The Blizzard

December 26-27^th: A blizzard hits New York City. By the end of the night, many areas have collected more than a foot and a half or more. In fact, the night before I couldn’t sleep because a plow truck was stuck plowing through the same block over many hours. On Monday, we heard all sources of public transportation have been completely shut down. The city plow trucks couldn’t keep up with the amount of snow fall the night before. Roads were covered in snow and parking vehicles were buried. The city literally stopped running. No one went to work and no one could go anywhere. I spent the day playing computer games all day.

December 28^th: I woke up 7 AM in the morning that day to get ready to go to a funeral in Chinatown. I raged in the morning because it was still awful outside. Most of the trains were experiencing delays and most of the Brooklyn trains were suspended (B, Q, D, N). Luckily for us, the bloody F train was still running! Since my dad said we would have to go to the funeral no matter what, we journeyed across Brooklyn to take the F train to Chinatown.

As we ventured to the closest F train, the path was quite challenging. Brooklyn looked like the result of an apocalypse. As I traveled the streets, it looked like I was inside the world of a disaster movie. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the streets and pedestrians traveled not on the sidewalk but on paths made by cars. As we made our way through the streets, we saw many people were struggling trying to get their cars out of the roads. Good Samaritans would stop and push the cars as they tried to force their way through the snow. It was a disaster. Avenue X was the worst. I don’t think the plows got to these small streets so therefore people simply abandoned their cars. Cars that entered couldn’t get out of this trap so the drivers just left their cars hanging around. It took us an hour to travel from Sheepshead Bay to Avenue X on McDonald Ave. After we got there, it took another 20 stops to get to East Broadway. Chinatown looked terrible. Whereas the snow in Brooklyn looked fluffy and clean, the snow in Chinatown looked like tar and oil spill material.

This was my second funeral event in my life. As far as funerals go, Chinese funerals are very superstitious. The older generation have all these rituals and customs that they follow. I must have bowed at least 20 times that day. There’s usually a ritual in which the family goes back to where they live to visit the home one more time before they head to the cemetery. Of course, once we attempted to get out of Chinatown we realized it was going to be impossible to get into Brooklyn. It took like half an hour to get out of Chinatown because the traffic was so bad. It took us all day to travel by car back and forth to all these places. After dinner, it took another freaking two hours to finally get home. By that time, the snow was starting to melt. However, many unfortunate cars and drivers were still stuck on the roads. I pity them because once they entered the one way, there was no getting out. MTA buses were stuck and personal cars couldn’t pass through. It was quite a day.