I decided to kick my lazy butt today by cycling to work. Armed with my new hard core trek u-lock, I successful decieved myself into leaving my bike locked out in the open (now that you know, don't have any funny ideas...).

To sum it up, it's not really a good idea to cycle to work. The rush hour traffic certainly affects Tuas too, with cars, minibuses, trucks pulling stunts for no apparent reason just to move faster. Like I don't understand why the minbus had to run it's wheels over the gutter just to get past a lorry, or why the lorry had to 'rush' ahead and left turn past me when I was like 2 secs from the junction. Does it really bother people so much to slow down from 60kmh to 30kmh 10meters before negotiating a turn? *shrugs* It escapes me why (besides staying alive) I have to slow from 35kmh to 7kmh when I am GOING STRAIGHT. *shrugs*

The 2 round-a-bouts are pretty tricky to negotiate, requiring drivers on both sides to adopt a 'give-and-take' kind of attitude. eg, you have the right of way, but oh well, slow down and let-em-pass cos it's really hard to cross kind of attitude.

And yah, I noticed there are indeed people on bicycles in the tuas region, although nearly all were banglas, which reminds me of my trusty (ok, not exactly but...) $270 Urata that disappeared in little india. That was actually my first bike. Yeah, in the end I parked my bike in my not-so-secret location and double locked it. I must have been the first person ever in the history of the plant to saunter through the gantry gates in cycling shoes, jersey and bibs.

The journey back however is significantly bad. I think from 5:20pm onwards, the traffic at Tuas just gets really really bad. I actually started feeling kind of uncomfortable, as though I was cycling in some foreign land... In fact, the traffic was easily worse than any I encountered on my trip to Thailand. Hard to believe, but the ground condition too! I was many a time cycling on a mix of gravel + metal nuts etc. Hard to imagine, and there were like rows of large trucks lined up along with mini buses and cars, and everyone seemed to possess this very speedy and efficient frame of mind. I would say that the road culture suddenly approached that of Malaysia, Johor, where you just see cars going all the time in various directions, ill-guided by road markings and such.

To sum it up it takes some guts and recklessness to cycle back home later than 5:20pm.

Oh, yah, the journey to work wasn't exactly short either, taking me about 100mins. It didn't help that I was cycling at some nonsense speed, along the lines of 29kmh on flats and 17kmh on slight upslopes for unknown reasons. Home was probably longer given all the waiting amongst traffic.

I guess for now it's back to my moving bed =)

And a closing photo of something weird I saw near my house in the morning:





It's like the opposite of locking your bike to the railing -_-''