18.12.2021 The Flood

I know, I know.  Weird things or big news sometimes does happen to me. But it is usually a one person experience. But when multiple people experience the same thing, it must be big.

 

When I rains for a long time, my mind always wandered back to one particular memory:

Sleeping and lying on the bed in Kuching.

Around this time of the year, Kuching, it would rain non-stop, and usually, the shortest was about 48 hours. So, imagine you're in the Ground Floor of a building, and all around you were the sounds of rain. It is so cooling that I don't even need to switch the Fan nor the Aircond on.  Man, I can sleep for days!


Towards the evening, as the rain got heavier, some of us decided to wait until the rain lightened up a little and that was about close to about 7 in the evening. But that time, it was already very dark. Anyway, seeing the rising flood first hand, I knew that all the alternative routes are no longer viable. The only one left was through a village. It was OK until I realised that there were no streetlights on the narrow road and both sides of the large drains were overflowing...

The main road was flooded. The flood waters from the opposite side flowed into my lane.

Decided to skip the main Highway as long as possible and took a detour through the village. This was a little dangerous.

Finally on the home stretch and yeah, there was spots of flooding. And this was a HIGHWAY.

Almost there. Since I am familiar with this stretch of the road, I had to keep to the right lane as there would be a pool of water on the left. My bad, it was a big pool of water on the left.

OK, just another three kilometers to go. So a few more minutes of traffic jam should not hurt much since there would be no more flooding.

I was wrong

 

So, on the next morning, the rain has not stopped but slowed down to a drizzle. The feeling was a bit weird because after a great night, I actually woke up on the dot. The traffic was smooth but by this time, the rain has started to get heavier.

Clouds on the building means its going to be a very cold morning.

Half an hour later, my Group WhatsApp reported many staff were going to be late and some of their houses were flooded as well. Taking the cues from the conversation, I fired up Waze and took a longer detour through the back roads.

Sadly, the place was flooded. I was at this traffic light earlier but the alternative routes were a no go too. By the time I came back to this spot, a kind gentleman has alighted from his 4x4 and helped to divert traffic. Because if we were to follow the lights, the jam can form a backlog within minutes.


Finally, I gave up and decided to brave the jam instead. As soon as I drove through the exit ramp, I saw the backlog, noped and reversed. I am looking at about 10Km worth of traffic jam and we haven't even considered the additional 3Km of flooding.

Many cars after me did the same. The went down the ramp, noped and reversed back out.

Wanted to have a break at the Clownhouse but gad, it was full as well...

This was that Waze reported at that time. Finally, Boss said the Office is closed. After notifying our customers, I still have to follow up with the loose ends since some are not happy or have more questions about their cars, etc.

All the way home, I changed to Santa at a lay by. And I so wanted to be able to punch him in the face. It was so irritating as the novelty wore off after a few minutes. But be like me; never ever change your Waze setting when you're on the road.

 

Lunch was a little consoling comfort with some burn biscuit and rando sauce. How it came about, that would be another story