Friday, February 8, 2008

Snow is fun for some - a real pain for travelers

We had about a week of snow in Shanghai and for the most part it has been a lot of fun, especially at work. But for those traveling for the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival is another name for it) the snow has caused all sorts of problems. Most people in China go home for Spring Festival and the most widely used method of transportation is by train. But with all of snow the government here has been overwhelmed and under prepared for such weather. Sure they have plenty of people to handle the work but not enough resources like snow plows, salt, vehicles that can drive in snow, etc. A lot of people are trying to find other ways to get home like taking the bus but most of the major roads between cities are at a crawl because of the congestion. Approximately 170 million people go home for Spring Festival. The U.S. has about 270 million people in it. So imagine more than half the U.S. population trying to travel a week before Christmas.



Around the apartment complex


On top of the roof at work. Our Director challenged the teams to make the best snowman during lunch hour.



Here is our snowman. Modeled after the Olympic bear.


The winner! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drinking a cold one.

Bowling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Death to Intel.

1 comment:

Sandy said...

I would have voted for the bowling one.

Looks like a lot of fun.