Why Motorcyclists Die...

In my last post, I described the funeral wakes for two young boys who had died in a motorcycle accident only the previous night. I would like to continue the story here, and to add some of my own insights.

Nobody knows how the boys died, except that they had gone out on their motorbikes the previous evening, and were found dead at the side of the road at six this morning. At the post-mortem, it was found that one of them had a broken skull and there was dirty water in his lungs, suggesting drowning in the roadside ditch. Although I'm no detective, I would surmise that they were riding their bikes together and may have been hit by passing traffic, ending up in the ditch. But we will probably never know.

One hears of deaths like this all over Malaysia. Youngsters, usually, on motorbikes, hit by a car or truck, falling onto the road at speed or colliding with another vehicle, ending up dead or badly injured. I once saw some photographs as a safety exhibition run by the police. One photo showed a policeman holding what looked like bloody human brains in a crash helmet, at the scene of a motorbike fatality.

The Malaysian Government has for many years now been organising increasingly hard-hitting and gory safety campaigns on the television and radio, showing us the importance of road safety and highlighting the human consequences of road accidents. Yet despite all this commendable official effort, these deaths and injuries keep happening time and time again, and they seem to be getting more frequent.

Is it because the riders don't wear helmets? No. Most of them do wear crash helmets. Is it because they ride too fast or too madly? Well, probably not, despite the well-publicised Mat Rempit illegal racer incidents in Peninsular Malaysia. Is it because the police don’t enforce the law? Well, it seems that the police are constantly stopping motorcyclists for various offenses, including riding without helmets. So there must be some other causes...

To me, as a fairly neutral observer, there are indeed other causes. After seven years in this country, I have been able to identify three factors that may cause the deaths of so many motorcyclists. These factors are the attitudes of road users, the state of the roads themselves, and the street lighting conditions at night.

Let us firstly deal with the attitude of other road users towards motorcyclists. Quite simply, motorcyclists don’t seem to get much respect from other motorists. You see, most people who ride motorcycles, especially in Sarawak, fall into two groups: young students, and the poor. Young students will include school kids, and university and college undergraduates. The poor, for this analysis, will include low-income groups such as farmers, factory workers, soldiers and junior-ranking office workers.

Now, young students ride motorbikes because it’s cool and convenient to ride them, plus that’s all they can afford. The poor just ride them because that’s all they can afford. And you will frequently find that many who have a motorbike will use it to carry the whole family – mum, dad, and often two or more little kids. Because it’s all they’ve got, and all they can afford.

Now, many people on the road, driving cars and trucks and vans, are not from these groups, or work for people who are not from these groups, and they seem to treat those who ride motorbikes like low-class scum. After all, they don’t pay much road tax lah, they are just poor people lah, who cares about them lah? They have so many bloody kids lah, whose gonna miss another one lah?

So it’s OK to turn left straight in front of a motorcycle without signalling, or to knock one over without stopping, or to drive too close to one, forcing the rider into the kerb, or to hit one from behind. So, the riders of motorbikes are not even on the respect radar, and as a result, they become victims of bloody-mindedness and sheer snobbery. They are so small lah!

Now the second reason why, in my analysis, motorcyclists die so frequently is the road surface itself. Now let me throw a scenario at you, dear readers. Imagine you are travelling at 60 kilometres per hour in a car and you hit a small hole in the road. What will you feel? At worst, a slight blip in your suspension.

But what if you are riding a motorbike at the same speed and you hit the same hole? If you are lucky, your bike will buck upwards and you may be able to land in the right direction, and carry on riding. At worst, even if you are not going very fast, you may come flying off your bike like a thrown steeplechaser. I wouldn’t fancy your chances, to be honest!

Now no matter how we may deny it, in some parts of Kuching, some roads have potholes, especially the smaller secondary roads. And not just potholes, but the whole road surface is in some places so uneven and bumpy that driving can be akin to sailing in a speedboat on choppy seas.

Indeed, certain roads in and around Kuching seem to have surfaces with the consistency of chewing gum. Perhaps because of the heat, the surface has warped, and one of the results is that the edges of the road are very uneven indeed. So usually, to avoid being struck from behind, motorcyclists have to ride at the edge of the road.... where the potholes are at their thickest!

