Friday, July 15, 2005

Wait Ah, I Wanna Drop My Passenger

The time is 7:15am, it's the earliest I've ever arrived work in my married life. Yeah, during singlehood it's common to come damn early, and go home damn late. Now, why the heck I wanna spend more of my time with colleagues instead of family?! Anyway, my job starts at 9:00am, therefore I'm usually in by 8:40am. Today, I need to have documents sitting on the boss's table before he arrives, thus the early arrival.

Thanx to those who commented yesterday. Nice to know I do have some returning visitors... aghh... nose walls stretching! Pain! You're right, it's easy just to write something, not easy to make it interesting. Anyway, I'm not pushing myself to write something everyday, unless something interesting (at least to me) happens.

Now, this morning while traversing my usual road, it takes me longer to reach than usual, eventhough I left earlier!! It's the "Wait ah, I drop my passenger" syndrome. I understand that Kelana Jaya LRT seems to be the busiest drop-off point, but this is NOT the Kelana LRT, instead it's the one nearby Jalan Raja Chulan where there's no in-curve for cars to move in. So okay, I totally understand as a citizen of this country that you need to drop off your children, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress, master (?!) and buddies. I totally can understand if you stop at the left lane (of three lanes) to drop-off. But I totally don't understand some cars that stops three cars from the left (triple-stopping), spend some 20 seconds saying bye bye, kissy kissy and then open door, yak a bit more, and then close door, see your drop-off reach safely to the pavement and then go off. It takes 1 minute per car. And when there's about 3-4 cars doing the same thing, it can really get sickening to wait.

Ahh... seriously, it's okay to see them drop off children. But I think girlfriends or other adults should do it fast. Kiss the hands, or the forehead, open door, and leave.

Leaving that story aside, most Malaysians and I have to include myself in, hahaha... tend to have this mentality of "bang me if you dare lah" when crossing the roads, and especially pasar malam (night market) time!! Most night markets will take up one side of the road in areas where there's either three lanes, or two uni-directional lanes. Some real good pasar malam traders takes up only half of the lane so that their customers can stand on the other half and allow cars to go through.

But ya lah... in between looking at things, we wanna walk at a clearing, which usually will be the other lane where cars need to go by. Take a stopwatch, and time yourself cycling from one end of a pasar malam stretch, against a car doing the same thing. I think if you have a running race with the car, you'll whoop the car's ass... not, boot upside down. Sigh... Malaysians..., when will I ever change. :P

Among the worst habit, this one at least I don't do, is to signal way last minute!! Those that I have experienced include, one dude coming out of the junction, being the good citizen that I am (oi, don't puke lah!!) I allowed him to come out, just to see him straight away stop his car and got down to go to the bank. This is on Jalan Pudu where traffic is heavy on two lanes, and he nicely park his car on one side. Not only that, he does not enter the bank until he sees the car behind his (mine) goes away leaving his car safe after honking at him. My wife will probably laugh reading this as she was in the car as well.

Another one is the (you all sure kena this before!) following a car that suddenly decides to slow down a little, and then signal left and comes to a complete stop on the left lane (not even pushing the car to the curb) and decides to wait for whoever he's waiting for.... and you don't see anyone coming towards the car. To 'show' that the driver is really trying to hurry (and making you think that he's hurrying), one or two gestures will come out. Either the dude/ette will start stretching the head looking out the left window, OR, picks up the handphone to call someone. Most drivers behind this type of cars will already start cutting to the right and leave the place. Same with me, and I never really got to find out the average time it takes before the car finally picks up the passenger.

Another area very famous for slowing down of cars down to 20-30kmh is at Sungai Besi entering KL. Near the turn-off to Jalan Istana, in the evenings, you'll nearly always see two policeman standing at the side of the road, practically doing nothing but staring out. We're used to seeing jakun (as if never seen something like that before) drivers who slows down to take 4D during accidents, but, these are drivers who thinks there's something up,... aiya... got police mah, sure got something, and slows down to look. They're either thinking "What's happen?" or "Wah, men in uniform. Sluurrpp!" (for gays or women).

Reason I wrote this today is not really that I'm urinated (a.k.a. pissed) at what happened this morning. I found it amusing. Though I was used to Kelana Jaya having triple-stopped people, triple-stopping on a busy road is not a good way to drop passengers. You get real angry bus drivers honking away.

If you are ever in the vicinity of Jalan Sultan Ismail on a busy evening, keep a lookout for waiters! Ya!! Really!!! Traffic policeman, sometimes up to eight of them on every curb after the traffic lights with the summons book in their hands waiting for cars to beat red lights or cutting illegally and then stop these drivers to contribute to more traffic jams, as well as allowing the driver to contribute to police economy. Damn, I wish I can get pictures of those people.

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