New Year…
Yeah, I know. It’s been ages since I last posted. I’m surprised that anyone was actually surprised, but this time I do have a reason, and the reason is SPAM. Somehow, some unscrupulous people somewhere have decided to use automated systems to bombard me with adverts disguised as comments, in the hopes that I accidentally let them on and you readers might actually click on them and go buy their shit (pardon my profanity). However, since I’m obsessively careful about screening my comments at the best of times, all it really does is make every session I log on to wordpress for a chore, and drain me of whatever motivation I had for posting. Hence the lack of posts. Alright, enough excuses.
It’s hard to believe that we’re all already more than a month into this new year. Seems like literally yesterday that I was popping corks and blowing whistles to say goodbye to the old year. I’m still only getting used to writing 2007 when I have to write dates. I’ll probably get the hang of it in, oh, about 11 more months.
Very little has really changed over the new year, although I have started walking a lot. This is not some new way of getting fit (although the gym thing is going well, and once the much maligned Weekend Mail comes back, you’ll see what I’m talking about) but more a way of escaping the jams. One thing you learn about KL from walking all over it (other than that is really is warm) is that there is a real lack of public planning, and this is all the more obvious now thanks to “Visit Malaysia Year”. One would assume that this, being Malaysia’s biggest tourist push for a while now, would have been thought up long time ago, and planned to the tiniest detail. But, in typical Malaysian style, the new street lamps are only going up now. This is not a problem, except that in order to put them all up, they have to tear up the sidewalk, and cordon it off with cones and red and white striped plastic tape. This means that all the tourists (and local walkers, like me) end up having to risk life and limb on the roads, and while Malaysians know what evil drivers we are, a lot of tourists don’t (but they learn fast, believe me).
While we’re on the perils of pedestrianism, lets talk about our traffic police. They pretend to be sorting out the traffic situation in downtown KL by directing it, since the traffic lights (which, at some intersections, are still operating on the same system they were when the raods involved were all one way) obviously aren’t doing a good enough job. But, instead of alleviating jams, the police succeed in making things worse, usually by not understanding that just because you send everyone through this traffic light, doesn’t mean that they can get through the next one. This leads to all sorts of new jams, in places where there were no jams to begin with. Which is why I walk. But I digress. As well as taking a misguided lead of the traffic, they also take great pleasure in ignoring the pedestrians. And should the pedestrians attempt to follow the pedestrian lights, they run the risk of being run over by cars which the police direct at them. Nice. I actually brought this up to a policemen in one of the tourist pondoks, and he just shrugged and laughed. I’m hoping he didn’t understand me. Hoping.
And lets not go into the information kiosks which are only accepting information from hotels and restaurants now (which means at least another few months before they hit the streets), the complete lack of advertising of packages and big events abroad (advertising a big tourist attracting event a week before it begins is like inviting your friend to dinner after you’ve ordered… and he lives in Singapore), and the fact that half the sidewalks that aren’t undergoing major construction reek of drains (or worse, feature large, open, death trap like holes INTO drains), and you can see why it’s not much fun walking through KL. Even Bukit Bintang has it’s share of potholes, faulty pedestrian lights, and killer junctions, and that’s KL’s most pedestrian area.
All in all, I’m not really complaining, as I knew what it was like when I moved here, and I’ve gotten used to avoiding the numerous deadly pitfalls during my walk home (you build up a spider sense). But we should be worried, because for a country that prides itself on depending on tourism so greatly, we’re doing a terrible job of showing the world what we can do. We seem to be like someone who invites guests round to his place, only to have them trying to shift old pizza boxes and dirty laundry just to find space to sit down in his obviously uncleaned place, or the host who busies himslef trying to do a last minute tidy up while you sit there and wait politely, wincing inwardly at the futility, since you already saw the mess anyway, after all. We are those two guys, but what’s worse is, we actually invited the guests into our slovenly place. And as both a house proud Malaysian, and a sometimes proud Malaysian in general, it’s really not on. After all, do we really want people to Visit Malaysia, leave (alive, we hope) and never, ever come back?
These boots were made…
WillQ.
