INGCO International, Inc. is
located in the heart of the United States, in the lovely state of Minnesota. A
lot of locals like to call it “MinneSNOWta” due to the massive amounts of snow
we typically have in the winter months. And this is precisely why I got to
thinking about this blog…
If I were a translator living in, say, Brazil, and I
happened to be walking through my neighborhood on any given March afternoon, like today, I would be shocked and dismayed to see what in the world goes
on here in Minnesota. I call it "The Phenomenon of Ice Chipping". Yes, ice
chipping. Not the kind of ice chipping that fancy bartenders do when preparing
custom concocted cocktails. Not the kind of ice chipping that caterers prepare
for fancy weddings to create punch fountains. No folks, the kind of ice
chipping I’m referring to is the kind where we crazy Minnesotans head outside
once the weather hits about 30°F to start chipping
away at ice; ice that accumulates after a long hard winter and forms small but
mighty ice skating rinks on sidewalks, streets, boulevards, paths, parking
lots, alleys –heck, just about anywhere where people are expected to walk
without killing themselves by slipping and falling on the, you guessed it! Ice.
Well we love to talk about ice chipping here in Minnesota.
And we discuss ice-chipping techniques as if our life depended on it. And we
discuss ice-chipping paraphernalia, and compare and contrast the variety of chippers,
which what one could potentially confuse as a weapon. And we discuss remedies
that hypothetically can avoid the entire presence of the ice formation in the
first place. Alas, none of those remedies work so we are humbled to fall back
on the tried and true art of ice chipping. And we chip away until our backs and
shoulders are so sore we cannot chip anymore. But we chip so that we do not
fall and break a hip, and we chip because we can, and we chip because we must.
This blog is dedicated to all of our amazing vendors that
live in warm and exotic destinations across the globe that will never have the
need to chip ice, ever.
