Ponder : Traffic Situation, Strange Thoughts, or, What Makes The World Go Round

The traffic situation can do strange things to you. Or rather, sitting in a car with a poorly serviced air-conditioner, with traffic in a standstill due to some people choosing a decidedly peak rush hour to amend some decidedly dangerous cracks in some decidedly busy flyovers and you are trying to get to your office in Kelana Jaya when you actually stay at the other end of the world that is Ampang can do strange things to you. One of the things, I found out, is to make your mind wonder. And when you let your mind wonder, you invite some, at best, misconceived thoughts.

So, there I was, staring blankly ahead, frowning yet again at rows upon rows of cars having the same fate as mine. At about the same time, the Radio Deejay announced that she has just received an SMS from a `Traffic Ranger' saying that the road from Taman Melawati to Kepong is heavily jammed. The first thought that came to mind was in a form of a wish: something similar to if only I had boarded that LRT instead, quite forgetting that yesterday I had to let three LRTs pass before I could get into one, simply because the doors shut too fast.

Believe me, if you try to board the LRT at Ampang Park station, after duly letting people alight, you'd barely have time to board it before the door closing siren sounds, though you can still opt to jump in at your own peril. Each time this happens, you'd utter a silent curse and swear that tomorrow you would take the car to work.

And each time you do take the car to drive to work, some people would decide that a particular stretch of road needs repair or refurbishing, and some other people would gladly choose the most peculiar time to carry out such work. Such as, when everybody else is rushing to work.

Perhaps it's their own unique way of telling people that, hey ! I'm actually doing this for you, man. And then they'd half-expectedly assume that we actually blare our honks in support. Otherwise, why do they continue their work so nonchalantly, even sporting a grin sometimes, when we finally get pass them and blare our honks madly? Makes us really feel that sometimes hand signals are more appropriate, thus barely managing to refrain from flashing some deliciously obscene hand gestures.

End of first thought, eyes back on the road. Traffic still not moving. In such a situation, it's hard to even imagine the truth when those scientists say that, at the equator, the earth rotates at a constant speed of 1,670 kilometres per hour (which is equivalent to 1,070 miles per hour). In comparison, The London-Paris Eurostar bullet train travels at 300 kilometres per hour, and a long haul Boeing 777 jet travels at a cruising speed of 500 kilometres per hour. Whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, there I was, stuck in a stationary car, with miles and miles of equally stranded traffic in front of me.

So, what makes the world go round, I asked myself. If you think about it, you'd begin to realize that everything in this world goes around. Like they say: what comes around goes around (though that actually has another meaning). Just take a look around; it looks like everything spins around by itself, or goes around another. The moons spins and goes around the earth in continuous orbit. The earth rotates and orbits the sun. And most probably the whole Milky Way rotates and orbits some God Knows What. That's probably (I say probably because I'd rather leave the physics out) true of the protons and neutrons too. Perhaps it's just an inborn habit. Perhaps there's an unwritten rule. Or perhaps it's a law of sorts. Not unlike the compulsory rounds of `tawaf' when we do our pilgrimage.

Whatever the answer might be, today I got to be wiser than to take the same likely-to-be congested road. I took the Ampang Elevated Highway instead, and was delighted at the relatively smooth flow of the traffic, and the prospect of arriving early. So that's the end of it, I hear you say. Errrrr well not quite. If you take this highway during rush hour, upon coming out at the Jalan Tun Razak exit, you'd notice a character wearing a full face crash helmet, standing in a luminous vest amidst the flowing traffic, waving hands in much the same way, and with much the same air of authority, as a traffic policeman would have.

The only thing is, he's not a traffic policeman. At least he does not appear to be one. And he does not wear any uniform, or any sign or emblem or whatever indicating where he is attached to. But there he is, standing there reliably every morning without fail, tirelessly directing traffic, generally unnoticed and unappreciated by the drivers. So much so that on the few occasions he was absent, the road would be heavily jammed, and then people would notice his absence and start to curse the traffic police, the DBKL and whomsoever they could think of. So, who could he be? To most drivers, whoever he might be, as far as they are concerned, he just made the world go round for them.

Well, come to think about it, perhaps he's employed by Projek Lintasan Kota Sdn. Bhd. Perhaps by the DBKL. Perhaps he's a cop in civilian clothes. Perhaps he's just a good and equally rich Samaritan with nothing better to do. Or perhaps I dramatized about him too much. Perhaps I simply read and watched too much of Judge Dredd (remember 2000 A. D.?) and Robocop. Or perhaps I have just let my mind wonder way too much this time.

Ah! like I said, the traffic situation can do strange things to you.



Originally posted by Midgee on