Ironically, one example of this kind of road is the very road where the two dead boys lived.

Now I know the authorities have been repairing and improving the roads a lot in recent years, and I applaud them for that. They have done a great job in the seven years I have been here in this town. But it is still the case that potholes and uneven road surfaces exist.

Now, as a car driver, I experience potholes and uneven road surfaces merely as a bumpy ride, little more. A minor inconvenience that keeps me from falling asleep at the wheel. But imagine if you are a motorcyclist. It means that every few metres, you have to make split-second decisions at speed (with a visor partially blocking your vision) as to which part of the road is safest to ride on. Sometimes you may have to ride all over the place just to avoid being thrown off your bike.

So the road isn’t exactly a friend to motorcyclists either....

A final factor which may contribute to the deaths of motorcyclists is poor road lighting. Now I have never been able to understand why the street lighting, where it exists, is so dim after dark in Kuching, the State Capital? It's a complete mystery to me, but then again, so are UFOs and ghosts.

So, imagine you are a motorcyclist. You have to both see and be seen. Not always a problem if you are in a car because you have big headlights at the front, and bright shining red fairy lights at the back. But remember, motorcycles have very small front headlights, with a narrow cone of light, and even smaller rear lights. And on top of this, motorcycles present a small, narrow profile in the dark compared to a car, and this is made even worse when the street lights, where they exist, are so dim. Not only is it difficult to see in front of you, it is also that much more difficult to be seen in turn.

Now I realise that many motorcyclists make it harder on themselves by wearing dark clothes and even sometimes neglect to fix their broken rear lights. Yes, this is a serious problem which must be addressed by the authorities concerned. But, if the street lights were brighter in the first place, I am certain that most car drivers would be able to see any motorcyclist more clearly, and in turn the motorcyclist would be able to see in front more clearly too.

So, gentle readers, I wonder how many more grieving families will have to endure the loss of their future heroes and heroines? How many more agonized screams of relatives and loved ones will have to ring out from the nation’s homes at the news of a death? And how much more blood will need to be washed off from the roadsides?

Not much more, I pray, not much more...

Here today, gone tomorrow...

My grandfather used to say this, whenever we discussed death: "here today, gone tomorrow". Of course, in his broad Berkshire accent, it came out as "ere tudday, gone tumorra". But the meaning remains the same however it is rendered.

Today, I was reminded of just how absolute this seemingly trite observation can be. Being a Saturday, the day started off in a pleasant, relatively trouble-free way, with a nice late breakfast with Annie and our nephew at the Tun Jugah Food Court. I had something I haven't eaten for almost five years - Cantonese fried noodles: a plate-sized round pillow of crispy noodles with a pool of eggy, chickeny sauce in the middle into which the hard noodles slowly sink and become soft and wet. Ah, the childish pleasures of life!

Later on, I took our nephew off for a book hunt, firstly stopping off at the excellent MyBookstore.com and its neighbour Sinar. We didn't buy anything, it was just a pleasure to look and browse and remind ourselves that one of the greatest things about being alive is being able to read, and learn.

After this, off to the only second-hand bookstore I have encountered in Malaysia, Book Castle, on the Jalan Zaidi Adruce near the hospital. Lots of old paperbacks and hardbacks, but not arranged in any thematic order, forcing us to search through the whole lot to see any gems. My neck hurt from constantly bending down to look at the lower shelves. And, there was nothing I liked. Slightly miffed...

Then, on the way home, we received orders from the General (Annie, who we had earlier dropped at home) to get some bananas on the way home. Went to get the bananas, then decided to eat (the torrential rain having a big role in forcing our detour). Then, more orders from HQ diverted us to the BDC shopping centre near home where we went looking at books again, then got soaked to the skin running back to the car.

Then, finally, we drove home. Wet, tired from all that shopping and running. And me looking forward to enjoying the rest of the afternoon reading with a nice warm cup of tea. But it wasn't to be...

