What can I say about snow, pretty for 10 minutes, annoying and shitty for the remainder of the time it hangs around. Especially if you can’t ski on it.
This morning, in Beijing we had a good dusting of snow, 20 – 30 cm’s in fact. Being from Australia, it was only the third time that I had seen it actually snowing. You see, in Australia, we have mountains, some would even call them alps, but our “alps” are usually covered in 50 cm of hard white slush that every wannabee with a Volvo, a ski rack and some snow chains seems to get mildly excited about each winter. I say bugger that and fly to New Zealand, where they have REAL snow…….but I digress.
Snow sucks, because it made me fall over. I was walking into work, stopped to take a photo and down I went, I fell on my laptop, which now has a bent chassis, however as a testament to IBM engineering, that was sold to Lenovo, the old T60p, takes a licking and keeps on ticking, even after being crushed under the hip of a Large Lumbering Western Giant.
Snow, is apparently a rare event in Beijing due to the dry climate, so you can imagine how “great” it made traffic and getting around. Drivers here just dont seem to comprehend how to modify their driving technique, speed, or distance to other cars, be it snowing, torrential rain or sandstorms. For example leaving work at around 11:30pm, we turn onto a secondary road, only to hit a patch of black ice and perform a slow and graceful full 180. Much hilarity ensued, however I think mine was more nervous laughter. This same peanut, whilst driving slowly, did manage to overtake a truck with no lights, on a blind corner, under a darkened bridge, whilst it was snowing, at midnight and none of us were wearing seatbelts, because they were not installed in the back!
No one owns snow tires, chains or the ability to drive properly in icy conditions. I had one driver still thinking he could drive at 110 KMPH in snow! You’ll be happy to know that when I thought I was telling him to slow down in Mandarin……I find out later It actually means speed up! For any Chinese or non Chinese Mandarin speaking smartarses I was saying “Ni Kai Che Hun Mun”, can’t be arsed putting in the tones, figure it out for yourselves!
Here are some photo’s of snow that all look the same. Enjoy!
