On the 11th of September 2001, the sun was shinning over Böblingen, Germany.
We at the Product Marketing team of the Agilent' Optical Network Test Division were working on the forthcoming introduction of a breakthrough product.
This Check-Point meeting was as usual : hard work, brainstorming, productive.
We left the meeting room somewhere around 3:00PM, after six hours of discussion in a closed environment, to head to our respective work places, at the other side of the building.
We immediately felt something was wrong : the floor was quiet, too quiet. A weird, awful silence.
I don't remember how we got the message - was it a colleague stepping by us when we came back or a Post-It note on our telephone - but I do remember how the three of us, Robert, Dieter, and myself, looked at each other, puzzled. " A plane crashed in the WTC, NYC ".
Then, we jumped on our computers, to read the news. I launched my favorite radio station. We got the first images, then the videos, on the online news websites that were still accessible.
As almost everyone on the Planet, we couldn't believe what we saw. It had to be a farce. It had to be for a movie or a television show.
Suddenly, the reality struck us. All the energy we got from our brainstorming session went out, instantly, to be replaced by a sad sad feeling. Kind of sickness. We were entering a new World.
I remember what I said to my buddy Dieter the same moment : " the World will never be the same, never ever. "
