By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS — Seydou Fall was up before 7 a.m. shoveling and salting the snow on a quiet Morningside Heights street on Friday.
He was daydreaming of his recent vacation to Africa, where he enjoyed hot, steamy weather.
"It's crazy. Honestly, it's crazy," he told DNAinfo. "It's a big problem to me because I was in Africa for a month. I just came back. Everyday it was [in the] 70s there.
Fall shook his head as he got ready to continue shoveling the sidewalk that was only half cleared.
"We don't know snow," he said. "You see that I'm dying now."
Many residents were out early in Morningside Heights on Friday, snow plowing and salting sidewalks, and shoveling out their cars after a major storm dumped more than a foot of snow on the city
And while Fall was already at work for more than an hour Friday morning, Al Hosein was out for a morning stroll with a newspaper in hand.
Hosein, a plumber, was keeping his fingers crossed that he didn't have to go to work.
"A lot of roofs will be leaking and people will be calling and saying there's a plumbing problem," Hosein said.
"I'll wait for [work] to call. If they don't call, I'm not going," he laughed.
Most of the borough's colleges and universities cancelled classes on Friday because of the storm.
Nearby, Columbia University sent an early morning text message and e-mail telling all students to stay home.
But Masters student Yam Ki Chan had to head out in the snow anyway.
"It's internship day," he told DNAinfo as he strolled toward the nearest subway stop at 125 Street.
"I might be a little bit late [because of the weather], but once I get in, it'll be OK in the comfort of the office," he said.
Chan made it to work in midtown in just over 30 minutes.
"No major delays. The trains were packed and the train floors were wet," he said, but the sidewalk in front of his midtown office was "squeaky clean."
"I'm from Chicago and I went to undergrad in Minnestoa," Chan told DNAinfo. "So this is nothing."
