Nosy parker

This post is about a little parking incident. Yes, I'm trying to be punny. You may groan now.

Sunday saw us headed to Plaza Singapura, somewhere past noon, and definitely against my better judgement. We persevered, nevertheless, since J wanted to shop at Spotlight and Carrefour.

Incident reference map
Coming down Orchard Road, I miss the first turn-in at Oldham Lane, and have to assault the long, 2-lane queue from the next turning at Handy Road. There's a yellow (no-stopping) box at the junction of these two streets, and technically I have the right of way since I'm approaching from the 'straight'.

As I sheepishly cross the box and insert myself into the right-lane queue, the driver of this silver C200 Mercedes on the left lane waves and smiles, and indicates that he wants to filter into my lane. I oblige, and he slides in front of me. There's a handicap decal on his rear windscreen. Hey, I'm practically doing a charitable thing, right there.

Let me side-track for a bit. Plaza Singapura has been around for ages, and was recently closed for renovation. The new design is bright and chirpy, and looks pretty damn good. But for some obscure and inane reason, they reversed the direction of the carpark flow. This means that the entrance is now on the RIGHT side, and the exit is on the LEFT, and now there's an absolutely idiotic free-for-all crossover junction where the two streams cross.

Score one for B.S. Johnson (ObReference: Pratchett).

This day, they had stationed some poor soul in a security guard uniform at the junction to direct traffic. Not that it helped much; the queue speed is less than a crawl. Some drivers capitulate, and help themselves to the very thoughtfully placed U-turn exit in front of me.

The left lane starts to move faster, as taxis manage to slip into the taxi lane and alleviate the pressure on the queue. And before I know it, the same silver Merc signals left, and noses in. He then signals to the right again, presumably to cut into said U-turn just in front of the next car. But then he spies some movement in the taxi lane on the left, and promptly slides into it.

Over the next five minutes I watch, dumbfounded, as he dodges in and out of the queue and taxi line. There's some movement in my lane as well, and I finally pass the cross-junction, only to find that the left lane merges with mine to form a one-lane ramp. And that the same silver Merc is just in front on the left lane, slowly edging forward, trying to nose in again.

Not this time, pal.

I stuff the pedal down and edge the Merc out, letting the Camry in front of him go. As he pulls into line behind me, I stick out my left index finger and wag it - naughty naughty.

J pulls my hand down, but not before the Merc's female passenger notices, and scolds the driver. Ha ha! Serves you right.

I intentionally avoided mentioning the driver's race and apparent age to avoid any reading biases. But feel free to opine. :D