Zeeyau is a great walker since she was a toddler and as we used to walk to and from the grandfather’s place almost everyday,. She was taught to read the traffic light signal to train her to cross the road safely (just in case she ran too fast ahead of me and I couldn’t catch up with her before the junction).

This was quite easy and straight forward in Singapore. Go at “green” man, stop at “red man” and “flashing man”. It is fairly safe as drivers observe traffic rules except for some reckless ones.

However, after coming here, our rules has changed to stop at “every man”. Drivers observed a different set of traffic rules here and motorists have priority over pedestrians. Back home, drivers have to give way to pedestrian at the crossing while negotiating a left or right turn at junctions. Here, pedestrians better 乖乖 wait for the cars to clear before attempting to cross. I have seen a few rare instances where drivers  stop to give way to the pedestrians, but they were greeted with loud honking from the impatient drivers behind them.

Taking a car ride here can be pretty exciting at times. There are traffic rules in place, but sometimes I felt the rules mean “no rule”. Every now and then, you see cars driving through red lights signal, stopping in the middle of the road (with the driver missing, weird) or even driving in opposite direction. The scariest incident we have met so far was a car in front of us suddenly decided to do a U-turn right ahead of us in the middle of a street.

It will take a while before we decide to get a car or even try to drive around.