World Trade Center

First day at college, Semester II of UFP.

It was nothing like it, it was back to the usual days of toiling after assignments, it was a mixture of welcome and not having to grow more fungi on myself and dread of the workload to come.

There aren’t any classes today, because it was merely an enrolling day. I hate the fact we weren’t informed at all about our timetable and we had to come all the way to college to get it - imagine those who lived further away in KL or Klang.

Had lots of CSO’s Trick or Treat event work and meetings till about 2.30pm when I had to go after Daniel waited at the bus stop for some time. Minutes later Andy arrived, and we went to Summit to catch the movie World Trade Center at 3.10pm.

I’m a bit at loss for words to describe how the movie went, even though Daniel proclaimed it was the best movie of 2006, and Andy thought it was really good. While it was powerful and emotionally effective at certain scenes, the entire movie wasn’t exactly a tearjerker as it was all made out to be. Being an American movie, unlike the local full-page length review I read recently of this movie, it didn’t exactly contained typical American patriotism I had expected.

It wasn’t all that moving, I’m afraid, even when I’m the type that gets moved quite easily. Call me a heartless bastard, but while the idea of showing how two real life characters, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, both Port Authority police officers survive the entire ordeal of being buried beneath the rubble of what’s left of the two towers, could be a little touching at certain parts, I thought it didn’t quite work out with all the flashbacks and talking about their own families and stuff. Dangit, clich?d even?

I liked the sudden ending to certain scenes that panned out in the dark to the next. What I didn’t understand was why only these two men and their families are shown in the movie, and not the dead dude Dom who was right next to the two main characters, and how his own family must be worried with grief till the news of his death came about.

While the scenes were playing out, I couldn’t help but think of the futility of the incident (which is great, as the movie increased our awareness, indirectly or not). A completely moronic action of the highest level by a bunch of motherfuckers whom we label ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’. Of lives unnecessarily thrown. Of how when 9/11 occured, how the government of the United States retaliated on a hunt to “avenge these deaths”, to quote a line screened in the movie.

And we all grow up very well with the adage of violence begets violence, don’t we?

The saddest part was how a large majority of us were completely oblivious when this incident happened, when I myself were in my best friend’s place staying overnight, playing videogames. How we were totally ignorant of the pain the people involved had to go through, the immense physical and emotional torment, the panic-stricken grief. And how, right at this second, this very moment, another fellow brother or sister dies. Of AIDS. Of artillery brought upon by war. Of an accident. Of cancer. Of a heart attack. Of a shot in the chest. Of being bashed in the head and chest by blunt objects. Of brutal rape.

Funny how that, by simply existing, we’re already a threat to ourselves and the world.