Days That I Can’t Shake – 1st February 2003

I remember being allowed to stay home on the 11th April 1981 to watch the inaugural launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Probably mankind’s most complex machine, the space shuttle programme heralded a new era in space flight – a reusable craft that takes off like a rocket but lands like a plane. As a twelve year old, I thought that humanity was on the verge of a new space age. Here was the space shuttle and soon we would be going back to the moon and beyond.

The launch on that spring day was abandoned due to a glitch of some kind and I enjoyed the rest of the day off. The shuttle finally took to the skies the next day – a Saturday, so no extra day off school. Nearly 22 years later and half a world away I sat watching the same shuttle break up in a fireball over the USA with the loss of all seven astronauts on board.

I just hope that their deaths were quick and painless.

In memory of:
Rick Husband, Commander
William McCool, Pilot
Michael Anderson, Payload Commander
Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist and First Israeli Astronaut
Kalpana Chalwa, Mission Specialist
David Brown, Mission Specialist
Laurel Clark, Mission Specialist

Days That I Can't Shake - 28th January 1986

There are events that burn themselves into memory - Kennedy's assassination, the moon landing and so on. I was not born or was too young for these two but I clearly recall the first day that scorched a mark on my mind. It was the 28th January 1986 - the day of the Challenger disaster which took the lives of all seven astronauts including the first civilian in space, Teacher Christa McAuliffe.

As I live on the opposite side of the planet to the USA, I was awoken to the disaster on the morning of the 29th January. It was the last week of vacation before beginning my first year of University and had become accustomed to sleeping in late. I spent most of the day glued to the news reports of the disastrous 73 second last flight of Challenger. The words "go for throttle-up", seeing the explosion and tendrils of water vapour and from the exploded main fuel tank and smoke from the prematurely separated solid rocket boosters have left an indelible mark on my mind.

I must have seen that sequence on the TV nearly fifty times that day. However it was not the actual explosion that I remember the most, it was the camera that was tracking the faces of Christa McCauliffe's aged parents. You could tell that they had thought that everything was going normally at the time of the explosion - yet they had just witnessed the death of their daughter and six of her crewmates. It took several minutes before they realised what had actually happened and that a day of celebration had turned into a day of mourning.

In the days ahead came grainy video taken through the tracking telescopes that showed the crew section of the shuttle had remained essentially intact during the explosion. You could clearly make out the nose cone and flight deck of the shuttle in one piece falling back to earth. It was concluded that many of the crew may have survived the explosion only to die in the inevitable impact over the Atlantic Ocean.

In memory of:
Francis "Dick" Scobee, Commander
Michael J. Smith, Pilot
Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist
Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist
Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist
Gregory Jarvis, Payload Specialist
Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Spaceflight Participant

A New Era has Dawned

Today marks the inaugauration of a new president of the USA. I would never have believed that I would see a black president of the USA in my lifetime. Echos of "I have a dream" just keep hitting me and it's a shame that Dr King Jnr is not here to celebrate too.

However more important than the inaugauration of a new president is the fact that the old regime has come to an end. An event that many more people in the world will be celebrating! The Bush regime (I can't call it anything else) was one of deceit, self-interest and control by the oil industry. I'm sure that it was Rumsfeld and Rice that were Bush's puppet masters in the Whitehouse and that they were taking their orders from faceless oil executives and warmongers.

I remember seeing the CNN footage on September 11 2001. G.W. Bush was in a kindergarten (about his level of education) sitting through a "read-a'long". Interesting to note that he was holding the book upside down! A sign of nerves? In a kindergarten - hardly as you don't see too many 5 year old assassins. A sign of stupidity? Quite possible - remember the binocular incident? A sign of distraction? More likely and adds to what I observed that day. A man came into the room and whispered into the ear of Bush news that a plane had struck one of the twin towers. Now, either Bush has the best poker face on the planet or he was expecting to hear what he had just heard. His brow did not furrow, his eyes did not squint or widen. Absolutely no sign of suprise was seen on the face of Bush at that time. The news of a plane striking one of the towers was nothing more than a status report. He had expected it! Circumstantial evidence... perhaps. But then look at what 9/11 was used to do. Even though 16 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, and none was Iraqi or Afghani, this terrible incident was used to justify invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq - two of the most oil-rich nations on the planet.

In Afghanistan he brought down the Taliban and as a result brought back the heroin trade: the Taliban did a good job of destroying the poppy fields. In Iraq he brought down the Hussein regime - not a bad thing to do. However there is just as big a despot called Mugabe currently reaking havoc and pain on the people of Zimbabwe. Those that are white or do not follow his warped ideas are being systematically winnowed out and dispossessed (or worse, disposed of). I wonder if the Bush regime would have acted if Zimbabwe had rich oil fields?

The Old Lady and Religion

My father is in a nursing home, and has been for nearly eleven years now, succumbing to the slow and indignifying disease of dementia. Multi-infarct pre-senile dementia to be exact. It was hard to tell exactly when the disease started to eat away at his brain partly because he was into spiritualism in his late forties - and we all thought him a bit barmy as a consequence. In retrospect I often think that his journey into spiritualism may have been the result of him coming to grips with the hallucinations and other non-sequiters of early-stage dementia - attributing his visions to things of religious significance rather than to dissolving neurons.

This thoughtnode is not about my father - more on him in later blogs - but rather at a 20 second incident that happened at his nursing home way back in 1999. It's so strange how things stick in one's memory. Even more so considering that I have always thought that my own memory to be poor and that I, perhaps, am witnessing my own future through the gradual degradation of my father's mind.

I was visiting dad one weekend morning with my mother. Dad was lucky enough to have his own room right next door to the nursing station, and as this area was located at the centre of an essentially long rectangular building, it proved to be a traffic hot-spot for the residents. Some were just old and infirm, others were more mobile but senile. Some of these were in a happy state of oblivion but the ones I felt sorry for were the those that appeared tortured. Some would mumble with a distressed look on their face, others would cry out - some appearing to recall childhood life at the hands of a forceful parent - you could hear the anguish in their cries.

I was standing in the corridor outside of my dad's room - I found it hard visiting him and was letting mum spend some time with him. This old gray haired lady shuffled up to me in her blue slippers with a look of worry on her face as well as a tear or two. I asked her if she was OK and she told me what was troubling her. It turns out that her husband had died some time earlier and he was an Anglican. She, on the other hand, was Catholic and she was worried that when she died she would never see her husband again as her priest had always told her that only true Catholics go to Heaven. In response I told her that as they both believed-in and followed the teachings of Jesus that they would both be together again in Heaven. I remember her face brightening up with a smile so strong that it nearly brought me to tears (in fact I'm pretty close as I write this). She hugged me, thanked me and shuffled off. That was the first time and the last time I ever saw that lady. I hope that she is at peace with her husband in Heaven.

My First Blog Entry

Welcome to my thoughtnode - a place where I can express my thoughts, reflect on past experiences and also act as my soapbox for when I wish to vent my spleen about an issue that grabs my attention.

The blazing speed at which the 2000s (noughties) have passed as put me into a reflective mood. This in addition to the fact that my life is now past the half-way mark has compulsed me to establish this blog. It is more of an introspective of my anonymous life but others may find snippets interesting or may relate to some of the things that I have witnessed.

Unlike many other blogs which are essentially chronological journeys of a person's present circumstance, this blog is more of a retrospection. Memories that pop into my head will be journaled without being placed into any given chronological order.