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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Lost in KL (and in Translation)

I’m going to meet Nina and Massi at the KLCC Suria at 7:00 PM to watch The Pirates of the Carribean. At exactly 6:00 PM, I packed all my stuff and left the office quickly so that I could make it on our meeting time. There are a few people who are taking the train from the Asia Jaya station and I was lucky to find a seat when I boarded the train. After 3 stations, our train stopped for 20 minutes at the Universiti station; the railway system has been experiencing some technical difficulties. As we proceed to the next stations, I noticed that our pace is slower than the speed during normal operations.

A few meters after Pasar Seni station, our train stopped. Since this happened during the rush hour, the train is full. We can also barely feel the aircon. It was suffocating. I texted Nina that our train stopped in the middle of the tracks and I don’t know if I could make it on time. Seeing my phone, the lady beside me (who does not speak English) asked if she could borrow my phone to call her husband who’s probably waiting for her as well. I lent it to her. The middle-aged Muslim lady in front of me felt dizzy and the people beside her gave her water and a liniment. Then, I offered her my seat. Unlike the train in Manila where there are windows that can be opened, the LRT does not have one. The non-Muslim people beside the lady asked her to remove her veil so that she could breathe but she didn’t. We asked the people near the door to look for the emergency button. They actually did and they were able to open the door which made it more dangerous to those who are standing beside the door. The thing with the railroad is that it has a voltage of electricity and stepping on the tracks is fatal. Some people inside the train got angry because of this.

After 45 minutes, all passengers were asked to leave the train and to walk to the nearest station. The railroad for Putra LRT line is an elevated track. I have a fear for heights and walking on the tracks is actually quite scary for me but I realized that I’m still lucky since our train was not stuck in a tunnel. Since I’m not familiar with the place, I asked the lady beside me on how to get to KLCC. She’s also not familiar in the place as well and told me to go to McDonald’s where most of the buses pass. Pasar Seni in KL reminds me of Quiapo (can you imagine getting lost in a place like this?) Unlike in Manila where you’d know the bus route by looking at its sign board, here in Malaysia, you need to know the bus number. There are a lot of buses that passed in front of Malaysia but none of them would actually go to KLCC. So I went inside McDonalds and called Nina to ask for directions. She’s also not familiar with the area so she advised me to take a taxi instead. Outside McDonalds, there are a lot of stores (stalls) beside it so I asked its people how to get to KLCC. All the people that I had asked can be classified to 2 types: (1) people who does not speak English (now I know what it feels to be a contestant in Amazing Race) and (2) people who can speak in English but does not know how to get to KLCC. Given this situation, the only choice left for me is to wait for a cab that would get me to KLCC. After 2 hours, I hailed a cab (finally!) and arrived at KLCC around 9:15 PM. Haay, it was a relief to be sitting in a movie house with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom on the big screen =)

The next day, it's in the newspaper. Here is the link to the Star article.

posted by subhuman @ 3:17 PM

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