School holidays should mean moving around the countryside, visits to the beach, visiting relatives & friends, and things of that sort. But it can also mean long weekends at close relatives' wedding activities. This week, having to travel daily from Seremban to Batu Kikir from Monday to Sunday, it has been a tormenting week of enduring the now notorious Seremban-KP crawl.
The thing is, most people have no choice but to pick the school holidays if they want to have wedding receptions. And if one has to take this particularly horrendous road to attend one, one has to have large reserves of patience, good humour and fuel.
Since I can remember, this road has not had a complete rest from various kinds of repairs. These last few years the government seems in a new-found hurry to do all kinds of upgrading, as if there are new-found funds, or new-found urgency to do everything all at the same time.
To add to problem, the efforts of the national car industry to put one within the reach of previously only motorcycle-affording people have only added the number of cars on the road.
Mind you, I'm not against progress, wherever it's evidenced. What the authorities must ensure is that the infrastructure is sufficient to handle the progress. In the case of the Seremban - KP road, it should mean the capacity of the road, and the control of the road users.
I remember that it wasn't that many years ago that I could drive from Seremban to KP in about 40 minutes, or even less if speed limits were not too much adhered to. Yesterday one particular car-load of guests to Pa' Ijoi's daughter's wedding took 2 whole hours !
And it's not even Hari Raya yet.
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