Soest - Ulm part 4: Blast Off.. Until the Blitz Bashes!

As a car enthusiast, I have always praised the joy of driving and reluctantly refused to use any form of public transport, except taxi and planes. The fact that I am slightly an individualist makes it even clearer because unlike in all public transport, one would have to share the space with some strangers and that is a trifle less uncomfortable. That was also the reason why I prefer driving a car instead of taking a train when I moved my whole belongings from Soest to Ulm. By the by, name anything form of public transport and I will always be able to capture their drawbacks. For instance, buses are not a quick transporter because they stop too frequently to pick up passengers; trains are fast, but it gets impractical if you have big luggage to carry; ships, well forget it because it makes you feel sick by their infinite travel time; if you go to Thailand or India, tricycles are also utilized as a public transporter and that is even worse. You will arrive with your face covered with smog and dust, due to their odd ingenuity of windowless vehicle design. I genuinely believe that only taxi and planes will do well, apart from the fact that crimes of robbery are occasionally happened in taxis and planes are sometime subjected to a delay. What I want you to have in mind is that cars are by all means more comfortable and faster than other land transportation options. As I have proved in the second series of this note, driving in Europe had turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences, particularly because Germany is the land of speed addicts and driving in the fast pace has always been an amusing theme to me. Sadly, driving fast appeared to be quite intriguing, especially when something on the side of the road which emitting blitz took some photographs of you and the license plate number..

And yes, I have been caught up by speed camera and should therefore pay 30 Euro for the speeding ticket. The occurrence was very obvious because it happened in the night and the blitz was quite a bit of surprise actually. I slammed on the brake as soon as the blitz flashed, it obviously wouldn't do any good because by that time the camera had got my picture and the registration number of the car, but I would say that it was just an instantaneous response to be taken and none of a big deal at all. In the speeding ticket (Zeugenfragebogen) issued by Regierungspräsidium Kassel which is the official authority of Kassel, I was informed that I was exceeding the allowed speed limit of 80kph by up to 24kph with tolerance of 5kph at some bridge around Kassel. Truth be told, this information is a revelation because I had no idea how fast I was going at that particular time, what makes it worst is I was not even concentrating on the road. If the authority asked me to reconstruct the occurrence, I would just tell them that it was very late in the night and I nearly fell into the welcome oblivion of sleep. So, remembering the speed limit was simply just a flash act, Hm.. There was the sign post showing a maximum speed of 80kph and the next minute I simply forgot it. Anyway, I want to stress on the fact that if the picture taken could have been sharper, you will find that I was not looking at the road. Instead, I was glancing at the route map on my right hand and everything was so clearly depicted because I also switched on the cabin lamp which made the car looked like a giant firefly with wheels. Meanwhile the camera took the shot at that exactly particular moment, a speeding driver with no safety consciousness to the road because he was looking at something else while he drove along in the Autobahn. Currently, I am requesting for a proper shot of the car to the Regierungspräsidium Kassel since the picture appeared in the invoice paper was somehow a bit blurred and scaled at a microscopic value.

"If I get caught of driving by myself, the authority will sue me. Blimey!"

In Germany, speeding fines can be differentiated based on several parameters. The cost depends on whether someone is driving in a town or on an Autobahn. It also differs based on how fast one exceeds the speed limit and in case you are interested with fines, the information regarding the violation to traffic signs (Ordnungswiedrigkeit) can be checked here. Speaking of getting caught by speed camera and aside from being fined, drivers who exceed the speed limit up to 21kph will also collect some points in their license, but since I am a foreigner and I was only 19kph faster than the allowable speed limit, I still haven't got any point in my license and I am still allowed to drive. Despite this, I was warned that I am not allowed to drive alone for the next six months, that means someone must be willing to be my passenger when I get caught the next time by the speed camera, in case if I do it again. If I get caught of driving by myself, the authority will sue me. Blimey! Honestly no idea about how disastrous the pressed charge against me would be, but it sounds like a massive exaggeration and that makes it not important at all. Anyway, I would like to explain more about the point in driving license because it is presumably more interesting. So basically, The point is again differentiated based on where and how bad you have violated the rule. A license driver holder, that's how the Germans refer to drivers, is considered for an agreeable 7 points at maximum. From 8 points up to 13 points, the license holder will be sent a warning notification by the authority and he/she will be recommended to attend a seminar of safety driving or some kind of it. From 14 points to 17 points, the warning notification and the seminar become a mandatory element aside from the fine. Then here is my favorite, when you pass 18 points, you are entitled to wave goodbye to your driving license. If you want to get one again, you have to repeat the whole driving test again which is preposterously expensive and takes a long time to accomplish. It gets even worse if you drive biblically faster than the speed limit because aside from collecting points, you will also be banned for driving any cars completely for a certain period.

