Imagine this….your teacher calls in sick and that you think you can find some time to visit the Ikea store 15 km away from your home to buy the curtains in your bedroom before the neighbours complain about your husband’s nudity.

You happily invite your classmate with you to the Ikea store. On the way out of Ikea, you realised that whilst you are inside the warm comfortable store, there is a serious snow storm brewing outside. You start driving the car and realised that something is seriously wrong. The brakes are not working well and the vibration feels weird. The sign on the dash board tells you that the roads are extremely slippery. You do not want to alarm your classmate and so you drive on 3rd gear really slowly but you can barely stop the car at the traffic light even jamming the brakes. You can only hope for the best as you drive slowly causing a serious traffic jam. You do not want to crash. It suddenly occurred to you that this car that Audi lent whilst they are servicing your car, is not with winter tyres! You have never experienced anything like this and you are seriously scared.

You crawled slowly on the highway (E18). Your only thought is that how can you get your classmate home safely in this freak snowstorm. The roads conditions on the highway are slightly better and just when you think that things will be ok, the car refused to move up a slope about 1 km towards her home. You are now in a residential area with less cars and the snow is now thicker on the ground. The car kept turning around, slipping and sliding in all directions. You are about to shout and wish you are back in Singapore and that is when you panic and called your husband for help! After trying for almost 15 minutes, a kind (and rather good looking) man stopped and offered to help. But he apologised and said that it does not look good. Another man offered to help…and this time, he asked other people to help push the car up the slope and he even trailed behind your car to ensure that everything is ok.

Your husband called Audi to complain, told them to bring the winter tyres and it is definitely not possible to drive in these conditions. They responded that they need to ‘order’ the winter tyres for a new car!!! But they will come immediately with another replacement car with winter tyres. They came quite quickly with an A6 and you very happily drove home safely and got your kids from the daycare.

Quite an experience, and that is why I am sitting in my warm kitchen drinking a nice cloudy bay to celebrate that I got through this safe and sound! But I can tell you…it is really really really scary and definitely not nice!