Just the other day a friend and I decided, after exhausting all other choices, to go have dinner at the Havelock Road Bak Kut Teh. So there was I in his car already planning out the route in my mind when my friend whipped out his new GPS receiver.

Well GPS guidence system is way cool technology so regardless having driven there a few times before, it’s excusable to just use it “in case we get lost”. So he brought up the recently used locations and selected the place.

I must say the system is really fun, that is until it asked us to exit at Alexandra Road. I questioned my friend and he replied, “Um… I just updated the map last night so this must be a new route.” Okay I thought, there’s more than one way to get there.

Until it asked us to turn south and the head west on Pasir Panjang. Now that’s really wrong. Told my friend but he insisted we should trust technology. Rather I choose to believe that he was just curious as to where it was leading us.

So we passed Labardor park and he decided to check the route. Here’s what it was:

ROFL!!! The stupid thing routed us into the sea! Hahahaha…

We checked and found out that when updating the map, the recently used entries were no longer linked to the correct location on the new map, resulting in it trying to bring us into the Straits. Normally my friend would have checked the route but having used it a few times he trusted it should be ok. Ah… complancency, the cause of most accidents.

That said the gadget is still nice to have. But in Singapore? Ok I do know of people who gets hopelessly lost even in such a small city as SG. But they had better check the route before setting off. haha.