Tuesday, November 17, 2009 . 8:24 PM

I just spent the last 2 hours on a fruitless trip around Singapore.

I was supposed to go for Celeste's birthday party tonight, which was being held at Aranda Country Club, which is like the other side of the island from where I live =\ so going there was always gonna be tough. Naturally I went to consult gothere.sg for directions and I memorized them as best I could before setting out.

The website told me it'd take 36 mins to get there, so I thought if I'd leave at 1800 I'd reach there well before 1900 even if there was a jam on the PIE. Well I thought wrong, there was a "MASSIVE JAM UP TO BEDOK" and I was literally traveling at a snail's pace along the PIE. Spent 1.5 hours sitting in the damn car waiting to go from time to time.

So I thought I could be smart. When I saw a turnoff that led to the TPE I took it, knowing that eventually I had to end up there anyway. Turning into the CTE, I was incredibly relieved that I could finally travel at decent expressway speeds. From the CTE I managed to hit the TPE and was pleased that I was on course.

I was on track until I saw the turnoff to KPE. Remembering that there was a component in the original directions that I should take the KPE at some point, I happily took that route.

So after going through that long long tunnel which is the KPE, I ended up at a turnoff between ECP (City) or ECP (Changi), which totally didn't make sense according to the original directions. Incredibly frustrated by that time, and counting that fact I was going to leave the party early at around 2030 anyway (it was 1950 by the time I reached that ECP fork) cos I have a huge backlog of work to clear, I decided to hell with it and just took the ECP (City) home.

I just consulted the directory and I realized that once I hit the TPE from CTE I was in the right direction all along. The wrong part was when I turned into the KPE, hence going in a circle back towards the AYE and back from where I came. Dammit. In the original directions from gothere.sg I was supposed to take the KPE BEFORE the TPE then I would've reached.

Well, at least I know how the CTE and KPE work now. Hopefully I won't get lost when I use these two expressways next time.

Bananas.

I owe you Celeste! Heh. Will make it up to you if we ever have your coffeetalk in the future (and if I can find what I'm intending to make it up to you with).

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

Archangel