Snow Fall

For the past 2 days we had about 5 to 9 inches of snow. So we stayed home and I worked remotely. I had no trouble connecting to the network but had some initial problems logging in. I tried to focus on working but had problems keeping my attention. I did attend some phone meetings, wrote emails, created a change ticket and called the help desk to follow-up an existing issue. Admittedly it was work at the minimum but I had difficulty focusing and working at the same time. The living room was cold although I wore layers of clothes to keep me warm. I went out and swept the cars of snow and started the engine to warm the car in anticipation of going to work the next day. I could not find the snow scrapper so I swept the snow away from the car with my gloved hands. It no longer snowed so it was okay to start clearing the snowfall.

The next day, I drove to office at about 9:30 am and some roads still had ice on the surface. So I traveled at about 5 to 15 miles per hour and all the cars kept a slow pace and the tires sometimes slipped and I could feel the car sway sideways because the tires could not grip the road. I was a bit nervous being the first time for me to drive under such conditions. But it was no longer snowing and the sun was up and I could feel the heat through the windshield. But it was not warm enough to melt all the ice so it was a convoy of extremely slow moving vehicles as we made our way cautiously towards our destinations. I realized later that it was foolish of me to go to work if I felt that I was not confident enough to drive. But I made it in the end and there were a lot of cars in the parking lot of people who made the same perilous journey.

It been a long time since the local county experienced such snowy conditions. A friend of mine remarked that these conditions existed in Northern places like Ohio but not in the South. But it was a good snow fall and the surrounding landscapes were beautiful in the snow. Yesterday after clearing the cars of snow I walked out of the subdivision, into the main road to see how it was going. There were a few cars on the road and some families where out in their thick clothes with their sleds. One family passed by me who were heading to the nearby park where they said there were good places to sled in the football field. Everywhere was brilliantly white like a blanket of cotton descended from the skies. I like winter landscapes and I hope to learn to ski someday if I have the chance.

This morning, a recruiting agent from Singapore called. She was asking questions about my friend and we spoke for an hour before our line was cut. My phone had exhausted its top-up value although I think I gave all that I could to her. I think it was a good interview. The lull in my normal activities due to the snow storm made me make You Tube videos with our vacation photos. I changed a few soundtracks of old videos and relived again the memories those images evoked. It seemed like a long time ago like it was another lifetime. The call from Singapore seemed to validate those wonderful memories. I spent the time at home looking at videos and enjoying my network television – watching Bloomberg’s Game Changers program with features on Steve Jobs, Google and Facebook. It was a good time to keep abreast of the industry to learn and try to forecast the future.

Yesterday, I worked beside the window where I could see the snowy landscape. It evoked a lonely and hollow beauty where together with the cold increased one’s feeling of loneliness. My mother is ill and in need of an operation and the weather contributed to a kind of helpless melancholy feeling that one is at the mercy of nature. I had trouble trying to speak to my family on the phone - at a different time zone and continent - a world away. I spoke to several people and I finally got to my mother lying in her hospital bed and she asked me if I was fine. She could not hear very well and she told me about herself in that way of hers and I could not do anything but listen to her voice and follow the flow of her conversation. I felt helpless without any power to do anything; just praying to God that nature should not have its way this time.