Putrajaya.

17.8.2009.

Saturday afternoon we went to Putrajaya to send Dekna's clothes because she has a ton of work to clear before her first court appearance on Monday. At least that was her excuse for getting us on the highway on Saturday, a day to be avoided because of the weekend rush out of KL. Sure enough, we were caught right before Nilai itself, a situation aggravated by two accident scenes on the KL-ward side and one on the Seremban-ward one. I say scenes because they all involved more than two cars each. And as usual, everybody slowed down to look, even from the opposite side of the highway, worsening the traffic flow.

I know Putrajaya was an idea conceived when Mahathir first took over the premiership in the early 80's. I understand that the whole 5,000 hactres would eventually hold 400,000 people, and by 2010 most of the Federal Government Departments would have been moved there from KL. I have been to Putrajaya before this, a few times for some appointments with people at a few departments, at other times just passing through to Shah Alam and KL. This time, to make it easy to meet up with Dekna, we were to rendevous at the Putrajaya grand mosque, because I'm not familiar with the internal roads, and this chosen spot is easy to locate. So I just guessed my way through with the help of the signs on the roads, and lo and behold, we reached the mosque without making a single wrong turn.

Since we had time to kill, we parked the jalopy at the spaciuos parking area in front of the mosque, and then noticed, for my first time, the sign pointing to the "Selera Putra" food court. Looking around, we chose Hameed's Nasi Kandar, but ordered roti canai because we weren't hungry. I also visited the toilet, and when Dekna came, I left her with her mother while I went to the mosque to do my Asr prayers.

There were a lot of people, many of them obviously foreign tourists. I could see that all were quite curious about the whole place - the mosque, the modern facilities, the boat rides on the lake, and the general layout and architecture of Putrajaya, because from here we could clearly see the surrounding skyline. Certainly, the whole planning and development of Putrajaya is massive and forward-looking. The appointments on the constructions are also modern and tasteful. I'm sure the visitors will come away impressed. 

The sad part is, alas, something typically Malaysian. It's the maintenance. In my years of travel when still working, I've had the chance to visit many countries all over the the world. I've also visited some of the existing Wonders of the World in Asia, Europe and America, and I know these countries have been building long before Malaysia also started building - their places of work, play and stay. And in most of these foreign countries, I noticed that the authorities have made certain that the maintenance of their places are not spared any expense. This has meant for me and my family pleasant stay and clean travel in most cases.

Our short visit on Saturday to Putrajaya, at those places mentioned, otherwise enjoyed by us, was however marred by the relatively inefficient work of maintenance carried out. There was a noticebly large number of uniformed workers milling around, doing obviously cleaning work - the sweepers around the whole area, the cleaners at the eating places, the artisans working on the mosque walls and ablutions. And yet there were too many flies around the eating tables and the food displays, the toilets were not that clean, the open spaces inside the food court and the surrounding areas ouside the mosque had uncollected debris and broken water-coolers, and the court inside the mosque held too much broken pieces of the walls being worked upon and give an ugly appearnce of not being squeaky-clean as a place of prayer should. Since there was a maintenance crew sighted, perhaps we need a stern supervisor to check on the quality of the cleaning done. That's not difficult to do. You don't need a rocket-scientist to determine the quality of maintenance carried out. I did it in my short visit. It'll be a pity if tourists pass by word of mouth the beautiful planning of Putrajaya spoiled by the ugly side of Malaysian habits. 

And this was but one small corner of the Putrajaya complex. I wonder what can be found in those large and beautiful dome-shaped palaces in the distance.

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