Comment: We now share the day as well as the memory

As I am posting from Sydney, all my posts today have been dated September 11, which it will be for another three and a half hours.

I have been working online for some years and this is the one day of the year that the time difference seems so incongruous.

But now we share the same date - as well the memories of that tragic September day four years ago.

It was around 11pm Sydney time and I was talking to a client and friend in New Jersey. I had just signed off when I saw a news alert in my inbox. As I read the basic details - a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre - I could never have imagined that those few, scant details, were telling me the world had changed for ever.

I immediately contacted my friend and told her what had happened - at that stage she was unaware of the event. To this day, we both still talk about the fact that she heard the news from a guy so many thousands of miles away.

As we talked, it became clear what had happened - America had come under attack. We both watched live coverage of the unfolding tragedy - two people, in two countries, feeling the same sadness, sickness and anger.

I have strong views on what happened before Sep 11, and even stronger views regarding what has happened since. But today is not the day to get on a political soap box; it is a day to remember not only those who perished that day, but also the loved ones they left behind.

So no politics, no agendas - just my best wishes and thoughts to a country that has come to mean so much to me.