Rush Hour

I've just moved to a new office at One Raffles Quay. One Raffles Quay is an office building located right at the edge of Raffles Place, near the new Marina Bay Financial Centre.

And this is the view that I see out of the window everyday.

Photo taken with iPhone... 
Hm... it was a little gloomy when I took this picture, huh?

Beautiful, isn't it?

Sadly, that's about all I like about my new office.

Great views but getting to and from work, as well as having lunch, is erm... for lack of a better word, quite scary.

You see, Raffles Place is at the heart of the downtown business and financial district of Singapore. Throngs and throngs of people work in Raffles Place. Getting to work in the morning is like struggling your way through a somewhat aggressive and desperate crowd during the post-Christmas sales.

The walk from the subway station to One Raffles Quay is a pretty long one.. and every morning, I feel like I'm part of a march to war, with the loud clacking of high heels almost like a rhythmic march to the battle fields. I sometimes almost think that they will blasting military songs through the long tunnel I make my way through to work.

Lunch is an equally frantic affair. There are queues everyone and people seem to be jostling their ways out of the offices to invade into all the food courts and restaurants nearby. It reminds me sometimes of a documentary that I saw where a swamp of locusts landed on a field and ate up everything in its path. Sends a chill down my spine at times.

It's pretty much the same after work, except in a way, the crowd is a lot less scary in the evenings. Maybe it is because everyone is feeling fatigued and drained by work.. Maybe it's because I do leave rather late compared to your normal office worker. I'm not quite sure. But the trains are still rather crowded, although not fully packed. And everything seems less frantic than in the day.

In any case, I have to get used to the rush hour crowd now, there is no escape really.

Although a bit late, but I now really appreciate my previous office location at the Marina Square/ Suntec area - with all the shopping and restaurants nearby.. and a calmer, more amiable crowd in the weekdays.