When we arrived home, Annie was fully dressed. Apparently, two of her students had been killed that day in a road accident and, as Annie was their teacher, we were to visit the homes of the dead boys to offer condolences. So, off we went in the driving rain, to the kampung area near Annie's school where the boys lived.

The first house was a pitifully simple place, bare walls with jungle at the back, full of people of all ages, mostly from the Iban group, which meant they were Christian. The dead boy was laid out in an immaculate wooden coffin with bright shining brass handles, surrounded by relatives and friends. There was a sudden up-swelling of wailing emotion, which always gets my eyes watering, but I controlled myself. We sat on the floor, and offered a small envelope with money to the mother, a local custom.

I remember noticing how peaceful and still the boy was, laying there with cotton-wool plugs in his nose, indicating a recent post-mortem. And I thought to myself that this young boy, killed the day after the end of school, was alive and running around just twenty four hours earlier. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "those whom the Gods love, grow young".

After making our respectful exit, we drove a quarter mile up the road to the house of the other boy who had died. This next house was accessed by bouncing our way across a stream on a rickety wooden walkway. It had a similar sad tableau as the previous one, but there were more relatives and friends this time, old men smoking, the remains of food on the table outside the house, the same dark, simple bare interior of the house, hot, sweltering, crowds of brown-skinned youngsters on the floor, with another young boy laid out in a beautiful coffin as a centrepiece, below a faded picture of Christ.

At the feet of the coffin, a dark old man was tending a small brazier where a pungent wood was burning, sending a strong, musky smoke up to the ceiling. Later, Annie told me that this is to mask the smell of the corpse, and perhaps to ward off the flies. We stayed there for a respectful period, then gave the requisite envelope of money to the mother, who was oddly calm I thought, and left this second scene of sudden death.

Here today, gone tomorrow. What a way to finish off the day....

Coffee and Violence...

Let me ask you something. How many times have you injured yourself while paying for a cup of coffee? Probably not that often, I would guess. But that's exactly what happened to me this evening. Don't worry, dear readers, it wasn't really serious, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the coffee itself!

Celebrating a sudden windfall, I took the wife and one of the kids to that emporium of earthly delights, Starbucks, at the Kuching International Airport. When they opened a Starbucks in Kuching, I was particularly pleased, as up to then there wasn't really a decent place to find really good coffee here in the cat city, unless of course you are counting that place in Sarawak Plaza that rhymes with "Toffee Wean"!

Starbucks is a great place to relax, and the chairs are actually built for people of my size, so I will never die from Deep Vein Thrombosis while drinking coffee at Starbucks!! You can just while away your time sipping excellent coffee and watching the world go by. If you have a laptop you can wirelessly plug into the Net, though I don't do that yet. I've only just learned how to use Bluetooth!

Starbucks thoughtfully offer a wide range of coffee-related products for sale, such as coffee beans, coffee mugs, and of course umbrellas and soft toys. And there are tempting little extras such as sweets, sandwiches and perhaps the biggest chocolate coins I have ever eaten.

But it was the coffee I was there for this evening. So, I went up to the counter and ordered my usual latte, plus vanillas and food for the others, and thought I would treat myself to a Billie Holiday CD they were selling. Then, when the smiling girl behind the counter (a former student) asked me if I had two sen change, I awkwardly poked my fingers into that little space in my wallet reserved for change, and instead of finding the requisite coins, came out with a small cut on my hand.

Now you might be asking, how on earth did you manage to cut your hand fishing for change in your wallet? Surely, Prof. Madder, you are truly a Cursed White Man!!

Well, to be honest, I am not naturally accident-prone, despite recent events. And this time, my little wallet-based incident was caused by my Swiss Army credit card. This is a James Bond tool which I keep in my wallet. It's small and blue, and the size of a thick credit card. It has a magnifying glass, tiny pen, scissors, flashlight, pull-out screwdrivers, ruler, tweezers, little pin and, of course, a dinky little Swiss Army blade.

And it was this blade that had somehow slipped out of the credit card and punctured my hand as I reached in to retrieve my coins. So this handy little device which I had kept for emergencies had found its first victim: its owner! But never mind, no blood spilt. Well, not much anyway...

