Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Part I, Chapter IX, Notes From Underground (1864).
One chilly evening in early January, as snow began to fall unexpectedly on campus, I saw three older ladies transform into little girls.
Lugging heavy suitcases, they prepared to get off the subway (train) after having pored over Google Maps for 10 minutes, trying to determine their exact destination.
As they waited for the train to stop, my wife and I noticed the rain … except the droplets looked slightly “thick”.
Wait a minute, I thought, this was not rain, this was snow!
The ladies jumped off the train when it stopped and looked up at the skies, laughing, giggling, their arms outstretched and their palms open, catching the falling snow.
Their suitcases – neon green, silver and powder blue – stood on the pavement, “witnessing” this magical moment.
I nudged my wife and whispered that this could be their first snowfall.
All of them looked like they were in their 50s, but I guess they spent most, if not all of their lives, in hot and sunny South-East Asia (they sounded like they were from Indonesia but I could be wrong), where “winters” are just a little cooler than the “summers”.
And even then, the drop in temperature is thanks to the year-end monsoon season, where it gets a little too wet.
That day, on the street, I saw the ladies happily experiencing real winter as they danced in the snow, jumping up and down, giddy with excitement.
Looking at them from the train window I thought about how we were just like them, only a few days ago when we saw white fluffy “cotton” descend from the skies for the first time.
So, I knew exactly how they felt.
Later that evening, while walking back to the hostel near campus, the snowflakes descended on us again.
It reminded me of the wispy pieces of cotton wool that I’d use to decorate my toy Christmas tree as a child.
Only this time, the cotton melted into little water puddles upon making surface contact.
The snowfall was pretty heavy I thought but hardly anyone sought shelter.
The locals opened their umbrellas and carried on walking.
To them, this was a usual thing.
They were even prepared for it with their umbrellas.
Meanwhile, we “tourists” from the tropics were a different story.
Although we carry umbrellas too back home, it is more to shield ourselves from the sun or the rain.
Here, there was neither – at least not at this time of the year.
Instead, there was snow.
It made us want to stand under the open skies without protection and let the snow touch our skin and melt.
But this was exactly what we had travelled all the way to experience.
We flew halfway across the world for this and I don’t think any of us regretted it.
We stopped to fully embrace the experience, taking videos and photos, and singing songs in our heads as we raised our hands towards the dark skies to catch the snow.
Not all memories were picture-perfect, of course.
Like the time I accidentally locked myself out of my room in the middle of a snowfall.
Worse, I was half-naked.
I had to scale the emergency staircase outside the building, all the way up to the sixth floor just to sneak back in, shivering and silently praying I wouldn’t get caught.
A few people saw me anyway.
By the time I stumbled into my econometrics lecture, I was cold, mortified and officially crowned the class clown of the day.
It was ridiculous, stupid, sakai, maybe, but magical at the same time.
When we finally reached our hostel, we stood at the main entrance for a few minutes to dust off all the accumulated snow from our heavy jackets, gloves, hats and especially from our shoes.
Suddenly, the door flung open and a man rushed out, still in the process of covering his head with a woolen cap and wrapping a scarf around his neck.
Behind him in full speed emerged a young woman.
They scampered up to the streets and started jumping with joy as the last of that evening’s snow fell.
Within minutes it stopped, but by then they had managed to take some photos and videos.
For the second time that night, we watched someone experience possibly their first snowfall.
At some point, the guy turned towards us.
He had a big smile on his face, his eyes wide with amazement.
He caught us looking at the both of them, smiling.
He started to laugh, gesticulating towards the skies.
In my not-so-great English, I said something about how lucky they were to catch the snow just in time.
He paused for a moment as if trying to make sense of my words.
Then, almost breathlessly, he replied, saying they’d nearly missed it, running down the moment they spotted it from their room window.
From his accent, my wife could tell that he was probably Filipino.
Another tourist from the tropics, I thought, wandering here in this little “snow globe”.
That phrase — snow globe — was actually my wife’s.
During a video call, she had been laughing about her 74-year-old mother and her eldest brother seeing snow after arriving in the US for the first time last week.
The way she said it — so offhandedly — while recounting their reactions and reminiscing about our snowy moment years ago planted the seed for this column and gave me the perfect title to go with it.
Because really, it’s all the same, isn’t it? Just like us, just like those ladies over there, all experiencing the magic of snowfall for the first time.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
