‘Cockroaches and lizards seeking shelter on my car door’
Taiwanese singer-actress Vivian Hsu was caught in the flash floods that occurred in Bukit Timah following an afternoon deluge across Singapore on Dec 29.
“I went out as usual, as it looked like a usual rainy day,” she wrote in Chinese on social media on Dec 29. “I was planning to buy my son’s favourite food from (Taiwanese restaurant chain) Din Tai Fung after leaving a cafe with my friends.”
The 49-year-old has a nine-year-old son, Dalton, with her former husband, Singapore-based businessman Sean Lee. She shuttles between Taiwan for work and Singapore, where she lives with Dalton.
“There was a downpour and flooding all of a sudden, with water rising almost to my car door,” she wrote. “I saw cockroaches and lizards seeking shelter on my car door.”
Hsu said she went to retrieve her car even though she was drenched.
“I was stranded in the middle of the road not long after driving the car out,” she said. Rubbish bins were floating, she wrote, and some cars were nearly submerged.
“This was the first time I felt so cold sitting in a car in Singapore,” she added. “I wanted to go to the toilet badly, but I didn’t know how long I’d be stuck. I got out of the car, stepped into the water and rushed to the shopping mall.”
Hsu, who also posted photos of the flood and videos of herself walking in the flood, said she was wearing her favourite white sneakers at that time.
“I finally got out of the predicament after an hour,” she continued. “I also got my son’s favourite food from Din Tai Fung.”
Singapore’s national water agency PUB said on Facebook on Dec 29 that flash floods occurred along Dunearn Road and Bukit Timah Road (near King Albert Park) from around 5pm due to high water levels in the adjacent drains and Bukit Timah Canal.
“PUB’s Quick Response Teams were deployed ahead of the rain and later closed off affected lanes, directing traffic away from floodwaters,” it said. “The flash floods subsided within 20 minutes.”
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