GPS-ing in KL
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008Rob writing….
OK, so I know the stereotype is that guys never stop to ask for directions, right? So how does a modern guy get across a city he has not driven in for 7 years, and where the road systems are now completely different? You got it – he uses a GPS. Even brags about how easy it will be to get around in this new city with his trusty cube of modern electronics. I mean, all REAL men have one – right?
Funnily enough, even though most men appear adverse to taking instructions from their wives, they will happily take instructions from a computerised female yankee telling them to “turn left in 50m”. OK, so my GPS doesn’t have the female voiceover thankfully, but it does have those all-important prompts. So what could go wrong? Hmmmm, how about when the GPS maps you are using are two years old (coz the owner of the GPS was too tight to spend money to BUY the latest version maps)? And what about the fact that Malaysian highways now have about eight lanes in places with four different exit points all occurring simultaneously (it seems) and the GPS does not help you know which lane is which? Well… then you resort to the most effective means of navigation – ask your wife to read the road signs for you!
The fun started out today with the simple decision after lunch to race across town to take the older kids to look for watches – their main goal for their savings in the last year. So, we quickly put the young ones down for a sleep, Grandpa offered to look after them, and the rest of us jumped into the van and plugged in our destination: 1 Utamah Mall. The GPS tells no lies – it was a simple 15 km trip. I was confident. This would be a walk in the park to navigate, after all, I had my trusty GPS in hand. So we headed off following the faithful prompts from our little unit. About 4 km into the journey, things started to get interesting. Firstly, the GPS instructed us to TAKE EXIT 103 SOUTH ON SS2. Simple, really – however, all the road signs had Exits 2204, 2205 and a whole other variety of numbers that bore absolutely no resemblance to the GPS’s numbers. Soon the dreaded communication prompt came: OFF ROUTE. RECALCULATE? A silent muttering at the GPS and a quick push of YES RECALCUATE had us once again following the straight and narrow pink track on that 2 inch screen. For about 4 minutes…before once again we found ourselves OFF ROUTE. Well, to cut a long story short, we took over 40 minutes to get to our destination with about 4 double backs, trackbacks, turnarounds.
You would think that is where the story ends… I wish I could say that was true… but the worst was yet to come. After a fruitless search of the mall for cheap watches (and later we would discover we had gone to the wrong part of the mall!!!), we jumped back into the van to head home. Let me summarise… we lost count of the number of RECALUCLATE? prompts that we endured, we struggled with 6 lane highways, GPS instructions that did not match actual road signs, Federal highway exits that were not always signposted, even a huge tropical downpour which reduced visibility to about 30m with spectacular lightning and flooded roads, driving what looked to be the wrong way up an offramp (but it also happened to be the onramp and you just had to do a legitimate u-turn when you got to the highway…..hairy stuff!)…. and those are just the highlights! To make matters even more frustrating for Mr Techno, Rach’s prompts to take exit A instead of B proved to be correct on more than one occasion – but not before I ignored them and tried to follow what I thought the GPS was saying! Even I know when to admit defeat, and after an hour of frustration, u-turns, going through the same toll road 2 (or was that 3?!) times, giving the GPS all kinds of threats involving being thrown from a (not so fast) moving vehicle…. I said – “Let’s follow your road signs eh?” So gracious really.
And in the end a combination of Rach’s good navigation and my now-not-so-faithful GPS we arrived back home after an hour and a half of travelling, about 40 kms of u-turns and zig-zags. I still like my GPS, but my confidence has been rocked. It withstood a fair bit of mental abuse today, and I am telling myself that it was simply because of the old maps, and that the old “rubbish-in & rubbish out” programming logic was more to blame than my own navigation skills. But quietly I am not so sure! Rach has been graciously quiet – although all the cousins had a great laugh at our journey when told about it this evening. Tomorrow we have to drive 25 km across town back to another family member’s place. Sigh. This time we spent 10 minutes discussing the route with my cousin first! Things can only get better from here, right? ……
Today’s route is in aqua…..unfortunately, you cannot see the u-turns and trackbacks up the same roads!!
I've always looked with admiration and wonder at those classic shots from trains that other people take....now we are in the position to take our own. Expect more of these!
Train Journey Number 1 on the Ekspres ... 
rayres