Weather: White and Wet

Even though I've seen plenty of ice and snow on the ground these last few days, it's all been frozen there since before I arrived, it being sub-zero temperatures except maybe for an hour or two every day. That changed today when I stepped out this evening into white fluffiness that poured across the street lamps in glorious drifts.

It's almost Chinese New Year and fireworks and firecrackers have been going off intermittently. Tonight, the concussive bangs were muffled into distant *PHHHT*s and everything seemed clean and new.

On my corner there is a little restaurant called 巴比Q (a phonic transliteration of barbecue). The owner tended to his coals and checked the food, and it could have been summertime in someone's garden... Except the poor man kept stamping his feet against the cold while the snow fell around him lit up by a single bare bulb. I ducked under the giant Pepsi parasol to check his wares, and went in for some meat-on-a-stick.