sardonick

Five years ago today I had literally just moved to Taipei. At the time, I was sharing an apartment with an Indonesian dude who spoke very little English (and I, at that point, spoke very little Chinese…we communicated through lots of gestures and a Chinese-English pidgin, needless to say).

So, it’s late afternoon (time difference, remember), we’re watching some Taiwanese variety show, when the normal programming gets interrupted with some fast-speaking, serious-looking news anchor. The language-newbie that I was, I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. The one thing I could understand, though, was the infographic in the corner of the screen behind him: lifted straight from CNN (I assume) was a picture of a couple buildings on fire, subtitled “America Under Attack”.

Wow.

I had no idea what was going on, and I could only think of the worst. My flatmate understood, but there was no easy way for him to communicate “terrorists just hijacked some planes and ran them into a building” in pantomime. Phone calls to friends and family back in the States naturally wouldn’t connect through.

Our apartment had a dial-up internet connection… the mainstream media sites (CNN et al) were overwhelmed with traffic and not working, if I recall. (“Is America’s infrastructure wiped out?” I remember thinking!). Finally, I was able to connect to less mainstream sites like Slashdot, which were still up and had excellent running commentary of the situation. I remember being logged on for most of the afternoon, refreshing the few functioning pages every couple of minutes, hungry for any new information. There was a lot of confusion and a lot of unintentional misinformation. Was it the PLO? Was it missiles? Was it nuclear? I remember wondering about the global repercussions of this attack. At this point we didn’t know who was behind it, the extent of the damage, how long the attacks would continue, or how the United States was going to respond. Having just arrived in a foreign country, life was that much more uncertain–Would I need to return home? To be drafted?? How will the global community treat Americans? How will my neighbors treat me? Do I even know where the American Embassy (or, Taiwanese embassy-alternative) is located?

I remember, on the morning after the bombings, my (normally tactful!) language instructor told the class “and this situation is unique because it is the first time anyone has attacked America since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor”. Now, you must understand, I was the only American in the class, and the remainder of the class was an assortment of Japanese, Korean, and European. When the teacher said that, I was sitting right across from the Japanese guy. It was an awkward moment, to say the least. How to react? I think we both just shrugged at each other.

Just a few five-years-old-now scattered thoughts.

Where were you?