Last night I was preparing for my presentation this afternoon. But I found it hard to focus as my mind kept on bringing me back to the fateful day 18 years ago…

It was an early day. My alarm beeped at 6.30am. We were heading to Singapore that morning. I was just a young officer back then, excited every time my name made the cut as delegation member accompanying my boss to meetings overseas with our foreign counterparts. It was more about the shopping than anything else. But we had to do the meeting first.

We checked into the Royal Plaza at Scotts hotel. The meeting was scheduled for 9am the next day. I was to give a presentation during the meeting, so I was a bit nervous. I made sure to run through my presentation again and again that night. It had to be perfect. All the time, I kept the CNN TV news channel on just in case there were new developments on the topic that I would be presenting on.

I remember looking at my watch, it was a quarter to 9pm. Then the Breaking News screen on TV caught my attention. WORLD TRADE CENTRE DISASTER in capital letters and the image of thick smoke billowing out of one of the towers of the building. My first thought was it was just a fire that broke out inside the building. I increased the TV’s volume. Still holding the TV remote I listened on. “A large commercial passenger jet was seen to hit the World Trade Center,” the newscaster said.

Oh My…..a plane crashing into a building. My heart went to all the passengers and people in the building. I prayed that they made it out safe. I was so naive to dismiss the gravity of the incident at that time. The thought of it being a deliberate act didn’t even cross my mind. It didn’t immediately register in my head that a large commercial passenger plane couldn’t possibly be accidentally flying over New York city that low.

Then just like having the life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment, I saw a plane flew straight towards and crashing into the other tower of the building. It was so surreal. My jaw dropped. Although I was thousands of miles away sitting in my hotel room, it felt like I was there witnessing the crash live from the building where the camera was.

I didn’t want to get my eyes off the TV as I watched in horror the unthinkable, unreal events unfolded. I fumbled around looking for my phone to very quickly alert my colleagues. I texted “Watch CNN Now!!!” Back then there was no WhatsApp yet. But I didn’t care about the outrageous roaming charge for SMS as I sent the text to everyone I could think of. Still, at that point, I thought the crashes were due to some glitch to the planes’ navigational system, a delayed Y2K impact perhaps.

As the breaking news broadcast covered the ensuing chaos, ROARRRRRR!!!! The first hit tower collapsed. It looked more like the building turned to dust and disappeared as the dust got blown away by the wind. When the dust cleared, the tower was gone. My mouth was wide opened the whole time, in disbelief. Then ROARRRRR!!! The other tower collapsed. The famed World Trade Center has disappeared, right before my eyes.

The world has changed since then. For those who were little kids at that time or born after 2001, they would only hear about this dark incident from their parents, educators, in books, newspaper archives, on the internet. For myself, and millions others who witnessed it live, we are forever bonded by the trauma we shared.

Where were you when it happened?