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Having been most fascinated by the heavy snow cover in Lansing, we
four 'sua-kus' (local slang for mountain tortoises) from the tropics
yearned most to build a huge snowman.
So one cold night, I think it's the eve of Chinese New Year, we decided
to brave the freezing temperature outside to build a grand monument
that we can gazed upon with pride the next morning...
We christened the handsome creature
after one of our beloved lecturer back
in NTU. Standing proudly in the snow,
everyone meet ....... Arthur.
Of course, being dumb Asians who
haven't seen snow before, much less
build a snowman, we set about what we believe to be the 'right' way to build a
snowman.
First we attempted to shovel the snow from the surrounding areas to the
middle. Then we painstakingly pile the snow up to form the heavy base. It
took careful sculpting from two of us while the other two half-kicked
half-plowed more snow for piling.
After an hour of work, the huge base was finally taking shape and we had to
start work on the 'upper body' - more shoveling (with a pathethic pizza box
retrieved from the garbage bins, yes we were that desperate) and more
painstaking sculpting.
After what seemed to be endless hours of
sticking our poor fingers in the wet snow,
Arthur was finally formed. With a few
branches of leaves, he was given his
trademark curly hair.
Of course, we were to find out the next day from our more experienced
American friends that our hours of hard work could have actually been
avoided.
Turned out that you were supposed to form a small hard snowball and
then roll it about in the snow for it to increase in size. That way, you'll get
a round and packed based without the backaches and muscle pains like
we suffered the next day...
Gheez, now why didn't anyone say that earlier???
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Feb
2000