Reading an e-mail passed around joke is probably not why you are reading
my blog. But the one that follows gave me a chuckle and then I realized it
really is not a joke. A very similar circumstance occurred to me in Malaysia.
Minus the police car – the only time you will see one of those is when they
have a roadside check for someone they are seeking or driving at breakneck
speeds down the trails with one of the men in uniform hanging out of a door
with a rifle pointed at cars they pass. Sounds farfetched, but I have
experienced it all.
So, here is the joke, and my own experience follows. Once you have read
both, you can decide if the story/stories is/are something to laugh at, or
whether I should be given a flight home and have my license revoked.
Here is the joke:
Sitting on the side of the highway waiting
to catch speeding drivers, a Police Officer sees a car puttering along at 22
KPH. He says he to himself: "This driver is just as dangerous as a
speeder!"
So he turns on his lights and pulls the
driver over.
Approaching the car, he notices that there
are five old ladies,
two in the front seat and three in the
back...wide eyed and white as ghosts.
The driver, obviously confused, says to him
"Officer, I don't understand, I was doing exactly the speed limit! What
seems to be the problem?"
"Ma'am,"
the officer replies, "you weren't speeding, but you should know that
driving slower than the speed limit can also be a danger to other
drivers."
"Slower than
the speed limit? No sir, I was doing the speed limit exactly...Twenty-two
kilometers an hour!" ..the old
woman says a bit proudly.
The Police
officer, trying to contain a chuckle explains to her that 22 is the highway
number, not the speed limit.
A bit embarrassed,
the woman grins and thanks the officer for pointing out her error.
"But before I
let you go, Ma'am, I have to ask...Is everyone in this car OK? These women seem awfully shaken, and they
haven't made a peep this whole time," the officer asks.
"Oh, they'll
be all right in a minute officer. We just got off Highway 189.."
At the beginning of my adventure here, I had to drive weekly, in the
complete darkness of predawn - down to a God forsaken place that I had never
been to before. So, my virgin trip, in the dark, made me keep wondering if I had
missed the exit. Exit my foot! There are no exits here, just ends of trails and
all of a sudden you are there. Anyway, I was very concerned when I came upon a
round sign that read 90 inside the round border. As I whizzed past it (in order
to keep up with the 120 km/h drivers - actually not at all keeping up, just
trying to avoid them hitting my rear-end as hard as they could, I second
guessed what I read. There are few road signs to guide your journey, and those
that are posted tend to be willy nilly. You may see a sign as you leave a
larger centre that advises the distance to some faraway destination. Then
further down the road, you will see a sign again – maybe – telling you the
distance to that destination, and it is posted as “next”. It is not next; there
are about 6-7 other little places before. So, imagine what one thinks when
driving in the dark, and not knowing where they are going, and dodging lorries,
tractors, head on idiots passing whenever the spirit moves them, wild boars
crossing, and any other obstacle you can imagine. OK, so back to the trip. I
spy a sign that says 90, but I left Kota Tinggi on 92, and did not turn. What happened to 92? I cannot believe the speed is 90, no one is
driving even close to that speed – except for the tractors and the odd broken
down vehicle, but they are passed even by me! I finally find a place to pull
over – a school area in fact. No one there, as it is too early for school to
start. I do not have a map, because there are no maps available in Kota Tinggi
and at that time I was not brave enough to venture elsewhere to find one. I call Jeff. He has reached the destination
just minutes before my call. He is great for NOT LISTENING. So, decides I have
turned toward some resort. His instructions are for me to get back on the road,
turn right (supposedly in his mind, back in direction of Kota Tinggi) and then
find a place to turn right and follow the road. If I had followed his instructions,
I would have been on the east coast of Malaysia, somewhere in a resort area. Nowhere
near my destination. I ignored his message, turned off the phone and madam GPS and
tried again – following the route I was on. In less than a minute, I saw the
sign Rengit – my destination! What I saw on the highway was the speed limit. No
words, just a number. Not at all like a highway sign back home. But here, they don’t
use highway numbers; in fact, everyone uses the final destination of that road
as the name. So, 92 is Rengit road. My highway to work is the Mersing road,
although it is highway 3 on a map. But even the emergency people who answer
calls do not know highway 3. Good grief. So, in defence of the little old
ladies travelling at 22 on 22, I fully understand their confusion.
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