Sentimental Rain

I don't have interest yet to meteorology or climatology. But climate (one of theme researched in those mentioned sciences), is always affecting our daily life. One informal signal of season change in tropical country Indonesia can be derived by it's naming. When the naming of the month is end with "ber" like September, October and November, rain season has come.

Rain often brings sentimental feeling. Asphalt is wet, the air is humid and the temperature is cold. Singapore has been poured by rain again almost everyday since last week. But at least in here there will be not too much negative side effect of rain. As far as now, there is no flood or even puddle and without any significant reason usually no traffic jam.

Sometime my memory is thrown back to previous one year in my life. That was when I was still in Jakarta. When I was working, rush hour comes to office and going home from office will be literally rush and hectic. In normal condition, all the vehicle will be stuck in that rush hour. For the driver it will stressful. For the public transport passenger, it will be boring time to home. The situation will be worst when the rain come. Even for very short rain, congestion will be increased significantly. Travel time can be doubled. When I was in university, I remember a moment when some of my friend spent 5 hours to home, because of the rush hour after rain.

Without elaborating too much, on of the main reason of the traffic congestion is overload road capacity. When rain come the congestion become so significant higher because there will be a lot of bottleneck happen on the road. First bottleneck is careless motorist who take shelter in the middle of the road (usually below flyover or bridge) and disturb traffic flow. Second, because vehicle have to queue for passing some small to large puddle.

But that was a memory. Rain or not rain in Singapore the road traffic will be usually same. I just often enjoy sentimental moment in the bus ride to home. Rain is sweet and scary. Sweet because the cold that it brings can make us calm and scary because heavy rain usually brings black cloud with a lot of thunder. In Singapore we just need to wait for the last month with "ber" ending passed to leave this sentimental season. Hopefully can meet another rain season in next year.