But I must say the latte was excellent, for all that. My wife and nephew had a hot vanilla each and shared a sandwich and some crisps. We sat, chatted and watched all the fashionable young things of Kuching posing and chatting on their mobile phones and playing board games.

The cut was nothing, and will go away very quickly. But the experience of Starbucks is one I will cherish forever. At least until the next time I go there...

Back on the Blog...

Well, folks, I'm back after spending the week marking my exam papers. Yes, it's that time of year again where the education industry briefly goes into battle mode: the exam season.

In Malaysian universities, final exams are held once every semester, and we have two semesters per year. So that's an awful lot of exams, and an awful lot of fear and anxiety! And that's just the lecturers!!

But seriously, you have to feel a bit sorry for the students at this time of year. They have a lot of obstacles in the way of their studying hard for the exams. For one thing, they only have about two weeks to study after the end of the semester. And they only have fifteen weeks of classes before exams, because we follow the Semester system here in Malaysia. This may be fine for some content subjects but for English, it doesn't exactly give students a great deal of time to improve their proficiency much. Ah well...

I remember back in the UK, where we have Terms, our finals were at the end of the academic year, around June. Lots of time to study and learn (though bear in mind Parkinson's Law that work expands to fill the time available for its completion!) But here, the finals are at much shorter intervals. I wonder how my little charges manage to learn all that stuff and keep it in their fevered brains long enough to spew it out onto paper again for the required two or three hours.

Thank God I don't have to sit exams myself, that's what I say! Mind you, life isn't quite a bed of roses. I still have to mark loads of scripts crammed full of essays and comprehension passages and other English exercises of varying quality. Forests of poor handwriting (mind you I can't talk!) and of course the curse of all language teachers everywhere: bad grammar and spelling.

It's a professional vice of mine but I can't help collecting examples of what we linguists euphemistically call 'Learner English'. I actually do this for my research, but a few real howlers cropped up among my marking this week. Allow me to share them with you. The first two are from essays on road safety, while the last one is from a passage on workplace interaction:

Howler No. 1: "For me, safety is more important than beautiful"

Howler No. 2: "Death in accident is wasteless"

Howler No. 3: "...to take certain actions which will help him to overcome his unsatisfied feelingness in a right way..."

I mean what were they on?!?!

I was commenting to a colleague this afternoon that looking at the English produced by learners is like reading the lyrics of a David Bowie song. Apparently, Bowie used to experiment with cutting up words and phrases randomly selected from newspaper articles. He would play around with the order of the words until he got the right LSD-induced effect. This means that my students are far from ignorant about language. They are just playing around with words, just to make my life interesting!!!

But seriously, I do care very much about my students, and admire them for tackling advanced studies in a language which is not their own. I really support them and hope that they have all the success in the world. Here is a picture of some of them sweating in an exam:

Can't you just SMELL the fear and sweat!?

But enough of this blatant sadism. My dear wife has just made a cup of tea. More blagging on the blog tomorrow, if you are good boys and girls!!

Class dismissed!!!

Chemotherapy Diary #2: Cycle Two

It's strange how something as outwardly scary as chemotherapy can become so routine. That's just how it felt this morning as we took our little patient over to the Sarawak General Hospital Oncology Unit for her next cycle.

The place was just the same - the familiar brightly lit waiting room and the nice soothing water feature next to the pharmacy counter. The same paintings on the walls in the corridor outside. And the same wait for me while Annie, accompanied by her sister, went off for her routine blood test.

While I waited for them to come back, I struggled to concentrate on an excellent Stephen King short story collection I had been reading, which I suppose in a dark way was appropriate reading for this place. I couldn't help noticing that this time there seemed to be so many more people waiting for treatment. Most of them were fairly old - there was one papery old guy in a wheelchair, his bone-thin arms and legs framing a sunken, shrivelled face with the pallor of a Holocaust survivor. I remember wishing that the remaining days left for him will be happy ones.

