Puddles on the roads

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.” It sounds romantic if what poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore wrote is taken literally, but not so for the clouds over Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere in the past week, which were an indicator of rainstorms, that, more often than not, brought about heavy rain, floods and massive traffic jams.
Some of us, if not all, know of people who have had experienced being caught in such situations during a downpour. 
My first experience with floods was when I was schooling at Convent Johor Baru. Heavy rain and high tide had caused Jalan Yahya Awal to be flooded. Back then, my late father and I had this understanding that whenever Jalan Yahya Awal is flooded, I was to wait for him at the back gate of the school. 
The only other time I got trapped in a flash flood was in Kuala Lumpur in the late 1980s. I remember having to wade through knee-high, dirty water late one night at Jalan Pahang, enroute to Danau Kota where I was living back then. I had just left the office as it had rained heavily earlier but it didn’t cross my mind that water had risen in some parts of the city. 
The cab driver saw that the road ahead after the Courts Mammoth building in Setapak was already submerged, but he didn’t think the water was too high to pass through. 
As we hit the water, the car engine spluttered and eventually stalled. Water quickly seeped in. The cabbie asked me to get out of the car and wait for him on the curb. As I opened the door of the car, water rushed in. 
The driver joined me on the curb after he called over the radio for a replacement cab to take me home. 
I have been in Kuala Lumpur for the past 30-odd years, and I can personally tell you that the city has never overcome its flood problems despite the introduction of the Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel (SMART Tunnel) in 2003. 
A civil engineering-trained friend said most of our roads are not “flood-friendly”, in that when it rains, the water does not flow into the drains. “That is why we’ll get puddles of water on the road,” he explained. 
Even our highways are flooded at times. Besides the so-called flaw in the construction of our roads, the blockages in the drains are also causing the floods. 
I just have to look at Jalan Liku in Bangsar where my office is. A heavy downpour for an hour or so will see water rising up to one metre high. After the water recedes, you'll see all kinds of rubbish on the road, such as twigs and branches of trees, plastic bottles, dead critters and other stuff. 
Although the public needs to be educated to keep the environment clean, the authorities concerned must also ensure that the drains are maintained for water to flow freely. The local authorities and the ministries concerned must make sure that this is done. 
I used to listen to my late father rant about this back when we got caught in the flood on the way home from school. He thought that local councillors and officers of agencies concerned should be out and about in the rain to see for themselves the clogged drains and the flood-prone areas. 
Only then would they know how serious the problem was, and is. This year, the Malaysian Meteorological Department has forecast rainfall from the second week of this month, with more heavy rain from next month to January. Massive floods are likely if there is continuous rainfall. 
The department categorised rain in three categories: yellow (where heavy rain is expected to occur within one to three days); orange (occasionally moderate rain of 0.5-4mm/hour for more than one day) and red (moderate rain turn to heavy downpour with accumulated rainfall expected to reach 100mm/day). 
Rain is also expected to be continuous for one day. It was reported that the government established the National Disaster Relief Committee under the National Security Council (NSC) in 1972 with the task of coordinating flood relief operations at national, state and district levels with a view to prevent loss of human lives and to reduce flood damage. 
The NSC confirmed that the December 2014-January 2015 floods were the worst in the history of the country, where 21 people were killed and more than 200,000 lost their homes with damages estimated at RM1 billion. 
Over the past few years, I had gone on flood relief missions in several states. My team had driven through waist-high flood waters to get to affected villages. We went to schools and community halls, which had been converted into temporary relief centres. Some victims sought refuge at mosques and surau. 
One temporary relief centre we visited was also flooded, where the water was knee-high. Wherever we went, we found food in abundance, but basic stuff like toiletries were scarce. These victims and their families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs. 
The first time I volunteered on the mission, it was pretty hard for me. While I was ready for the hard work during the mission, I wasn't emotionally prepared for it. But, I cannot compare that to what the victims and their families had gone through, especially those who lost their loved ones. 
The psychological impact can be long-lasting. I am hopeful that we are ready to face the floods and are better prepared this time around to help the flood victims. Let us also pray for this year’s monsoon season to be kinder on all of us.​

Excursions, anyone?

