In the middle of the night

I got off work rather late yesterday, about 7.30pm due to a meeting in the office. These after-offfice-hour meetings happen from time to time, though mercifully, it isn't that often. One of the reasons might be that the air-condition goes off exactly at 6pm, so staying in the office would be very bad for health, especially when you start to inhale each other's carbon dioxide. Another reason, of course, is that the participants, because of their work commitments, cannot meet until after 5pm.

In any case, I took a taxi home. I usually take the bus/MRT. I was hungry so getting home faster at extra cost was justified, I thought. It turned out that the trip wasn't much faster as traffic was still quite heavy at that hour. What were people doing on the roads at that hour? Don't they knock off at 6pm? I haven't come across a company where office working hours stretch right up to 7pm, except those companies that works shifts - at least not officially. But I am ignorant. There are still many office workers heading home at that hour. In fact, last evening, LTA's EMAS warned that there was massive traffic jam after Thomson Road right up to Eunos. Either an accident had taken place, or some vehicle breakdown, or some road works, or more likely, office workers were fighting their way home in their expensive vehicles.

I recalled a friend from Mauritius tell me that in his country, shops close at 6pm and there was hardly any vehicular activity after that hour. That's difficult to imagine in Singapore on ANY day of the week. I venture to guess that after 8pm, the traffic would be even heavier. As it is, I had to pay a surcharge of $2 for taking a taxi between 5 and 8pm

Because of the heavy traffic, I got home not much earlier that if I had taken the Bus/MRT. There truly is no downtime for traffic in Singapore. Let the visitor beware.

P.S. Interestingly, this was the first time that I had seen a taxi using a GPS device. The vicinity of the roads that we were approaching was shown up on the device. But the graphics were terrible. How I wished the images were life-like. But I suppose that, as far as technology goes, it is only a matter of time.