20-10-20

No.....that is not the date of a day in the future. That's the timing we clocked on the road this morning, our first ever trip to work from our new home. Being the inaugrual journey, we didn't have any sense on how the traffic conditions might be on the roads, so like typical kiasu Singaporeans, we decided to set our alarm clock to get us up from bed at 6am sharp (Actually not THAT kiasu lah. The even more kiasu ones would have done a trial-run of the journey one week in advance).

After spending 30 minutes washing up and changing, we were on our way. Jae was still asleep and resting on mommy's shoulders when we stepped out of the house.

1st leg: This part of the journey saw us travelling on an unusually uncongested Bukit Batok road. I was doing like 70km/h which was the speed limit along this stretch of road. Traffic speed slowed a wee bit when we neared the school zones. The little tot remained asleep as mommy waved goodbye. Almost 20 minutes for this leg of the trip.

2nd leg: This was the shortest leg, clocking just under 10 minutes. Traffic, despite showing some signs of picking up, was still pretty smooth. I stopped at quite a number of traffic lights, though. Yes, the sleepy head was still very much in dreamland. She did open her eyes very momentarily when Por-Por picked her up from the car, as if bidding me goodbye.

3rd leg: Ah, this last portion of the trip would usually have meant that I'd pay the ERP charges at two gantries - one along BKE and one along PIE. I passed through the former at 0700hrs and the latter at 0710hrs so no charges. No need to contribute to this system that is raking up quite a bit of displeasure among motorists nationwide with the recent announcement of hike + new gantries. Smooth traffic on the highways meant that I was able to reach my office in record time, at 0720hrs.

50 minutes from door to (last) door. I called Angie from my office and she was surprised at how quickly I've arrived at my final destination. I suggested that we could squeeze off a little more, say 10 minutes worth of sleep tomorrow morning, but she pointed out that traffic conditions worsen rapidly and that a difference of 10 minutes at departure would likely be met with a traffic slowdown resulting in delay several fold this duration. I think she's right.

Oh well. Perhaps I can do more of such early morning blogging in the future.