i don't have a gripping story to tell of the terrorist attacks from my vantage point in western canada. that is not to say that those of us so far away have not been affected by the events of yesterday. i wasn't aware of the events that had transpired until i stepped out of my apartment door yesterday morning and greeted my neighbour with a standard 'good morning' to which he rejoined the non-standard greeting: 'for some of us anyways'. after seeing my blank look he told the news of the wtc towers being hit by two airplanes -- apparently a terrorist attack. this left me in shocked disbelief as i hurriedly bladed to work. when i got there i found my supervisor and co-workers huddled around a radio listening to the reports as they came in -- first of the pentagon being hit and then of the towers actually collapsing along with conflicting reports of other airplanes also being hijacked. being an it person, i quickly moved to my computer and attempted to bring up news coverage online. at this point virtually all of the major news sites were down. however, my.yahoo.ca was responsive as usual perhaps because people don't think of yahoo as a news source (which, of course, is true in a sense, they only publish what comes over the wire) or perhaps because it's more scaleable than the news sites -- at any rate it became one of the sites i watched constantly throughout the early morning. later, as cnn and others scaled back their pages and became responsive again i monitored them as well as metafilter.com and other non-mainstream sites. as an aside, msnbc was one of the last of the major news sites to regain consciousness -- excuse me for insinuating that ms systems aren't as scaleable as other solutions. (i might also add that our own government-funded cbc did not handle the increased traffic very well at all -- likely due to their chronic shortage of funds.) as more news reports flowed in and the faa turned the whole u.s. airspace into a gigantic no-fly zone (with our own government following suit) the magnitude of the situation began to sink in. my roommate went home at noon. his company closed since their head-office, based out of Houston, had shutdown for the day. a number of the tallest buildings downtown also closed. later, when i went home we listened to cbc broadcasts as they continued to cover the disaster (i don't have a tv.) 12 international flights bound for u.s. destinations were eventually routed to our local international airport. lineups at local blood donor clinics are hours long. we're doing what we can...but for many, it is too little, too late.

where do we go from here? in theory, we should pick up the pieces and build lasting peace. in practice though, that will never be possible: there are too many people that have grown up in environments of violence and hatred for there to ever be complete peace. even the worst punishment cannot deter the people who will give their own life to take the lives of innocent people and the strictest police state could never be a place i'd want to live.

what is the answer? there is no answer: it's the way people are; the way the world is. as individuals we can try to be the best neighbour we can to everyone we meet...and in the end, that will be enough.