Monthly Archives: November 2009

Exit Strategy – Get Home ASAP

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Nov30_Exit

After a week in the hos­pi­tal I couldn’t take it any more. The doc­tor told me I needed to be here for at least three weeks before I would recover. I was feel­ing bet­ter but still in a lot of pain and just wanted to go home. I hate hos­pi­tals and they are not a good place to be even when you are ill. I also hate being a patient and not being able to move which is frus­trat­ing. All I could do was lay in bed and then you start to think too much and get depressed. After some dis­cus­sion the doc­tors agreed to let me go home on sev­eral con­di­tions. Namely that I con­tin­ued the reha­bil­i­ta­tion ther­apy process at home and kept up with the med­ica­tion. I also had to come back to hos­pi­tal every three days to change the dress­ing and check the wounds. The doc­tors and nurses had done a great job of look­ing after me, but I just couldn’t stand being in the hos­pi­tal any­more. Thank­fully I would be going home tomor­row :-)

Corridor Of Pain

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Nov29_Corridor

As part of the ther­apy I had to try and walk up and down the cor­ri­dor a few times each day. Any kind of mov­ing was slow and painful and walk­ing was in real­ity a very slow shuf­fle. Dur­ing the day the cor­ri­dor was often full of other patients doing the same thing so you got to meet alot of other peo­ple in sim­i­lar anguish. I think this shar­ing of a com­mon agony was one rea­son peo­ple were so friendly. The com­mon greet­ing on the cor­ri­dor was not “ni hao” (how are you?) but “teng ma” (does it hurt?). To which the answer most often was a gri­mac­ing reply “ter­bie teng!” (really hurts) and a shak­ing of the head.

Staring At The Ceiling

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Nov28_Lightbulb

With an oper­a­tion of this type you can­not sit up as the pain in unbear­able. All you can do it lie on your front or back and stare up at the ceil­ing. With no inter­net, radio or tele­vi­sion the expe­ri­ences is even more dull. Because the pain was so bad the nurses gave me an injec­tion and some pain killing pills. These kept me feel­ing very drowsy, so I could sleep through the pain most of the day and night. Star­ing at the bare flu­o­res­cent tube and drift­ing in and out of con­scious­ness it felt like I was in a scene from some prison movie.

Post Operation Pain

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Nov27_Fire

After the nurses stopped the mor­phine yes­ter­day the real pain began. The oper­a­tion had been a pain­less affair but the post oper­a­tion was an ago­nis­ing affair. On top of that the reha­bil­i­ta­tion process was par­tic­u­larly uncom­fort­able to say the least. I wont go into the grue­some details but it was the worst expe­ri­ences of my life. I asked the nurses if they could put me back on the mor­phine drip but they told me it was too dan­ger­ous. Firstly, it would dam­age my brain and sec­ondly, it was too easy to get addicted too. I can under­stand why so many famous peo­ple and movie stars get addicted to pain killers, as it not only kills the pain but keeps you feel­ing a lit­tle high. This was the fire box in the cor­ri­dor, which you dial 119 in an emer­gency.  I wish there was a num­ber I could call in this emer­gency, but I guess I will have to get through this cold turkey.

Patient 66 is A Foreigner

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Nov26_Number66

In the hos­pi­tal I became patient 66, which is the num­ber on my wall. I guess it’s an eas­ier way for the nurses to iden­tify who you are with­out con­fus­ing names. The num­ber also iden­ti­fies where you are on the ward so a quick way to know which bed you are in. How­ever as I was the only ‘waiguo ren’ (for­eigner) in the hos­pi­tal you couldn’t really mis­take me for some­one else. I esti­mated about 70 peo­ple on my mixed ward, with sep­a­rate rooms for male and female. As the only for­eigner I became some­thing of an odd­ity and would con­tin­u­ally hear peo­ple say­ing ‘hey look, there is a for­eigner here’. Despite being an out­sider, I found the other patients very friendly and kind towards me. They would often stop me to talk and ask me ques­tions about myself, all in Chi­nese of course. It was good lan­guage prac­tice and most were sur­prised I could speak any Chi­nese.  I also met a cou­ple of younger Chi­nese patients, who worked for multi national com­pa­nies so it was good to be able to talk some Eng­lish as well.

