Recently, I spent a weekday afternoon running errands around Singapore. Before the journey, I was expecting a leisurely afternoon drive to and fro my various destinations around the Western & Central parts of our island. After all, it was off peak hours so how bad could it get? Well, Murphy's Law decided to interfere and that leisurely afternoon I envisioned never materialised.

The first sign that things were not going to be quite so fuss-free was the rain. It started out as a constant drizzle and varied in magnitude throughout the afternoon; never ceasing for even the briefest moment.

Then there were 2 accidents, one along the Expressway and the other near the first exit I had to utilize. Traffic was slow moving and it took a whole 15 minutes to clear the exit. Effectively, the 2 traffic accidents doubled my travel time to my first stop.

After running the first errand, I headed out towards my second stop. This time, I carefully planned a different route to avoid the congestion caused by the accidents and optimistically thought that I could still end the day on time. But a total of 3 road works on the way to my second destination meant additional delays and slow moving traffic.

Thanks to all the delays. By the time I left my second destination for the third, it was already 5pm and traffic was gradually building up. And finally, when I chose to depart my third destination for home; horrors of horrors, there were more road works! This time, the works were "strategically" placed near the car park exit causing a tail back and congestion all the way into the depths of the underground car park. And I continued crawling home in peak hour traffic.

So, as luck would have it, an afternoon of leisure morphed into a tiring and stressful day out stuck on the roads. As our weather gets worse over the coming months, I guess it is a timely reminder to drive safely and avoid being a victim of all the road hazards around.