A little Orchard Road drama

If you missed yesterday's flash flood at Orchard Road, Darren Bloggie has compiled some images and videos here. budak explained it to me as something of a "perfect storm" situation, produced by the timely combination of a spring tide and intense tropical downpour.

Note: It was not a "disaster", for reasons that ought to be obvious, and people need to stop cavilling about how the government didn't plan for it. I suppose the fact that people are cavilling reveals just how much in Singapore people tend to think that the government can (and ought to?) do everything to keep every aspect of Singapore life chugging along nicely. But hello, that 100 millimetres of rain (or 60 per cent of the total average rainfall for the month of June) fell in three hours, producing a flash flood that lasted only about an hour, sounds about as best as can be expected in most developed countries.

I think my friend Cien said it best on Twitter, though:

The sweet, sad irony in the ST photo of foreign workers helping a local save his BMW from the floods. Let's hope he pays it forward.