Happy Days Drips

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Nov25_Drip

Fol­low­ing the oper­a­tion the doc­tors put me on drips for the next few days. I think I had to have five bot­tles a day or var­i­ous flu­ids. There were only one or two nurses who had any basic Eng­lish, so most of their com­mu­ni­ca­tion to me was in Chi­nese. It’s funny how much your lan­guage improves when you have to speak Chi­nese and you have no option. The nurses kept telling me how good my Chi­nese was, but some­times it was a mix­ture of guess­work, facial read­ing and body lan­guage to under­stand what they were say­ing to me. I also had a great Chinese/English visual dic­tio­nary that came in very handy. I would highly rec­om­mend this book to any­one learn­ing Chi­nese as the pic­tures make it eas­ier to asso­ciate words to the actual object.

Post Operation High

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Nov24_Operation

The oper­a­tion went well and was over after 30 min­utes. After they had injected my spine and given me gas I was knocked out for the whole oper­a­tion. Can­thy stayed with me dur­ing the whole process as she was wor­ried incase some­thing went wrong, as the doc­tors didn’t speak much Eng­lish. She told me the oper­a­tion for hem­or­rhoids was pretty hor­ri­ble to watch and one day she might tell me about it. How­ever, I have a vivid enough imag­i­na­tion so not sure I need to know the gory details. After­wards, I was still high on the mor­phine so was feel­ing very pos­i­tive and upbeat. I was also quite woozy and a lit­tle deliri­ous so I was say­ing all kinds of stu­pid things. But I had no idea once the drugs wore off how much pain I would be in…

Best Room in the Hospital

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Nov23_HospitalRoom

I checked into hos­pi­tal this morn­ing for an oper­a­tion for pro­lapsed hem­or­rhoids. A slightly embar­rass­ing topic to write about, but a com­mon prob­lem and sadly this is real life. I have been suf­fer­ing for sev­eral weeks but unfor­tu­nately the con­di­tion became very severe so I needed this emer­gency oper­a­tion. I wont go into details but I think the con­di­tion got aggra­vated by my diet, the cold weather and cycling to work every­day. Any­way Can­thy man­aged to get me the best room in the hos­pi­tal and one of the only dou­ble rooms. In local Chi­nese hos­pi­tals pri­vate rooms don’t exist and most rooms have around eight peo­ple per room. The hos­pi­tal is the best in Bei­jing for treat­ing colonic dis­or­ders and has a good rep­u­ta­tion for its sur­geons. How­ever, con­di­tions as you can see are slightly run down, but this is not unusual for local Chi­nese hos­pi­tal. I tried not to com­pare it to a west­ern hos­pi­tal, as I was just glad they could take me in and oper­ate on me. Peo­ple often laugh and make fun of hem­or­rhoids, but I can assure you when it gets this severe it is no laugh­ing matter.

Kitchen Sink Sunday

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Nov22_KitchenSink

Sun­days are lazy days in our house. We often cook, make a mess and try to use every plate, cup and uten­sil in the house. Not because were slobs but because our Ayi (clean­ing lady) comes on Mon­day so we can make a mess and not have to worry about clean­ing up. As our Ayi comes three times a week we try and cook on Sun­days, Tues­day and Thurs­days and then pile the plates up and see how high we can get them with­out the stack falling down. Hav­ing an Ayi that does all the clean­ing, wash­ing and house­work is com­mon in China as labour is cheap. But would be a lux­ury in the UK or USA due to the higher cost of wages. My Mum thinks it makes me lazy but secretly would like one of her own. For us, it means we have more time to focus on the impor­tant things in life–and not the wash­ing up.

