Day 0

Indulge me while I rant. I mean, otherwise, I just might go out and have a cigarette. Meanwhile, haven't smoked today.. had two sticks yesterday.

This is about driving in Malaysia. Oh yes, that story and also the direct cause of more than 6,000 deaths every year, countless ringgit in money spent on car and infrastructure repairs, hospital bills and broken homes or lost children (Human Potential ya?). Going down the more morbid side of things - some might say its a form of population control or what keeps one sector of the economy going.

Without all those vehicles being destroyed by usually ill-equipped drivers, how are we going to sell more cars and make Malaysia a regional auto-player? Lets keep killing our own people and only export cars with airbags to our overseas markets. Meanwhile, we'll tax the shit out of everyone who wants to get an import car (the only ones with airbags). We all win!

Ah I've just set myself up for a massive conspiracy theory. JPJ is on the take from car manufacturers to ensure they continue to churn out completely useless drivers so that AAM can continue to say there is year-on-year growth in vehicle sales! (and then argue about it with the ministry)

Anyway, I'm sure that isn't really the case. I'm more inclined to believe that its a result of piecemeal/ad-hoc policies that resulted in the clusterfuck we are in now. Something I gained a lot of insight into during my stint at The Star.

What caused this outburst? Seeing a grandpa ferrying 2 of his grandkids (who were not belted up) while busy chatting away with what I assume was his son. This was Jalan Sultan Ismail at peak traffic and I was unfortunately right behind him (he cut in front of me earlier without signalling). Apart from completely not paying attention to the road and braking hard every few seconds, he was obviously indecisive about changing lanes making it unbelievably hard to overtake because he's basically zig-zagging along the white line. Mandatory retests at 65 anyone? I almost knocked him once when overtaking and on the second occasion when I had an opening, there had to be DBKL watering its precious plants and taking up the whole lane.

Which brings me to another point, why the hell do they always water plants at peak hours. And what's the use of all those electronic signboards? You know in Singapore, you'll be informed way before that something's taking up whichever lane for whatever reason.

As much as Malaysia wants to plug itself about being a developed nation soon, and 9 years is soon, nothing's going to change if something as common sense as scheduling when to water plants can't be done. Oh don't even get me started about enforcement of road rules and education of drivers.