New York...New York...

Last night, Joyce sent me this link whilst I had fallen asleep at my table. Woke up today and watched it. Must say its a MIGHTY good rendition of "New York New York".
In fact...that was the song which I had been singing/humming/playing in my head...during the 9-11 disaster in 2001.
It was during my JC 2 Prelim exams...and I had just finished studying for a Geography paper the next day. Having shut my computer off (which had been playing "New York New York" on repeat...I went to bed. Only to be woken by my younger brother awhile later with him exclaiming..."KOR!! YOU GOTTA SEE THIS! AIRPLANE'S CRASHING INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE!"
I was too tired...and irritable. I thought it to be another of his late night Hollywood re-runs. Perhaps a Jean Claude Van Damme...played too often. I grunted, and rolled back to bed.
Awhile later...in he came...this time, clearly alarmed..."KOR YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!! ANOTHER PLANE'S GONNA CRASH!!". Figuring I'd probably not do too well...and yet, not really be affected (after all it was only the Prelims)...I woke up, showing my clear displeasure for his over-reaction to an 'old Hollywood' movie, and went to see just what the commotion was all about.
What was playing on the news struck me. The Towers were blazing...and people were jumping out of windows...in a manner which reflected their sheer desperation. Not Desperation to cling on to life...but desperation rather, of choosing a faster option to die - out of the window, plummeting more than 70 stories onto hard tarmac below. Chilling. Real. And non-Hollywood. This was the real stuff.
This was the real stuff that I had written off to be an "old-Hollywood re-run".
This was the real stuff...that has been embedded in my mind ever-since that night...which I spent the entire early hours of the morning, staring blank-eyed at the television screen, as reports after reports of the casaulties were fed on 'live' TV.
This was the real stuff...that I had been whistling the tune to, ironically, just hours before its execution...an ominous undertone of what was to come.

This, was New York.

Friends, let us not be insensitive, and shun our senses to the world around us. It is because of "New York, New York" that innocent people, Coalition and MIddle-Eastern alike, are now bombing and shooting each other over.