Sick As A Puppy…Again

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Nov21SickAsDog

Can­thy was feel­ing sick again so another day spent on the sofa. She had down­loaded a num­ber of Chi­nese soap operas so spent most of the day watch­ing them. I think there were 35 episodes in total and I watched a cou­ple with her to prac­tice my Man­darin. How­ever with­out sub­ti­tles it was hard to fol­low as they were also talk­ing local Bei­jing dialect. It would be like a Chi­nese per­son watch­ing UK’s Eas­t­En­ders on TV and not under­stand­ing why no one spoke text book Eng­lish. What was inter­est­ing is that most soap operas has a sim­i­lar story regard­less of what coun­try they are set in. Its nor­mally some­thing like boy meets girl, boy meets another girl, love tri­an­gle, break up, par­ents don’t under­stand, etc etc. So really just another ver­sion of Shakespeare’s clas­sic Romeo and Juliet set in a mod­ern Chi­nese landscape.

Spicy Duck Blood

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Nov20_MaoXueWang

Can­thy has been crav­ing hot spicy food but with my con­di­tion and upcom­ing surgery I have to avoid this type of food. She ordered Mao Xue Wang, which is a spicy dish of noo­dles, veg­eta­bles and dried cubes of duck blood. This is one of Canthy’s favourite but some­thing I can live with­out. I would describe Canthy’s palette as more Guangzhou in taste as she loves chicken feet, soups and all kinds of ani­mal organs in spice. Unfor­tu­nately I am a very visual eater so I like my food to look good as well as taste good. Whereas Can­thy doesn’t care what it looks like as long as the taste is good. Hence her love of duck blood, duck heads, and other ani­mal inter­nal organs. Like most west­ern­ers I find the ingre­di­ents strange but the taste is good if you don’t think what you’re actu­ally eating.

Grim Anatomy

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Nov19_HospitalBed

I’ve been suf­fer­ing for weeks with a minor ill­ness that has sud­denly got vio­lent worse. I was in so much pain that Can­thy took me to an emer­gency hos­pi­tal to see a doc­tor. The hos­pi­tal spe­cialises in colon dis­or­ders and is the best in Bei­jing. How­ever being a local hos­pi­tal con­di­tions are not exactly what you would expect from a west­ern per­spec­tive. The inspec­tion bed was not exactly what I was expect­ing and noth­ing like you see on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy. This one was more grim anatomy but I was just glad to see a doc­tor and get some help for the pain so I didn’t really care about any­thing else. Unfor­tu­nately I needed to get emer­gency surgery, but it’s not a life threat­en­ing con­di­tion. Just embar­rass­ing and painful so they booked me in for next Mon­day. I just hope I can last till then.

God Save The Queen

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Nov18_TheQueen

I’ve only had my pass­port for a cou­ple of years but I’ve already run out of pages so needed to renew it. The UK con­sul is at the Kerry Cen­tre, which is just down the street from my apart­ment. Inside the con­sul it looks likes a generic gov­ern­ment office you find in the UK and it even has a pic­ture of the Queen and Prince Philip on the wall. The pic­ture is pretty old and looks like her coro­na­tion pic­ture from 1952. Amaz­ing to think she has been in power for over 50 years and still going strong. Look­ing at the pic­ture I did feel a lit­tle home sick as it’s not often you see a pic­ture of Queen in China. It makes me want to watch the movie The Queen again, star­ring Helen Mir­ren who really looks the part.

Chicken Feet Soup

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Nov17_DuckFeet

Can­thy had another crav­ing for chicken feet, so we went to Lee Gar­den again to eat the spe­cial­ity dish. Not my favourite infact I hate the taste but I had one webby foot just to give her face. You use your chop­sticks to pick it up at the ankle and then just bite off one claw at a time. Then in your mouth you suck or bite off the skin where most of the flavour is and then spit out the bones and car­ti­lage. You con­tinue this until you get the thicker foot area, which is sup­posed to be the tasti­est part. If you ever come to China you have eat chicken feet just to say you tried it. It’s an acquired taste, but who knows you might even like it.