Had that many more people got cancer since our last visit three weeks ago? Or were they the same people? When Annie came back from her blood test half an hour later, she recognised a plump Malay lady who was also undergoing chemo, and they chatted for a while. After not very long, Annie was called into the chemo day care room, to receive her latest drugs. Just to remind you, gentle readers, here are some photos. Annie is the one wearing pink:



This time, her session was a little longer, just over two hours. The drugs were the same - the cherryade and the lemonade! Afterwards, she felt ravenously hungry, and we took her to Chillipeppers for lunch!!

Many of you reading this will obviously want to know more about the effects of chemotherapy and, after seeing it first hand for three weeks, I can fill you in. Annie has gone through all kinds of weird symptoms since her first cycle last month. Here are the most notable:

• vomiting. Especially the first couple of days. Drinking fizzy drinks such as Coke or 100-Plus (isotonic) definitely helped. Plus she had drugs to control the vomiting!
• Burning sensation in the nerves and veins of the arms and hands. In the first week mainly, and this was again controlled by taking steroids
• Headaches and fever
• Painful ulcers inside the mouth, and irritating acne around the mouth and face
• Lack of energy
• Loss of appetite and taste (though we made sure she ate!)
• Slight bloating of the face and stomach
• Mood swings (well, wouldn't you?!?)
  
• Black stools
• Red urine and, of course:
• Severe hair loss. Annie has now lost over 80 percent of the hair on her head. But this will grow back once the chemotherapy treatment stops. Just look at a recent photo of Kylie Minogue if you don't believe me!! Mind you, I hope Annie doesn't become blonde like Kylie!!
  

So chemotherapy is not much fun, and different people experience it differently. They say the cure is worse than the disease, but then again, the cure doesn't kill you.

Annie is in fairly good spirits, considering. We know she will be OK, but that's hard to internalise for her sometimes, I am sure. All we can give her at the moment is love and support. And lots of Coke and Cherryade!!

Coining It In

Ever since the Americans buggered up the world oil supply by invading Iraq, the price of oil has rapidly headed North, making it more important than ever for frequent flyers to get value for money. And here in Malaysia, that means Air Asia – the fastest growing low-cost airline in Asia.

If I’m not travelling on official business (when I use Malaysian Airlines (MAS)), I use Air Asia, mainly because it’s a little bit cheaper than MAS. But cheap does not necessarily mean cheerful.

Being a Low Cost Carrier, Air Asia exists only to cut costs and therefore maximise profits. You see evidence of this all throughout their operations - the ground staff often double up as cabin attendants, you don’t get a guaranteed seat unless you pay extra on your ticket, and once you get on board, you have to pay for the in-flight meals and drinks. Also, you often find the interior of the cabin is slightly less clean than on other airlines, because Air Asia saves on cleaning costs.

Now that the price of a barrel of oil is creeping towards $100, I’m beginning to wonder how many more ways Air Asia can economise, apart of course from adding lots of hidden extra charges to the ticket price and forcing travellers back onto MAS.

This idle speculation led me to think of a particularly dark and somewhat comical possibility which I would not be surprised to see happening in reality. What if, in order to save fuel costs, one of the Low Cost Carriers such as Air Asia actually passed on the cost of the fuel the aircraft was using to the passengers, while they are actually flying?

Imagine this if you will: instead of including fuel surcharges in the ticket price, the Low Cost Carrier installs little coin meters next to every seat in the cabins of its aircraft. Once the plane takes off, and reaches cruising altitude, an automatic switch on the flight deck will cut off the fuel supply to the engines.

Then, A little voice will announce over the PA system: “good evening ladies and gentlement, you are advised that in order to restore fuel supply to the aircraft engines, guests must insert the sum of five Ringgit Malaysia into the coin slot on your seat. Only 50 sen coins are accepted by the machine at this time. If you require change, please approach one of our cabin attendants. Have a nice day and enjoy your flight!”

You can imagine the ensuing scramble for 50 sen pieces and the mad rush to feed them into the little slots, just like the slot machines in a Vegas casino. Everyone in the plane will be frantically feeding coins into their slots, shouting and cursing when they drop some, anxiously eyeing the little display monitor on the cabin bulkhead that tells them how much money has been collected, and how much more needs to be fed in.

