It’s already late at night, 1.02am to be exact and here I am sitting at my old laptop typing away. While I was just about to shut it off and start working on something else, I came across an article on Medium and it hit me with a whiff of inspiration to write today’s opinion piece.
Firstly, I decided to use the newly face-lifted 1-series as an image here which has absolutely nothing to do with what I am about to write but I really do love how it finally looks. No longer will I relate the 1-series to that of Darth Vader’s helmet. Perhaps I have fallen in love.
Anyway, I digress.
Over the past month, I have had a bit of change in terms of my morning routine. Instead of the long drives I used to take to Cyberjaya, I started taking the train into KL. It’s a whole new experience for me and during these times, I get to experience KL differently.
Mornings are a lot calmer, thanks to the lack of frustrations of traffic jams. I tend to pay attention to my surroundings a lot more as well. Especially when I am fortunate to get a seat on the train, I tend to constantly look around me if there is someone else who needs the seat more than I do.
There are times when I see idiots who pretend to close their eyes and sleep, completely ignoring the old man or pregnant woman trying to find a seat. My heart cries out but my lips seemed to stay sealed. I wonder if it is just me or is my head playing tricks on me, saying that it is always better to avoid conflicts.
There are many times I wished I had the guts to tell someone off, especially cretins who cut queues at the train station and try to stand right in front of the entrance to the train. They completely ignore passengers who want to disembark from the train. The scenario plays in my head a couple of times, each with me taking a different action but in truth, I just stood there, completely silent, and probably regretting the lack of my action.
The problem carries on even when I am driving. There were countless times when I see a lorry or a bus swerving dangerously or speeding on the highway. Instead of being a good citizen and reporting it, I just tend to just complain about it verbally. Either I curse them in my heart or just complain about it over a cup of tea at the local mamak. And that is about it.
Even with a sticker at the rear of the said vehicle mentioning that if you see the driver driving poorly, send an SMS to a 5 digit number to report the incident, it would take me a while to think about it and probably brush it off later.
There was once where I tried making a report via SMS, but I didn’t leave enough information such as where the incident occurred, what time did it occur and which kilometre mile marker did it occur. I got a request to fill up the rest of the information but I just couldn’t be bothered because I didn’t pay attention to those other bits of information.
Another trend I see on social media is the emergence of pages/groups portraying offenders. One such group is about how idiots who can’t park properly. Of course not every circumstances allow us to make a report but consider those times at a shopping mall. But when you think about it, besides trying to shame the person, chances are, he or she wouldn’t have seen the report. In the end, they will probably continue parking like an idiot. There needs to be an action on our part as well instead of just relying on the authorities to do something about it.
It’s about time we all did our part, if we actually took more action instead of just ranting online or at your usual tok kok sing song sessions (ignore the spelling so that I can be politically correct), we could make a larger difference.
So remember, when you see something, say something.