Modern Mud Building

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Nov16_ChaowaiSoho

Liv­ing in CBD we have some news views of the area from our apart­ment. Well that’s if you like look­ing at build­ings, which fun­nily enough I do. Our south win­dows face Guo Mao Three, the tallest build­ing in Bei­jing and our north win­dows face the new Chaowai Soho com­plex. It’s a typ­i­cal retail/office com­plex but with an unusual design inspired by the Tulou Mud houses of Fujian province. It also incor­po­rates a num­ber of other tra­di­tional Chi­nese archi­tec­tural ele­ments to make a very mod­ern state­ment. It’s devel­oped by Soho, which is Bei­jing lead­ing prop­erty devel­oper known for its inno­v­a­tive design and mod­ernist approach to archi­tec­ture. It looks good in the day, but really sparkles at night

Walking Around CBD

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Nov15_CCTVTower

We decided to go for a walk today as we had spent the whole week­end at home doing noth­ing. Liv­ing in the Cen­tral Busi­ness Dis­trict (CBD) has many advan­tages espe­cially that every­thing is quite close and walk­a­ble. The CBD area, (often called down­town in the US) is set for a huge expan­sion as the Bei­jing gov­ern­ment plans to dou­ble its size. Skid­more Owings Mer­rill, the famous US archi­tects have just won an inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion to cre­ate three new areas linked by parks and green areas to make it more envi­ron­men­tal. We passed by the CCTV Tower, which is due to open soon. How­ever, the hotel that caught fire is still there and has yet to be repaired. I heard the inter­nal struc­ture is OK, but not sure if peo­ple will have con­fi­dence in it with­out pulling the whole thing down.

Sick As A Puppy

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Nov14CanthyDog

Can­thy was feel­ing sick again, so it was my time to look after her and play Flo­rence Nightin­gale. Maybe I make it sound like a lot of work but it is really very easy. I just need to put her on the sofa with duvets and blan­kets to make her feel warm. Then she can spend the whole day watch­ing DVDs while I work at the din­ing room table. That way she feels she con­nects with me even though she is too engrossed in her TV series to talk to me. Today she only wanted to eat water­melon and choco­late ice cream, so it feels like I am look­ing after a sick child some­times. Well it keeps her happy (and quiet) and in our house that’s the most impor­tant thing.

Christmas Capucinnos

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Nov13_Starbucks

My local Star­bucks in Jin­bao Tower has started putting up dec­o­ra­tions so I guess it must be offi­cial that Christ­mas is com­ing. Christ­mas is not a big hol­i­day in China and we only get one day off (Christ­mas Day) but it’s becom­ing increas­ing part of the local cul­ture. Most shop­ping cen­tres and hotels in the city will start to put up their dec­o­ra­tions to get into the spirit of Christ­mas. Hop­ing to increase con­sumer spend­ing dur­ing the fes­tive time. I have yet to see my first Christ­mas tree but I am sure it wont be long now. Star­bucks is the biggest cof­fee chain in China, with over 350 stores in 26 cities. It’s the most impor­tant mar­ket out­side the US, so this num­ber will rapidly expand and spread its Christ­mas spirit across China.

White Christmas Hutongs

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Nov12_SnowyHutongs

It has been snow­ing on and off all week but noth­ing as heavy as last week­end. Although the main roads were clear many parts of the old city were still cov­ered in snow. The hutong area out­side my office build­ing still had snow-covered roofs so it reminded me of a Christ­mas card scene. I don’t think the heat­ing is very good in the old build­ings so it can’t melt the snow on the roofs. We are expect­ing more snow this week­end so will have to see how heavy it will fall. It does make the city look pretty when every­thing is cov­ered in white, so hope­fully it could be a white Christ­mas this year.