And as the required amount is reached, the plane’s engines will start to whine again, the aircon and lights will power up, and the aircraft will come out of its nose-dive after the pilots have managed to steer it away from catastrophe.

Don’t laugh! Don’t think this can never happen. Remember, how many people twenty years ago would have believed that we would be flying around on an airline that makes you pay for your food? How many people would have thought it possible that free-seating would become the norm on a major international airline? And how many people would have dreamed that the price of oil would approach $100 a barrel?

Certainly not me.

No Escape...

Well, gentle readers, rather than smashing my video camera against the wall, I managed today to transfer some video content to my PC. It seems that my mistake was to assume that I could transfer the data straight onto a CD. Instead, I had to transfer it to the hard disk first.

Easy when you know how, isn't it?

On the subject of technology making our lives less not more pleasant, I read a very disturbing news article on the BBC Website yesterday. It seems that scientists have worked out how to stop mobile phone signals from interfering with the navigational equipment on airliners. They have developed a system for allowing mobile phones to be used inside the cabin of an aircraft, as long as it is flying above 3,000 metres.

Now I'm all in favour of scientific research and human progress and all that Star Trek stuff, but come on, don't you think these scientists have gone a bit too far in "giving the customers what they want"? I mean, don't they realise what a hellish Pandora's Box they have just opened?

Imagine what flying in a plane will be like about two years from now, when the system has finally been approved and all the airlines slavishly install it in their cabins. You get yourself comfortably seated and buckled in, the in-flight magazine nicely balanced on your gut, or your favourite novel open in your hand and, just after takeoff, a soft little 'beep' will sound in the cabin, announcing that 'mobile devices such as phones and laptop computers can now be activated safely'.

And activated they will be, oh yes, and pretty damn quick! The cabin will suddenly metamorphose into a beeping, clicking, flying coffee-house; a great loud Babel of different tongues gabbling and barking and quacking and yelping into their PDAs, bluetooth earpieces, mobile phones and God knows what else. If you're lucky, the staccato chorus of 100 thumbs clicking SMS messages into existence will quietly permeate the aisles and rows of the plane. But more likely, the passengers sitting RIGHT NEXT TO YOU will be those special people blessed by God Almighty with the loudest and most irritatingly nasal voices ever to have been produced by human vocal apparatus.

And that's just Business Class!!

Imagine what this cacophonous Inner Circle of the Damned will be like back in Economy where you are squeezed together like on a Slave Ship. It's bad enough at the moment when someone a few rows behind you makes up for his lack of mobile fix by speaking exceptionally loudly to his neighbour about something utterly and confoundedly dull and stupefyingly boring. You just want to get up out of your seat, reach back and commit an outrageous act of Air Rage just to SHUT THEM UP!!!!

And that, my dear friends, is only a merest taste of what it's going to be like on every flight, everywhere in the world IF these scientists get their way and their damned system gets the green light. Everyone will be able to piss you off BIG TIME for hours and hours on end, without being told off by the cabin staff for causing a danger to the other passengers. You can forget about concentrating on your Stephen King or Harry Potter. You can completely forget about sitting back and soaking up the calm, stratospheric peace of air travel. And you can forget about being able to hold a conversation with that pretty girl/handsome guy next to you because he or she will be too busy clicking away!!!

The only respite you will get is mealtime and, if you are lucky enough to be on a long-haul flight, the in-flight movies. But apart from that, if you are like me and think of travel as a much-needed stretch of calm in between the chaos of departure and the madness of arrival, then you will not be a very happy chappie at all.

So I would like to make a request to all airlines, especially Malaysian Airlines and Air Asia, which I use frequently. Please, Oh Please do not adopt this technology which will bring Hell and Misery to the cabins of your aircraft! Please go on believing that mobile phone signals will have catastrophic effects on an aircraft, and cause it to go off course and crash.

If you grant my wish, I will be soooooooo happy, and I will sooooo keep on enjoying your in-cabin experience. If you don't, well, I suppose I'll have to fall back on Plan B: stuff my ears up with cotton wool. Then I'll be able to read my book!