almost the pre-eve of Merdeka...

...and i heard on the radio this morning that pretty soon, we will be hosting a human rights convention right here in Kuala Lumpur. wowie (and please sing this next line out - makes me want to shout.. stamp my feet now and shout)! ahem, BUT, i am of the firm opinion that we should be hosting a t.r.a.f.f.i.c. convention instead. forget the bloody human rights living in this city man! i mean what is really "THE" priority here? 50 years of independence and we close down all the major roads leading into the city for a full week of dress rehearsals??! come on mr. prime minister. what about our traffic rights?

yes, yes, to check myself first... i am loyal. faithful. i even get goose bumps when i hear Negara Ku being played and oooi, when i see the jalur stand on foreign land, i get that special spine tingling thing-y happening, big time. but i am sooooo tired from just crawling and inching my way to work all week this week (and it's only Wednesday people!). i sincerely doubt i am going to be singing and celebrating come Friday. i will instead, be sitting zombified, nursing a double shot of my favorite single malt, on the rocks, watching my Max and all the pre-recorded flicks, and so NOT the national parade. so i can completely put out of my mind and my soul, all the stress of having an almost developed nation, put its rakyat through hours of torturous struggling through snail paced traffic, just so we can do dress rehearsals for a week from 6:30 am - 1:30 pm and then again from 6:30 pm to 1:30 am!!! and why freaking close the SMART tunnel to "alleviate" traffic congestion for Christsake?? how does that make any sense? (are you sure you didn't mean "elevate"??) you already have the hundreds of cars in queue waiting to enter the tunnel, backed up for miles, with no bloody way of U-Turning or deviating from their inner lanes. and you get this radio chick coolly telling you to "be patient out there. this is expected to last at least the next 2 hours or so."

(author's note to self: breathe!) okay, why don't we just do a China and declare the whole flipping week off (i think they do this for labor week?? whatever) and maturely recognize that productivity is already shite this week, as loyal citizens are getting to work either extra smelly from the overly packed LRTs and are just sitting there in their cramped cubicles thinking all day about clock-out time, and counting down the hours to when they can finally hurry on home to shower all over again... and the rest of us i.e these car-wrought-stress-wreaks that have just shakily made our ways into our offices, we are just wanting to sit on down now, take these phones of their hooks, and try to forget the 2 h.o.u.r.s. we have just spent, making like a tortoise... and oh yarrrr! what ever happened to Putrajaya??! aren't we like supposed to be hosting ALL national governmental functions out there? oh oh oh. idea: or can't we just rehearse out there?? and let the rakyat go about earning their daily wages, status quo, until it is THE public holiday and you get to have all the streets all to yourselves, and thus can just parade on in peace?

vomit blood ;p

en el samaforo = at the traffic light

so much for "welcome back Senor Sun". nyah nya-nyah nya-nyah. needless to say it rained in monsoon sheets mid-afternoon yesterday, and whilst the rain had submitted to a measly drizzle by the time 6 o'clock rolled on by, the traffic on Jalan Sultan Ismail had grown into sheer epic "vomit blood" proportions!

nasty. took 1 whole hour to crawl myself down Sultan Ismail, and again the cops had their heads stuck up their back-sides. twice in two consecutive days, the U-Turn near the Shang was again unmanned (read as in: no cops!) and so cars, buses, and motorbikes battled from all 4 sides to beat their individual lights. thinking i was really doing well, i maneuvered myself lane to lane to frantically make that U. only to find myself sitting outside the Shang then for almost 30 minutes.
it was then that i knew, without a shadow of a doubt that i would again miss another IggySingh bedtime :(

ahuh, and then we had two cops happily chatting with each other near the sime darby lights as the fast lane stacked itself almost silly and backwards towards the Concorde, with unsuspecting folk in the first 2 lanes not realizing the bulk of the fast and middle lanes were actually in stand-still lines to eventually make that right turn at the sime junction. now, versus checking each other's uniforms out, wouldn't it have made more sense to ride your little motorbikes a little down the road to start pushing people into the other lanes? or at the very least to man the U-Turn lights??!

needless to say people, my entire 1 hour and 40 minutes home was literally spent sitting in the exact same spots, and just sitting some more, wondering why our cops n.e.v.e.r. get it right. why can't we keep Sultan Ismail clear??? it is still unequivocally the worst black-hole in our KL traffic horror stories, what with its propensity to flood, and the sheer volume of cars it supports. our infamous jalan is enough to make even the Pope curse and rant and rave! (No offense to my Catholic relatives and friends!)

sigh. needless to say, i am back to grinding my teeth and woke up this morning to find myself brushing very painful teeth. so i have decided that i am taxing home tonight. i still have my head-ache from last night, and really just want to sink into the back seat of a nondescript taxi, and be like the vegetable i am feeling... hmmm, belacan brinjals anyone?