No Ducks On This Pond

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Nov11_DaDong

My boss was com­ing up this week and we had a cor­po­rate event, which included a com­pany lun­cheon on Thurs­day. I had been try­ing to think of where to go when our sec­re­tary Mandy sug­gested Da Dong across the road from our office. Da Dong is one of the most famous restau­rants in Bei­jing, which spe­cialises in roast duck. I have been there many times but not this new one, which was sup­posed to be a very mod­ern design. Well the restau­rant was pretty cool with the cen­tre­piece being the open kitchen duck roast­ing sta­tion. This was sur­rounded by a shal­low pond, which was filled with gold­fish. The restau­rant was pretty big which many pri­vate rooms so an idea loca­tion for our lunch. We booked a table and planned the menu so was look­ing for­ward to com­ing back here on Thursday.

Motorway Snow Storm

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Nov10_TaxiHome

Flew back late from Shang­hai and arrived in Bei­jing to a snow­storm. Shang­hai had been very hot but Bei­jing was –3C when I landed. The weather was bad and the taxi ride back to my home was pretty scary. The snow was so bad you couldn’t see much out the win­dow and at times we were hardy mov­ing at all. As in many taxis there were no seat belts in the back so I just kept my fin­gers crossed we wouldn’t crash or skid. On the way back I saw a taxi that had spun out of con­trol and was now fac­ing the wrong way on the motor­way. Luck­ily no one seemed to be harmed as it could of eas­ily turned into a multi car pile up. I was glad to get home but I knew the taxi dri­ver would be head­ing back again as the air­port seemed unusu­ally busy prob­a­bly due to the weather.

Icing on The Plane

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Nov9_DelayFlight

I had to get up at 5am this morn­ing as I was on the early flight to Shang­hai. I got to the air­port with plenty of time so went to Burger King (BK) for break­fast. For some rea­son the air­port is the only place I know in Bei­jing that has a Burger King, so I often try to go when I am trav­el­ling. Burger King is not as well known as McDon­alds in China, but I think the food is health­ier. The BK strat­egy appears to be to locate in air­ports in China, as I know there is also one in Shang­hai. Any­way by the time I boarded the plane the weather had dete­ri­o­rated at we were stuck on the run­way for two hours. The pilot told us there was icing on the wings and so we couldn’t fly. After a while these funny look­ing cherry picker cranes arrived and started spray­ing what looked like hot jets of steam at the planes. I won­dered if we would every get to leave and then fell asleep on the plane. The next thing I remem­ber we were land­ing in Shang­hai. A lit­tle late, but still in time to make the pre­sen­ta­tion in the afternoon.

Eight Hand Mahjong

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Nov8_MajongHands

Canthy’s friends were hav­ing a Mahjong evening so I said I would come along and stop by for a drink. I use to know how to play the game but that was many years ago and I was never any good. If you play with Chi­nese peo­ple they like the game to be fast and furi­ous and I was just too slow hav­ing to study every tile. Mahjong is like a national sport and is played every­where you go in China. It has a his­tory that dates back thou­sands of years and some believe it was invented by the great teacher Con­fu­cious. Can­thy loves the game and use to play it in alot in her shady past. I think she use to be very good and won alot of money but then had a bad expe­ri­ence. I never really ask too much but  think I know what hap­pened. Any­way she hasn’t played for a long time so she jumps at the chance to play it now. One of the most recog­nis­able sounds of the games is the clackety-clack sound of the tiles being shuf­fled. When I first moved to Hong Kong in 1996 I lived in a local build­ing in Wan­chai. At evenings and espe­cially at week­ends the sounds of clackety-clack could be heard com­ing from my neigh­bours. The noise often went on until the small hours of the morn­ing but it took me a while to know what the sound was. After a drink I left Can­thy to play and hope­fully win as gam­bling is a big part of the game. She even­tu­ally came home around 3am and had made a few hun­dred kuai in pocket money. She was pleased with her win, as it was just a fun game with friends. But noth­ing like her big win­ning days and nights in the past.