MY niece, who is studying at a university, lives in a residential college where she shares a room with four students from other states. She came home for the mid-term semester break recently and shared some observations with her parents about her college mates. 
One pertinent observation she made, besides their weak command of the English language, was that they were somewhat “isolated” from the outside world. It was quite shocking to her that some of her college mates had not been to Kuala Lumpur before. 
“I tell them of some of the known places in Kuala Lumpur and it drew a blank stares. I talk about some famous shops and they didn’t know about them,” she said. 
She, too, had a dose of culture shock as some of her college mates spoke in their own dialects with thick accents, which was difficult for her to understand. “I had to get someone else to tell me what she means although she was speaking in Malay,” she added. 
Upon hearing her story, I extended an offer of a staycation in the federal capital for her and her roommates at any time of their convenience. But, it had to be an education trip for them like those school excursions that I went on during my secondary school days. 
Some of us, if not all, must have gone on at least one school trip before. Of the many trips organised by my school, I remembered getting permission to go for only two. 
My parents weren’t that big on school trips. The first was when I was in Form Three, where the teachers took us to the Veterinary Institute in Kluang (with a stopover at a pottery centre in Air Hitam before returning to Johor Baru). 
The second was when I was in Form Five when we visited the Chemistry Department, where most of us nearly threw up after we were told that the foul smelling thing in a basin in a sink behind us was a dead drug addict’s stomach lining. Well yes, unexciting trips these were.
 There were other trips, but I knew better than to ask my parents for permission for trips like the one to the federal capital (“I can always take you there during the holidays,” my father would say) or for picnicking at the Gunung Ledang waterfalls (there was something about the mountain that he didn’t want to tell us). I know they would not allow me to go unless it was an educational one. 
And, I don’t believe schools have stopped organising excursions as I still see many groups of schoolchildren, even those in kindergartens, at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, for example, especially during school holidays. 
I know of some government linked companies that would bring students from schools in other states they have adopted on trips to Kuala Lumpur. Petrosains and Aquaria, for example, are the two venues that these children will visit. 
In fact, there is one school in Putrajaya which has some kind of an exchange programme with a school in Bandung, Indonesia, where a handful of students will go on study trips there. 
And, I have seen foreign students, all wearing the same coloured T-shirts and pants, at our own airports waiting to board their flight home.
 I can understand that parents are apprehensive about letting their children go on these trips. Affordability and safety could be the two main concerns, but I believe the benefits of these school excursions sometimes outweigh the risks. 
Inge Hol, the director of Educational Programmes and School Trips at Spark Languages in Southern Spain, offered some reasons why a student should go on a trip on her LinkedIn account. 
She said an overseas trip, for example, was an amazing opportunity for them to practise their language skills, especially communicative skills of understanding and speaking. 
I agree with her. I took my teenage niece and nephew to the United Kingdom and France a year ago and they were forced to listen, understand what is being told to them in English and to respond accordingly. 
And they did quite well on their own despite being shy to speak in any other language than Malay when I left them to do grocery shopping on their own at a supermarket in London. 
It can also expose them first-hand to the local culture. “With the increasing globalisation and internationalisation happening everywhere, it is vital for students to expand their worldview, to be taken out of their comfort zone and get an opportunity to appreciate other cultures. Without this awareness, students will find it difficult to become worldly citizens of the 21st century,” Hol said. 
She also said a visit abroad became a new culinary experience: meals or even just ingredients students might have never tasted, seen and even heard of. My niece was frowned upon when she dipped the McDonald’s fries into the sundae instead of tomato or chilli sauce. 
“I tell them it’s a perfectly normal thing to do. My friends and I do it all the time,” she said, laughing. 
I hope that they will take up my offer for a stay and a tour of Kuala Lumpur. Before venturing abroad (which is possible, given that universities undertake exchange programmes with foreign universities and educational tours abroad), they should know their own country first, especially anything and everything about the federal capital.