Reunion Dinner

This year, the traffic jam on the North-South Expressway was exceptionally bad. We made our journey to Ipoh at 1230hrs, and just moments entering the Duta toll, traffic was already at a standstill. The thought of crawling through the long queues was dreadful and the stupid message from the Transport minister Chan Kong Choy did not help much either. It kept looping between a few messages telling us to be patient on the roads and to keep tempers at bay.

As we crawled through the heavy rain, I suddenly remembered some stuff for my mum and grandma that I have left at home. Dammit, I had to make my way to the left lane to turn off to head towards Damansara. The jam was caused by idiots squeezing in from the left lane to make it through to head towards the right interchange to head up north. Stupid drivers, where the hell are your patience?!

So I managed to squeeze through to the emergency lane and made my way to head towards the Damansara interchange. At this point, there was no use in trying to rush for time. Thankfully we left around noon, so even if it took 6 hours, we'll still make if for the reunion dinner. So I sped all the way back home, collected the goods and rushed off again. This time, I took the Guthrie corridor, don't mind paying the extra RM 4.20 in toll, as long as I do not need to go through that crawl in Rawang.

Once we cleared to Rawang, another surprised met us head on. Yes, the crawl was just as bad passed Rawang. Traffic was backed up all from Tanjung Malim. It turns out that heavy rain plus reunion dinner rush... was a combination for disaster. You see, the root cause of the jam on the Expressway was not because of idiot drivers. It was sure not the rain, well... partly to blame. The main cause of the whole bottle neck was that each rest area was so overflowed with people and cars and buses that people were parking all the way out to the emergency lanes heading into the rest area. It was that bad!

Message to PLUS, please build more toilets along the route, I'm sure you'll solve the bottle neck that you faced this year and every other festive season. Heck, hire portable loos for that fact, just plunk them into the grass beside the expressway and I'm sure people would rather hold their pee rather than go into these "death traps". Yes, take a pee, if you dare! With all the idiotic drivers around, people would probably die in the loos being rammed by a driver who's fallen asleep behind the wheel.

Then, the blame as we know it would be pushed to the police to solve why their Ops Sikap figures are going higher. Yes, a brilliant thumbs up for the police force or that person behind the desk who came up with the idea of lowering the speed limit on the trunk roads. Who's got proof that speed kills? It's negligence! Do some homework before you burden drivers out there.

It took me a damned 5 and a half bloody hours to get to the Simpang Pulai exit. Normally I'd have done it in an hour and a 45 minutes. With a 1.8 turbo on that thing that Proton calls their Wira shell, I'd done it in an hour fifteen. Looks like it's going to get worst every year, so why are we still continuing to pay for toll?

P/S: Pic taken from thestar.com.my.