Ikea’s Swedish Brunch

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Nov7_IkeaFood

It’s been a long time since we have been to IKEA, but we needed to go and pick up some new cab­i­nets. Can­thy dreads going there as we also seem to get into a silly argu­ment over noth­ing. How­ever this time I promised I wouldn’t argue in the shop as Can­thy hates mak­ing a scene in pub­lic. As we got up late we decided to head to the restau­rant first for brunch. Unfor­tu­nately they had a new menu and the food qual­ity had got a lot worse since we were last there. So we strug­gled to find some­thing that looked good but we knew it would be hours before we would eat again. After brunch we headed off into the store, which was so packed you almost couldn’t see the prod­uct through the sea of peo­ple. Most cus­tomers were just hang­ing out, rest­ing and sleep­ing on the room sets, as reported in a very funny story a few months back by the La Times. Any­way we decided to try and make this the short­est trip pos­si­ble and then get the hell out of there. It only took us two and-a-half hours and one and-a –half argu­ments, so we did pretty well ;-) But next time Can­thy has told me I have to go on my own, as she will def­i­nitely not ever go there again.

My Face on CNN

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Nov6_CNNTV

I got back late from work so there was no Thank God Its Fri­day feel­ing for me. Just another late night in the office and then cycled home in the freez­ing cold again. Got home took a shower, while Can­thy pre­pared din­ner and I turned on the TV to watch the news. Sud­denly my face appeared on screen and I called on to Can­thy, who came run­ning from the kitchen. It was only a brief clip and a sound­bite, but it made Can­thy start scream­ing “wow your on TV!” I have been inter­viewed the week before by Emily Chang at CNN, who was doing a story called Life in the Fast Lane. It was about China’s super rich kids, that belong to the Super Car Club and race exotic cars for plea­sure. You can see the whole CNN video on my other blog or click the link. The inter­view only took about 20 min­utes as Jo Ling Kent, the CNN pro­ducer is only look­ing for a few insight­ful com­ments to add to her story. As an expert in brand­ing and China, I have done a cou­ple of these before and enjoy the expe­ri­ence. Though it can some­times be a lit­tle ner­vous being infront of a cam­era. After­wards, Can­thy told me that my face looked fat but I explained that most peo­ple gained 10lbs on TV due to the cam­era. She laughed at my sug­ges­tion and maybe she is right. So maybe it is time to start my gym pro­gramme before I get another call from CNN.

Nike’s Little Yoga Doll

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Nov5_NikeYogaDoll

I often pop into Nike at Wang­fu­jing, not because I am so sporty but just to look around at all the new cool stuff. Infact I haven’t been to a gym in at least fours months despite join­ing a very expen­sive gym at my apart­ment com­plex.  I have joined for two years so I still have time to use it as Can­thy keeps reminded me of how much money I am los­ing every month. Any­way I keep hop­ing that I will be inspired to go by buy­ing some new train­ers that I know I don’t really need. The other rea­son I go there is to be inspired by the dis­plays as they have some of the best win­dow graph­ics of any retailer. The cur­rent design pro­motes its women and dynamic yoga which is a big cam­paign at stores and online. But what caught my eye was this cute lit­tle big­headed doll doing a yoga pose. It reminded me of Melissa, my old Hong Kong flat­mate who was a pro­fes­sional yoga teacher. When she left she Hong Kong she gave me her Nike yoga mat, which I still haven’t even unrolled. The yoga doll fig­ure is used through­out the store in var­i­ous poses and appears on posters and other point of sale. The doll makes this pose look so sim­ple and effort­less, but I know from expe­ri­ence how hard it is. How­ever if I was a 3ft doll I might find it eas­ier to do than being a 6ft tall guy.

