Record snowfall in Seoul

There was a record, once-in-a-lifetime, or at least since 1937, snowfall on Monday. It started in the morning, and lasted until mid-afternoon. Traffic was snarled. What usually takes me 35 minutes took about 90 minutes, with one hour of that stuck between the last two bus stops on my route. For others, it took them many hours. At the end of the day, I had the bus to myself.










The snow on the roof of the building next door to our apartment still hasn't melted.  You can see the tracks left by the security guard, and see the places where he pees against the wall, though.

The first leaf of fall...

The 5 seasons of Seoul

I've now been here for almost a year, and over that year, I've discovered that Seoul has five distinct seasons.

1) Summer - August through very early September, lovely warm weather, not too humid
2) Fall - September through mid-November, cool crisp weather, leaves start falling, perfect walking or hiking weather
3) Winter - mid-November until some time in March or April, cold
4) Spring - April through June, warms up, snow melts, trees begin turning green again
5) Rainy Season - end of June through end of July (I hope), gray, humid, muggy with rain

I am really looking forward to the end of the rainy season.

Spring, glorious spring!

Spring is finally here! It went from needing a jacket and a sweater weather last weekend to short-sleeve weather, practically overnight. The cherry blossoms are out. Everything is blooming. My allergies are kicking in. And the management at the apartment building says that the time for air conditioning won't be until sometime in the next two weeks. I've even put away my chair heating pad!

So how cold is it?

Yesterday, it was about -5(C), maybe even -10(C) (in the low 20s (F)). This means, for those of you who live in the warmer climes (where I hope to live one day soon):

• That at noon, I could see my breath.
• That my glass of ice for my drink last night didn't really melt at all.
• That now I know why the store on the corner is selling fur lined gloves.
• That now I know why Russians wear those funny looking fur hats.
• That now I plan on stocking up on warm woolly scarves, some thick gloves, and some serious long underwear.

It also means that if I go in to work over the weekend, that I have to be prepared to work in Arctic conditions since the heating or air conditioning is always off over weekends. I end up sitting on my heated chair pad, wearing a thick wool coat, scarf and hat. I have to take the gloves off and live with frozen fingers because I've discovered that I can't really type while wearing gloves. Although maybe I'll get some cheap ones and just cut the tips of the fingers off.

Gingko leaves

The ginkgo trees all lost their leaves in one single night. The temperature dropped precipitously and the weather turned bitter cold over night last Tuesday. The evening before it was windy, and the next morning as I headed to the bus stop, the sidewalks were carpeted with the gingko leaves. By the time I headed home in the evening, the street sweepers had swept all the leaves up.

Hurricane Watch, Amazon Kindle, Olympics, and Other Observations

So, we're stuck in a hotel. There's a tropical storm hovering over us. We've been watching the Olympics. I've been reading.

Fortunately the electricity is still on, but since I've just written that, it will undoubtedly go out at any moment. That's ok, we have our water and our canned, non-perishable food to get us through a day or two. We've been in a hotel now for almost a week, with another week or more to go depending on how things work out. Things to do -- find laundry services that will not exhaust my daily laundry per diem. Fortunately we're in a place with a microwave and refrigerator so we've been able to go to the store and get a few things so we don't have to eat restaurant food all the time.

Yes, I know, some folks eat out at restaurants all the time, but I find that as I get older, restaurant food doesn't sit so well with me. Some places I get a stomach ache, and some I just end up with that over-full greasy feeling. So having the option of going to the store is really, really nice. It isn't home cooking, but it's better than fast food or over-priced entrees on a daily basis.

We've been watching the Olympics. Go Trinis!! Anyway, we're limited to the channels that the hotel has, which is pretty much the basic network and cable channels. I enjoy watching the Olympics. I admire the athletes so much -- the time, energy, and effort they put into their sport of choice to get to this level is quite impressive. That being said, why is it that every time a US athlete fails to get the gold, the interviewer puts them on the spot and punches them in the stomach figuratively? Ok, you've spent months, years of your life working so hard to get to this point, and something happens and you don't make the final, and to get back to the locker room, you have to pass the NBC interviewer, who is going to ask you some of the most insensitive questions I've ever heard. And in addition to watching these incredibly uncomfortable and insenstive interviews, why is it that the network has to show you every single fall or stumble from every single camera angle available? I know the gymnast fell off the apparatus, I don't need to see it from every single angle, the left, the right, from above, from below, from 45 degrees to the side. She fell. We saw it the first time. We don't need a gazillion replays. Please, move on.

When we're not watching the Olympics and I'm not working, I've been reading. I splurged on an Amazon Kindle and am thoroughly enjoying it. I've had a few issues where it hasn't been that responsive and I've had to re-set it. But I have a 2 GB SD Card in there, and room for many, many books. It's actually almost too easy to flip between books because now I don't have to get up and physically go to one of the piles of books I used to have sitting around the room. Now, I just press the home button, and select one of the many other books available to me.

Anyway, it's now raining, the wind is still blowing, and we're stuck here for a while longer.

Tropical Storm Fay

High tide -- the water is all the way up to the dunes, at the foot of this wooden walkway.


Low tide, where there's still some beach. This is more normal at high tide.


Even the surfers with surfboards didn't stay in for long today.

Sweating season has arrived...

Here in northeast Florida, there are two seasons -- sweating and non-sweating. Sweating season has officially arrived. This means that I sweat in my sleep. I sweat when I walk outside. I sweat when I breathe. I'm completely soaked before I start my beach walk in the morning.

I also know that I'm getting pretty acclimated to the weather. While, yes, sweating season might have arrived, up until this week, it was too cold to go outside most of the time without a sweater in my opinion. And yet, there would be people on the beach in bikinis or shorts while I was shivering and wondering how fast can I get back to the car and turn the heater on.

Now, my goal is to hold off on turning on the air conditioner until May. So wish me luck...

CA v FL electricity woes

I just saw a news story that says that in Florida when it gets cold, people use more electricity, so they're working hard to make sure that there's enough electricity so everyone can use their heaters tomorrow.

In California, it's summer where the electricity demand soars.

Just another one of those differences I've noticed between California and my new home state. As long as there are no rolling blackouts tomorrow! It's very, very cold outside.

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

It is dumping water outside at the moment. It's raining so hard that were I to sit in my car at this particular time, it would seem as if I was going through a car wash -- even though the car isn't moving. It's actually been raining pretty steadily, which doesn't seem to happen very regularly when it rains here. Usually when it rains, there are pockets of car wash type dumping mixed in with lighter rain drops with large areas of very clear blue sky visible. Sometimes it will look nice and sunny outside the window, yet if I walk outside, it's pouring rain.

This is also different from the summer rains. Summer rains come in the afternoon/evening, and follow a standard pattern with some parts of Jacksonville getting dumped on and others bone dry with thunder and lightning. This is consistently dumping rain on both sides of the river and for a long period of time.

Anyway, I love listening to the rain, I'm just hoping that by the time I have to go to work tomorrow, that it will have stopped.