is right in the middle of Long Island.

I’ve just been told that everyone in my company has been accounted for, which is great news, seeing that CA does have an office in downtown New York.

I’m due to fly out of New York for LA and Sydney on Friday night (NY Time), but at the moment, the airlines are still sorting things out: every plane in the US was grounded as soon as the problems started, and haven’t flown since.

You’ll have seen some of the terrible news out of New York about terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (as well as the Pentagon in Virginia and Pennsylvania. If not, see CNN, or the New York Times)

This morning, I was attending a training session in CA Headquarters, Islandia (on Long Island, about an hour out of Manhattan). A fellow trainee brought a website up on the screen with what looked like a faked picture of one of the World Trade Center towers – a building I had visited only a day earlier. I’d assumed it was a promotion for a new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. A short time later, there was a similar ‘faked’ picture of a massive fireball on the other tower. A few people had gathered around the screen, or were checking the news for themselves. I read the text, and could not believe what I was reading: someone had coordinated an attack on the heart of New York.

When the training session broke (shortly before 10) it was only starting to dawn what had happened. It was only words on a page at that stage, and some unbelievable pictures. I headed for the cafeteria with some colleagues as we discussed the event in a state of shock. As we walked, we passed another group who were discussing a relative who was in one of the *collapsed* towers.
Collapsed? It was inconceivable. We didn’t believe it. I felt a little sick.

It was early morning, and the corridoors were full, but everyone was headed in the same direction; the cafeteria.

Several hundred staff were congregating in front of a half-dozen television sets, which displayed scene after scene of massive devastation. In all the smoke, we couldn’t tell that the second tower had by that stage collapsed. Someone passing by said that there were four planes down; the others were at the Pentagon and Pittsburgh.

I resolved at that stage to only believe the pictures; there was so much speculation going on about what was happening. But sure enough, the television showed four crash sites (at that stage, there was no vision of the actual crashes, just the aftermath. We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t even know if there were passengers in the planes. There couldn’t be, could there?) Someone else passed and commented to us that there were now four planes down, and as far as we knew, it wasn’t over.

For a fleeting moment, I considered whether or not we were a target; being at the headquarters of a multinational corporation (note: at that stage, we didn’t know if the attacks would stop). All sorts of stuff goes through your head at that stage. But I was like everyone else; this could not be happening. I was walking those streets days ago. I was lucky enough to have seen the ‘old’ Manhattan skyline before it was destroyed.

A meeting I was due to attend was about to start. I didn’t need to confirm that it was cancelled.

People who weren’t stabbing at unresponsive cell phones were staring in disbelief at the pictures: those daring enough made the observation that *thousands of people were in those towers* and fell silent.

Training continued – what else could you do? There was a large contingent of international visitors at the training, and they were fielding phone calls from distraught relatives who assumed the impact was wider. People huddled around websites and TVs for the rest of the day.

After several attempts, I was able to get a line to Perth to let my family know that all was well. Ainslie was able to tell me far more than what I knew: Australia was getting the same saturation coverage which we were getting in NY. She gasped down the phone as footage was played of a plane plouging into one of the buildings.

I am safe, and unsure what is in store. There’s no doubt this is the start of a war, but I don’t know what that means. I also don’t know that I’m where I should be right now, half a world away from home, but I haven’t got a choice. The mongrels who stole those planes took it away.

I’ll post updates as I can (it’s difficult to maintain an internet connection at the moment), but be assured that I’m well out of danger.

Well, it had to be done. I posted a goodbye message for ACMusic – the other site I administer – tonight. It was difficult to do (it’s older than Caleb!) but the fact that I’m going to be doing a lot more work and travel with my new position at CA meant that I needed to decide between spending time maintaining another website, or keeping the love of my family.

August 31: I noticed that some people had been trying to search my family tree through the normal search function on the site. It didn’t work before, but it does now. :-) Go for it!

Although it sounds a little weird, I reckon this study’s going to be required reading in a few years. I suppose it’s another step in the progression from Books to the Web: HumanMarkup.org is trying to find a way of assigning human traits to information systems, similar to the way you can find information about the subject a paragraph through clicking on links on the web. The idea is to remove misunderstandings: if you thought that the person writing the sentence ‘my dog has fleas’ was a 31 year old white anglo-saxon protestant male who was being figurative, would it take a different meaning if you knew it was a 6 year old asian girl who was being literal? It’s serious stuff, and worth considering, especially if you plan on writing for the Digital Age.