Friday 18 July 2008

The Day It All Stood Still

Monday was definitely a day Malaysians living in the Klang Valley would remember for some time to come… I mean, how can one forget the “fun” (more like agony) of being “trapped” in your car for extended periods, moving only inches (if any)? What am I talking about? The horrendous standstill traffic due to the roadblocks, especially around the Parliament area in Kuala Lumpur!!

It was quite odd that traveling from Old Klang Road back to Subang Jaya via Federal Highway late on a Sunday night took us longer than usual, with the unexplainable masses of cars at such a time. We wondered why traffic was so heavy and congested… Little did I know, worse was ensued the next morning!

I left home at about 7am and headed to Petaling Jaya, where I worked. Thinking that it was just one of those days that Federal Highway was extremely congested (I mean, Monday morning ler… probably everyone got a bit of Monday blues and left a bit later than usual) as I was greeted by congestion even getting onto Federal Highway, I detoured through Glenmarie to use the NKVE Highway to get to work on time (I start at 7.30am). The journey on NKVE was pretty uneventful and upon exiting the Damansara toll, I had intended to take the flyover to Sprint Highway, which usually gets me to work quicker than if I had used the LDP Highway. Surprisingly that day, traffic was at a standstill on the flyover, which had backed up quite significantly – even getting onto the flyover was almost standstill! It was a good thing that I was not too blur that morning (c’mon, it’s Monday morning!!) and quickly detoured off to use LDP instead, taking heed of the traffic reports coming from the radio station. I finally arrived in the office – five minutes to 8AM!! Ugh… my punch card had a red timestamp… sigh. My boss came in later and I heard him informing our admin staff that, “everybody will be late today; traffic jam very bad”. A newspaper article was circulated to all the staff later that morning with the explanation of the horrific ordeal – roadblocks due to the possibility of illegal protests as Parliament would be presiding that day.

A reprise was seen just yesterday, as reported over the radio station’s traffic report. Not wanting to be caught in the traffic jam, I used the LDP instead as I could already see the long line of cars heading to Sprint Highway. At least this time I was only about 5 minutes late, compared to 25 minutes!!

And finally, I took a peek at the newspaper today and found this article:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/7/18/nation/21857511&sec=nation
It was entitled, “Roadblocks to continue”… sigh! A colleague told me of her friend who actually took emergency leave on Monday and turned back home instead of enduring the traffic she saw as she was on her way to work in KL!! Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to afford such a “luxury”, hehe…

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