The Magic of Snow

Being born in a tropical country like Singapore, we have no chance of experiencing snow unless we venture overseas. Snow is so romanticized in our culture to be so wonderful and an extremely magical event. If you ask anyone in the streets of Singapore, they would have told you that they would love to go to a snowy place and play with it, especially when it is Christmas season. I had just that opportunity that many would have die for.

I was in Tianjin for about 11 days last December for a job service aboard a FSPO off the Bo Hai. I spent a week or so aboard the vessel. It was not my first time aboard and it felt a bit like home to me. (To me, everywhere feels like home except Singapore. No reason, just the way I'm wired)

Not too sure how to make of this but the weather grew from bad to worse the moment I got on the vessel and it started to snow. "Wow! Snow! Great! It is the first time I will have some contact with actual snowing!" I thought to myself.

However, that baptism in the cold is nothing sort of exciting, magical or as we imagined it to be. Well, I had to perform some work under harsh snowing conditions, in the deep cold with icicles on my brows. To add insult to injury, every drop of snow added to my misery while I'm out there. I thought that was miserable being but that was not the end.

The few days of snow we had was actually the greatest snowstorm Tianjin ever had in 50 years! I ended up staying more days on board the vessel than I should and had to wait for the weather to clear up before there is any planned flight to take me out of there. (I will not consider the sea option because the last time I took the boat, the ride lasted a good 14 hours amidst the stormy seas.)

When I finally got back onshore, I had expected a great white landscape worthy of a picturesque painting. To my dismal, I was greeted with an ugly scene of dirty frozen grounds and dirt water flow. "Is this the magic of snow?" I thought again.

It may be possible that I'm the only one whose first experience with snow is not a pleasant one but I'm sure, that my lesson out of this is not whether snowing is magical or not.

I'm glad that in the midst of my "misery", I had that wonderful unforgettable experience of waking up one morning to find it snowing outside. Boy, I felt like a kid! That, to me, was well worth braving the cold and enduring the dirty scene.