A Snarl Up

Well, its official friends, I seemed to have moved into my car. 

I have been absent from blogging for the past few days due to this reason. I have been at the steering wheel and not at the keyboard.

Singapore Parking Lot!

Where to start on the traffic in Singapore….. aaaaggghhh!

Cars are hugely expensive in Singapore.  It’s considered a luxury beyond many things and as a result public transport is indeed fantastic, you really can't fault it.  Buying a car is complicated. 

(CEO, certificate of entitlement is a program designed to limit car ownership, and hence, the number of vehicles on the country's roads.  Residents of Singapore  bid for the right to buy a car, with the number of certificates deliberately restricted.
The COE allows holders to own a car for a period of 10 years, after which they must either scrap or export their car with, or bid for another COE. On top of this cars are at a premium price just to make matters 10 x worse).

Okay, that’s the boring facts over with – the bottom line is, the number of COE’s issued has  risen and the roads are more like parking lots these days. And the island is too small for soooo many cars.

Yesterday, to cap it all off it rained.  Now I don’t mean a shower or a downpour, I mean serious tropical rain so heavy that it looked like a curtain falling.  So, throw this in with the already bumper to bumper traffic and…. Yeah, you get the picture!

And  it gets better…. of course yesterday it was ECA pick up.  I waited for over 90 minutes for Little M to catch the shuttle bus from the middle school campus to the elementary.   By the time she arrived, (all lovely and muddy and dirty from soccer), I had to decide there and then, did I have time to take her home, pick up Mr H and drive straight back to the middle school for parent teacher conference?  With the way things were, plan “A” wasn’t going to work, so I had to put plan “B” in place – which was, take poor Little M back through the traffic to the exact same place she left 90 minutes ago before she got on the shuttle bus.

Nightmare.  More traffic. Stinky muddy tired child.  Very fraught me.  Lashings of rain.

We made the 7pm parent/teacher conference in time (just) .  Little M sat in the foyer doing her homework, no food, no snacks, tired and fed up.  Only to have to get back in the car and fight our way home again…… and walk through the door at 8.50pm.  I was exhausted, how Little M was still on her feet I don’t know, having been out of the house since 7.45 that morning.

Today was also school pick up  – still not funny – still crazy but at least it wasn’t raining.
(I did see a poor squashed monkey on the side of the road when I was at 5mph – poor thing). 

Today's "better" traffic..... agggghhhh

There is an upside.  No school tomorrow, no pickups, no traffic, (no expletives!).
And to finish on a nice positive note – parent/ teacher conference,  Icouldn’t have prouder J

Ok, moan over.... normal service will resume tomorrow.... :)
Happy, safe driving, wherever you are!

Until the next time

Beth x

(Thank you for taking time to read my post)