helplessness
This country is really strange. Now, they don't get nearly as much snow as, say, any city in Ontario, but they do get snow, and they've been getting snow for the thousand or so years people have been on the peninsula. In my year and a half here, I've seen about three big snowfalls. Yesterday's was the biggest by far. Perhaps even in my life. Back to the point. I am going to generalise this to Korea, but it may only be my city, or others like it, who knows.
The strange thing is: absolutely no one is prepared for even the smallest amount of snow.
Now, I don't mean snow that melts as it touches concrete and glass, but an amount enough to cover the ground and to warrant a bit of shovelling.
Here is a list of things that I observed which shall serve to illustrate my point:
- I did not observe any one of the millions of people who live in this city (the sixth largest in Korea) with a proper snow shovel. I've seen small pointy-ended shovels, like those you see in the movies for digging graves. I've seen people use dust pans. The MacGyver award goes to the building maintainence workers who have long wooden sticks nailed to a rectangular board. Granted if there are no shops that will sell snow shovels I can understand this. But with the number of apartment building complexes in this country that need walks and lots cleared, I can now imagine the green ones rolling in as I sell my $20 Canadian Tire shovels at 100%+ profit from the back of a rented truck across the country.
- No effort whatsoever is taken to melt the existing snow. No sand, no salt. Actually, I did see one guy hosing down a driveway. Smart move. I guess road salt is perhaps a luxury in Canada, but still. Though I should mention that they do salt the highways here.
- Drivers also do not know how to handle snow. Some friends mentioned that they had helped a number of people push their cars out of the snow, but then the driver would stop the car and get out to say thank you, thus getting their car stuck again. Snow/all-season tires are as rare as shovels, as are proper ice scrapers and squeegees/brushes. I've seen people use just their hands, or a piece of stiff paper or cardboard.
Unfortunately, yesterday evening it warmed up and a lot of the snow began melting and through the night the temperature then dropped, coating everything in ice. It should be interesting trying to get anywhere today.