Friday, April 27, 2007

Why you low down, double parking, no good son of a gun!

If you think spitters and sneezers spoil you weekend at the mall, wait till you get out of the shopping complex and step on to a typical Malaysian car parking lot. Now a parking lot is a place where lines are nicely drawn up and you are expected to park neatly, right? Wrong! This is the shared view of a seemingly large section of Malaysian drivers.

Let us categorize the first group of these so called drivers as "Crossed Eye Jack". Now Jack is a nice family man who would jump into his Rexton the moment his wife hollers "we're out of mosquito coils!". Unfortunately Jack is gifted with a line of sight that enable him to see a fly landing on the bridge of his nose perfectly, but alas parking a car properly is a touch-and-go affair, ie , he always parks his car at the right centre of the dividing line of the space, ie, he takes up two parking spaces. Many drivers have perfect eyesight but we have to call them by this nickname too. Sorry Ah Beng, Muthu and Ahmad.

Next is Mr Bangkok Park. This F1 driver wannabe is always in a hurry, a burn rubber, devil-may-care type, that swings into a parking space with a screeching halt and at exactly 45 degree angle of the parking lot. He doesnt bother to reverse and park in nicely and when confronted, retorts by rolling up his t-shirt sleeve revealing a full tattoo of a prancing dragon : "Ai yah.... never mind lah, I only park for 3 hours, not a whole afternoon" or worse: "You got a problem with my parking?"

Then comes Mr Tight Squeeze, who must have assumed you are a circus contortionist. In fact he's parked so near that both his and your wing mirrors are giving each other high fives.. You had to climb into your car through the window like a stock car driver, while he (on the driver's side) gets out easily with space wide enough to load a washing machine. And the worse thing is, yours is a brand new BMW 7-series and his is a rusting, clunker of a van with an extendable ladder tied to the roof. So you had to reverse gingerly while your wife and some sympthetic bystanders wave franticallly with their hand shouting "gostan....gostan.....gostan....oooopppp!!!"

Finally enters Mr. Tidakapathy a.k.a. Mr Sloth, whose real name is Ah Beng. This tooth pick biting, nose picking dude always parks at the entrance of the building even though he sees empty parking spaces two spits away, and in the process, always double parks or at a perpenticular angle blocking other parked cars' exit. His rationale is simple: he's here to attend show at the cineplex with his family," no big deal what". Two hours later and an exasperated P.A. announcers with a hoarse voice finally located Mr Tardy, he saunders out nonchalantly to find the commotion surrounding his car, Finally realising his oversight, he proceed with the speed of a wounded koala bear to remove his offending car. While the wronged parties shake fists at our hero for making them waitng for two hours, he vehemently protested "where got two hours? My watch shows only 1 hours 45 minutes only leh" and in the same breath mutters unhappily about something like "interupting his family's dinner at the KFC". Apparently, apology is not required here as he is also being wronged. Fair and square.

Dear fellow Malaysian, which category of driver do you belong to?

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