Boredworkers.com

Its 10:58pm and I just got home from a very eventful day. I dropped WL off earlier after work and was heading home when I struck a pothole going 50km/h. All a sudden I get squeky sounds from my left front tyre and the car keeps drifting off-centre. Pulled over at the shoulder to take a look and found a very flat tyre.

Rumaging through my trunk, I couldn’t find my original lug wrench and was having trouble getting the bolts off. Managed to get one off before WL came to the rescue. She brought along a cross wrench with a huge ass steel bar for leverage. With that and a few mistrials with the damn jack, we managed to get the flat tyre off and the spare on in roughly half an hour. Not bad considering that it was raining on and off and I was jumping in and out of the car to avoid getting too wet. Afterall, I was already sweating like a hog after the initial huffing and puffing trying to get the first nut out.

I examined the tyre to see what caused the flat and found that the sports rim was busted. So the plan now is to drop the tyre at the shop tomorrow morning to see if they can’t repair it and probably send the car for service and alignment on Saturday. Wonder how much that will set me back… This by the way is not the first time that my car’s taken damage from potholes. I’ve had a busted rim once before (lets say the rim was egg shaped) and broken my drive shafts twice! Anyway, here’s a good look at the damage:

And so the big question of the day… Who is to blame for this damage? I admit that it was partially my fault and will take some of the heat for being careless on the road and driving a wee bit fast on a small backroad. But was it all me? I’m sure all you drivers out there have hit a pothole some time or other in your long hours on the road. Heck, I remember everytime someone asked me for directions along Old Kelang Road to my place, I would tell them, “…Coming from Old Town, you drive along Old Kelang Road until you’ve passed Pearl Point on your right. Go straight down. After the 15th pothole, you’ll see a big sign that says Taman Desa. Take a right at the traffic lights and…” They’ve since upgraded Old Kelang Road and the directions no longer apply but it does illustrate a point.

Potholes are not the only problems that we are faced with. There are other bad road conditions, the most notable of which is the infamous “Jalan tidak rata” (Road is uneven). I kid you not. If you drive along the new highway cutting across to the east coast, you’ll see several road signs bearing those exact words. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Someone sure screwed up big time on that project. And why not fix the damned thing? Granted the signs are cheaper and easier to put up. Good reason, I guess.

So just how bad are Malaysian roads and why isn’t anything being done about it? Is it that we have too many road to take care of them all? Is the roadworks department undermanned? Do they have insufficient funds to finance the road repairs? Or is it just that the people in charge are simply too lazy to get their rotting carcases out of their seats to do some actual work and that the taxes we’re paying is going a long way to line some faggot’s silk pockets? Questions, questions… and all without answers. All we can do is speculate, continue bringing up the subject, pray that someone will take note and hope beyond all odds that, eventually, action will be taken.

So with all these crummy road conditions, is it still worth owning a car and driving? Well, to me it is. I’ll continue paying my taxes, living with the increasing petrol prices, swallow the high maintenance costs and risk the dangerous roads because it is a convenience to me and like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water, I’ve gotten used to it. Cheers.

Here are some directions if you don’t know how to change a flat tyre. Although come think of it, some of the directions doesn’t apply since my tyre only has three (3) lug nuts :P