WHILE most office workers have to contend with traffic jams or packed MRT trains during the morning rush hour, Mr Colin Xu whizzes through Singapore on his trusty bicycle.

It takes him only 45 minutes to cycle from his home in Toa Payoh to his workplace in Changi. The alternative MRT-bus route will take him twice the
time.

"You have to admire the simplicity and efficiency of the bicycle," Mr Xu, 25, enthuses.

It may mean cycling almost 40km every day - an effort which he started a month ago - but it makes him feel "more alive".

Still, he maintains that neither speed nor a healthy lifestyle is his main incentive for choosing leg power over fuel power - it's about doing his part for Mother Earth.

"I'm anti-automobiles," he says. "I think cars aren't really that necessary."

The nature lover has travelled to many remote places and completed a 1,600km cycling route three months ago from Lijiang in China to Lhasa in Tibet with a few friends he met on the Internet.

"Taking a trip like that with a car would have burnt a lot of petrol, so I'm glad we cycled. It's good for the environment," he says.

His green belief was further cemented after he watched the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which depicts the dangers of global warming.

He saw that as a "wake-up call", which made the former public transport user decide to take a stand by riding the bicycle to work four days a week.

Xu still takes the MRT on Fridays, the last day of his work week, to carry a week's worth of work clothes to his office so that he can make light work of cycling on the other days.

The avid cyclist has been regularly biking on Singapore's roads over the last five years and feels that traffic here has become a lot more congested.

"You feel it more acutely as a cyclist because you can smell the air all the time, so you know when the quality is affected," says the Shanghai native, who has lived here for nine years and is awaiting permanent residency.

On why Singaporeans don't see the need to go green, he suggests: "We get electricity and petrol here but we don't really see the price we pay for them. It seems all these conveniences come out of nowhere and have no consequences.

"Singapore may be a small country so maybe people think what we do doesn't have a global impact, but every bit counts."

To get more people cycling here, however, he feels that drivers need to be more friendly to cyclists.

On the benefits of biking, he says "a bit of physical sacrifice and sleeping earlier daily will lead to a sense of freedom, independence and good health".

"Besides, wearing that cycling jersey is a surefire way to turn heads. You look really cool," he laughs.