New Road Sign Straight Ahead

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Nov4_NewRoadSign

I cycled to work this morn­ing along Chang An Avenue, the main cen­tral street in Bei­jing. This is where the 60th Anniver­sary mil­i­tary parade was held, but obvi­ously it looks very dif­fer­ent on a nor­mal day. No tanks today, but just two green suited mil­i­tary per­sonal rid­ing their bikes. What I did notice dif­fer­ent was a new road sign that had recently appeared. It had a pic­ture of the entrance to the For­bid­den City and the words Tianan­men 2km. Not sure when it appeared or why. Tianan­men Square is not to dif­fi­cult to find, as you just have to drive straight and you can hardly miss it. How­ever it’s prob­a­bly more use­ful for dri­vers stuck in the ever-worsening traf­fic jams. At least they can tell how far they have to go and how long they need to wait before they get pass the infa­mous Tianan­men traf­fic blackspot.

Numb Mouth Hotpot

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Nov3_SpicyHotpot

Went for lunch today with Can­thy and Ozark but I got there late. By the time I got there they had already ordered but the food looked pretty good. It was a stir-fry hot pot restau­rant where the food is wok fried as opposed to being boiled. Hot pot is very pop­u­lar but it was the first time I had tried this style of cook­ing. As this was Canthy’s favourite, she and Ozark had almost fin­ished by the time I got there. The con­cept is sim­ple; you just order dif­fer­ent ingre­di­ents, mainly veg­eta­bles but you can also add meat, chicken and shrimps, basi­cally any­thing you can think of. It looked deli­cious and I didn’t find it hot at all until about 10 min­utes later when my mouth went numb with the spice. I later found out that is a pop­u­lar and famous chain of hot pot restau­rants called Ma La Xiang Gou. The name trans­lates into ‘Numb Spicy Tasty Pot’, which is very apt. As the food was tasty and my lips and mouth was numb for the rest of the day.

Beijing’s Artificial Snow

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Nov2_ArtificialSnow

Cycling to work this morn­ing it felt like the cold­est day of the year. As usual I was cycling very fast and gasp­ing in the icy cold air, which was burn­ing inside my chest. I thought my lungs were going to explode so I slowed down so I wasn’t breath­ing so hard. There was still a lot of snow around from yes­ter­day but the roads were clear so I stopped to take this photo. What I didn’t realise until this morn­ing was that the snow was arti­fi­cially induced. The Chi­nese author­i­ties had fired sil­ver iodine into the sky (as they often do) to induce the rain. How­ever they had given no warn­ing so it caught the gen­eral pub­lic off guard. The air­ports had closed, flights were delayed and the unusu­ally heavy snow brought chaos to the traf­fic. There was an out­cry in the news and Inter­net as no one had been pre­pared for such a down­fall. It was the ear­li­est snow­fall in 22 years and one of the heav­i­est in recent years. I must admit I too was sur­prised at how heavy the snow was but now I know the rea­son why. I think the author­i­ties will think twice before they do that again.

Snowball Fight

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Nov1_SnowballFight

Woke up this morn­ing to find it snow­ing! It had been quite heavy so the whole city was cov­ered in a white blan­ket of snow. I then woke up Can­thy who was even more excited than I was. As we were going out for brunch later we decided to go out early as it would be hard to get a taxi in this weather. The streets were deserted and we had to wait an hour or so to get a car. In the mean­time we played snow­ball fight in the snow. Well, actu­ally Can­thy played snow­balls and I played at get­ting hit and ended up look­ing like a snow­man cov­ered in snow. Luck­ily I was well pro­tected wear­ing my fleecy parka coat so I didn’t get wet or cold. There were about a dozen kids play­ing snow­balls but only one kidadult, who was hav­ing more fun than the real kids.