everyone's been telling me that i should've come in the summer, when the trees are leafed, where days are long, where the place and the people are generally more 'alive'. i've read so many travel guides that range between enthusiastically encouraging visitors to COME IN SUMMER to outrightly warning: DON'T COME IN WINTER. and who's to blame them. it's the Great White North we're talking about, after all(:
or they tell me that Fall's the best time to travel, especially if you're the kind who looks for great scenery. it's the season where leaves are colourful and pretty, where the weather's just right and not too cold or warm, where you get to watch leaves fall and the city just beginning to fall into its deep winter slumber.
or Spring. when places awake from months of deadness, and flowers bloom and trees start growing again, and everything tells you that it's time to come out of your snuggly hole and embrace the world again.
every season but winter.
but i came here for the winter, and for the cold. i guess 20 years on a tropical island has taught me to shun heat and to crave cold. and city life has fostered in me a desire for silence, stillness, for inactivity. i expected to see streets with lifeless (or leafless) trees, a generally white landscape, and a calm kind of quiet surrounding the city/town - and that's pretty much what i got, save the tiny disappointment that i have which is the tremendous lack of snow. but that's for another time. i came here precisely to see the winter landscape, to experience living in a different season altogether, way across the Atlantic and way above in the northern hemisphere. i came wanting to know and understand just how different life could be simply by virtue of the temperature outside, and how that affects the everyday patterns and behaviour of individuals. students, working adults, kids likewise.
it was quite a sight, seeing every soul on the street covered literally from head to toe in multiple layers of wool, acrylic, denim, stockings, boots, scarves, hats, beanies..and feeling for oneself the need for all these clothing, marvelling at how we've made it possible for ourselves to adapt to the various challenges nature throws at us. wondering about how, never in my lifetime, would i expect anyone to be able to dress the same way in my own country.
and that feeling of watching snow fall - straight onto my jacket and my gloves - for the very first time in my life -
that was incredible.
of feeling the harsh, cold air whizz into your face the moment you open a door from the inside and prepare for a possibly challenging day out..another amazement altogether.
a friend from the US told me about how he liked having seasons because with them you could actually feel a passing of time. i never actually thought of it that way, but realised how true it was. i recall describing singapore to many people (especially those who've asked me about how i was coping with the cold and whether i'd ever experienced anything like it before) as a country of "year-long summer" - where (real) snow and sub-twenty temperatures were virtually unheard of. and while i did certainly describe that with much disdain, i never thought of it in a temporal way. yet it's so true. how a year is made complete with the passing of four seasons, and how all around you nature is responding in its own way to the higher force that's commanding these changes. how we've to match our activities to the changes in our environment, and how this full cycle repeats itself every 364/5 days.
truly amazing.
as i mentioned above, there hasn't been much snow to speak of thus far, and the temperature has been waaay warmer than most previous winters, which has in truth come as a huge disappointment to me. i came prepared for -20 temperatures and inches thick of snow, prepared to take photos of lovely bright-white landscapes and snow-dotted trees... but there's been close to none of that so far (save about two days - in waterloo - and maybe another two in toronto).
i want snow :)
and i have actually experienced 'too cold' already - that would be about -10°C not counting windchill, and i have to admit it's not fun, as most people have warned. it's the kind of cold where you really can't stay outdoors for more than five minutes without having your fingers start hurting badly from the cold, and you having to jump around to keep your body warm. i guess i wouldn't wish for that kind of weather on days that i'm gonna have to walk a lot - like say, take walking tours around a city/small town, but then again, i would want it for things like snowball fights and ice-angels and snowmen :) and well, just for the experience of it as usual.
they say last year's winter was painfully long, lasting from late november (!!!!!) to end-march/early-april. and the coldest they got was around -30°C with windchill. guess i don't wish for that kind of temperatures daily, but i certainly hoped for colder weather here, and am still hoping!
some people ask me why in the world i chose to come to a small unknown town called waterloo (i mean geez, it sounds like a toilet, for starters only) when there were other options like UBC in Beautifulritish Columbia, or calgary where the lovely Rockies tower all around, or toronto, which is such a lively city (yes even in winter - at least relatively speaking), or the US!
i have individual reasons for not choosing each of those options, amongst others, and i invite you to come speak to me personally if you'd like to find out more. suffice to say i just don't wanna offend anyone(: but in short, i guess i'd say that i chose waterloo because:
1. precisely because it's a small town. and small town means away from the city, smaller crowds, more peace and quiet, less cosmopolitan, less hectic, more locals, more countryside-like. and because the idea of a university in a small town is just kinda novel, cause you can't possibly get something like that in a country the size of singapore.
2. it's nicely situated in the east side of canada where there's a wealth of places to visit, from toronto to montreal/quebec to the eastern islands to churchill in the north (aurora borealis!! <3), and it's also in the south of canada so it's close to NYC, Boston, Pennsylvania...etc!
3. waterloo has a reputation for being friendly (to both canadians and outsiders) and i'd say that is one Huge factor i'd consider in choosing a place to study, live and travel in for four months!
either which way, i'm in Canada. the land of friendly whites and beautiful nature and unmistakable cold, where crime rates are relatively low, where space abounds, where so many people talk and dream about retiring in, and where just about everywhere the outdoors is calling out to you to take in its sheer, breathtaking beauty. no matter which season you're in. courses i'm taking are rather to extremely interesting, i'm learning some great new things and many things about canada i never knew before, the people i came here with are a great nice bunch, i'm starting to see some prospect of making good international/canadian friends, the cold is aweeeeesome have i mentioned that, i'm away from singapore and that is such a huge blessing, environmental friendliness here is a Big thing and there're so many relevant departments at my university, it's really a great, much-needed break from everything back in singapore...
i'd say i'm very happy where i am, and i wouldn't have chosen a different time or a place to come to :)
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