KLCC

Today, in KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre), I noticed an odd thing. True, I had noticed it previously in other Malls and places where people congregate; places that people arrive at by driving their cars to it. It is also true that they do not need to drive their cars to KLCC because there is a train stop in the basement.

KLCC - The Famous 'Twin Towers'.

(The Shopping Mall is at the bottom.)

Well, all right, calling it a ‘train’ is a bit of a stretch – it is a local rail network that links parts of the city to each other called the LRT, the ‘Light Rail Transit’.

Light Rail Transit (LRT)

The LRT is a computerised travel system that is basically advantageous for the city, depending where you live, of course, but fails in one important aspect – parking. 

Not many stations have adequate parking and the bus service that feeds the stations is also limited in its destinations.

Otherwise it is an excellent and well-used system.

But people still drive their cars to get to most places including the larger Malls and that would mean that the car park in KLCC is invariably full. Unless you either go very early or you go when there is a public holiday and everyone else has gone back to their villages (kampungs) to be with their relatives for that holiday.

Which brings me back to the thing that I have noticed in these places.

In the upper levels of the basement car park – the only car park in KLCC, there will be cars endlessly circling looking for a spot to park. In the basement levels there are, quite often, plenty of spare spaces.

What is it that stops drivers from parking in the lower levels? Is it that there are extra escalators to go up to get to the Concourse floor? It can’t be time because they spend so much of that wandering aimlessly around looking for a space that it would be so much quicker to go down a level or two.

Sometimes I wonder if it really is time. Perhaps people are in so much of a rush that they make what they are doing take longer.

At the bakery counter where we like to purchase freshly baked bread I barely had time to take hold of the plastic bag containing my purchase before a woman behind me reached out and placed her purchases on the counter as if terrified that someone else might beat her to it.

I asked her if I might have been in her way. She replied that I was not in her way so I explained that I was being facetious. That got a blank look.

It is the same with lifts. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to get out of a lift because of the press of people trying to get in. They clearly do not realise that standing back and letting people out is the key to getting into the lift more easily.

Unless there is a terror that someone might slip in before them.

Horrors.

It happens on the roads, too. Heaven forfend that you try to pull out into the next lane to overtake a slower vehicle in your lane. A desperate driver accelerating fiercely to prevent you moving out in front of them will immediately close the gap that you are about to enter. Should you achieve this manoeuvre successfully the driver who has been denied the right of immediate passage by your pulling out will almost leave an imprint of his number plate on your rear end to signal his, or her, displeasure at your disreputable act.

How dare you get in front of him – or her?

When I first started driving here I was alarmed at how bad mannered the drivers here can be.

I remarked on it to one of my colleagues at work. I said to him that everyone seems to have this ‘me first’ attitude. He disagreed. He told me that if it was ‘me first’ then there would be some degree of acceptance that there were other people involved – this is not the case. He explained that it was just a ‘me’ culture.

This was a degree of selfishness that I had not experienced since I was last in Holland.

Since that conversation I have tried to establish how it is that people will endlessly circle parking areas in the levels closer to the shops? At first I thought it was after the same fashion that Mummy or Daddy will park almost in the school to save their little ones from having to walk to the extent where they double park and triple park to be closest to the gates. Thus blocking the road for other traffic for which they have no regard whatsoever.

Can it be as simple as that? They think that by parking in the nearest levels they are closer to the shops? Is this an extension of the ‘Me! Me!’ culture just as crowding into a lift is just that?

I have no idea. To me it is just bloody rude.

Solipsism.