Like a duck to water?

Yeah, that would be me driving in KL after 6 months: it’s as if I never left! No wonder while I was in the U.S: I felt soooo kekok the few times I drove... it probably wasn’t so much a matter of driving on the wrong side of the road in the wrong side of the car, and more like knowing deep inside that if I actually RELAXED and drove like normal I’d be incurring the wrath of the other road users!

Then again: in a few more years I may just feel at home on the road there.. My impression is that the standard of driving seems to have dropped since my younger days there: at that time (10-15 yrs ago) I felt the drivers were almost too courteous. Now, well, it seems as if there is a drift towards the Malaysian way of driving.

But then again… it does seem like Malaysia is backsliding even more downhill… I have a distinct feeling of being less safe than before… after all, when not only are there more incidents of road rage, but also more and more cases resulting in the death of one of the drivers, one can’t expect to feel too safe anymore! So, while I drive as aggressively as the next person on the road (or perhaps a bit more, heehe) I try hard to make sure I don’t instigate any problems with the other idiots on the road…

Overall, I do think the traffic situation seems to have improved in KL... of course, I suppose it helps that I don’t have to struggle through traffic to get to the center of town by 8am every weekday!! But still… the road in front of the apartment seems to be fine, even at 8 or 9am… before it would be pretty backed up…

I did have my doubts about traffic last night, tho… heading back from KLCC, taking Tun Razak south, on the flyover past Bulatan Kg Pandan: it was moving so slowly at 930pm!! Mystery finally solved: a minor accident between two cars and a motorcycle had occurred on the flyover, essentially reducing the two lanes to just one, caused the crawl… once we were past that spot, it was smooth sailing :) thank goodness! I would hate to think the rush hour traffic had not yet receeded by that time!

Talking about flyovers: waaah finally the flyover linking Jln Kg Pandan with the road heading to Tmn Maluri/Pandan Jaya is open. I guess that will temporarily ease the traffic congention there (until the volume of cars on the road increases lah), tho the bulatan area is still a huge construction zone… I wonder how that underground route that is to also serve as a floodwater conduit is gonna look like…

And one more note on roads: narrowly avoided a divider that’s been extended waaaay past its original length 6 months ago @ TTDI area on the way to BU. So dangerous! I suppose it’s still relatively new, and the road lines haven’t been repainted to reflect the new position of the lanes? So what’s happening at the moment is that as you go round the curve, and you are in the middle lane, whoops there it is! It actually encroaches onto the middle lane, cutting it in half! I’m guessing there have been many accidents, and countless near-misses there, especially at night!! Sooooo dangerous…

Sigh… Malaysia Boleh….