The picture on the left hand side shows an actual form of speed camera in Germany. You can find this exact view on Bundeslandstrasse B1 in the direction Paderborn, just outside Soest border. By all means, I would say that 30 Euro is actually not a very enormous amount of money, not if I spend it for a dinner in a fancy restaurant and order a juicy lamb steak with oregano salad dressing on it. Instead, it was spent for some speeding act which appeared not faster than a dog could run; 19kph and that made it an utter waste. However, it was still worth the experience including and the most expensive photo shoot session of my whole life, I should perhaps find a frame to display it in my bedroom and nail it dead to the wall. Anyway, I would recommend those who enjoy driving at a fast pace to drive safely and obey the local rules, mainly because speed kills. However, I would also recommend them to get someone to sit on the passenger seat and the purpose is not so that they get to chat with someone lively. Instead, tell the passenger to keep an eye to the road as well, especially to a grey post on the side of the road with lens and blitz on it, so he or preferably she could remind you when there is a speed camera ahead. And on that surprising bombshell, this preposterous case is now finished and so is the series of "Soest - Ulm" notes. I certainly hope that the similar case will not happen again when I drive all the way back to Soest in July, particularly because a wise gentleman never falls twice. Until then, enjoy!

Priorities

As an intern in a major company, you more often than not find some assignments and projects which will be quantified at the end of your internship period by your supervisor. These will be the basis to measure how good is your working performance; how far you are motivated to get into the main business; how eager do you want to learn and absorb new knowledge. However, things like this won't necessarily apply to all interns in the world today, especially in difficult time like now due to finance crisis whereby the stack of work orders in the company keeps tumbling down and that means it is slightly harder to get a task. When this happened, I therefore killed the time by sort of making myself unnecessarily occupied by doing some on-line research about my company's products. When I felt sick after reading it for some boring hours, I simply took a break and checked into my mail inbox whether there were mails coming in. Mind you, these mails were also sent by some of my friends who were also sort of employed in their companies, but in the same time jobless as well. In this forum of unlikely dedicated interns, We actually talked about bunch of interesting craps such as our daily activities, watches, games, computers, cell phones, entertainment, schwein flu, weather, food, tourism and even the clog on water closet; we basically discussed about everything. But, I did find something interesting in the forum last week and it was basically about Euro trip. Some of my friends decided to get visit several countries in European continent after they finish their internship program and I was invited too, be it a distinctive proof that I am not an anti-social bloke at all. However, after they explained about their plans, I am afraid that I have been excessively reluctant by turning them down and refusing to go with them. There are of course reasons which some might regard them as complete rubbish, but in my opinion, it has something to do with what people called as priority.

Naturally, a normal human being will choose the best decision which wins him/herself fully, although compromises have always been something unavoidable in every argument. These compromises are then to be scaled personally whether they would suit your priorities and they are tolerable enough, I would obviously push myself to do the impossible things as long as they are still within my reach and sensible considerations. Even if I refuse to do something, there are always good reasons for me not to get into it any deeper and they are mostly not open for a further discussion. I am obviously more than happy to travel with them because I have always pointed out that it doesn't matter what you are doing, what does matter is who you are doing something with. But in this case, a clear description to this extravagant trip is I will drain my bank account by visiting many countries in a fortnight and yet spending only one day in each country on the average with a massive discomfort because mostly we will sleep on the train which I unfortunately can't. Not pretending of being such a ridiculously demanding prince who wants to sleep on a king size spring bed with fluffy goose pillow, but I simply just couldn't work out a reason of why I would spend my money for a great inconvenience and it doesn't worth my salt at all. To emphasize how serious I am about my opinion, I would bravely report that all these arguments are not just a pile of irrational thoughts because I had experienced what they are about to be doing. I have been on a night train which took about 8 hours to reach its destination and I have been on a night bus which took about the same time as well. And the trip in the train was my God dreadful! The bus was even worst and turned out to be a catastrophic disaster; I knew that I didn't sleep at all because I still could feel where the bus was actually directing at. It is presumably almost impossible to sleep in a train and completely impossible to sleep in a bus and that is the end of it.

"Priorities are merely values with no arguable beliefs."

Furthermore, travelling around Europe has never been a very much intention of mine because I figure that it would be wiser to just do a small trip around Germany or even at the outrageous bombshell, I would only go to one or two very worth to be visited countries, then save the rest for a much better use. I had actually outlined this to some of my friends, but some also think that I behaved like a poor people. Come on and get real, my friend..! I feel rich if I could for instance pay the rent of my room by myself or simply keep it until I need it to fund my thesis project. The difference between my point of view with my friend's was very plain to see, although our initial plan was the same, which was doing our internship program and that has been the end of our similarity. Euro trip became their next priority as they walked out the company they had been working at for the last time; meanwhile I don't have that sort of thought. One might clearly differentiate which thing is a really important thing to do and priorities are just a subjective topic to be addressed, but I am quite sure that people will not care very much on other's ideas or opinions as they had set up their values, in this case of course the priorities. The rest thing you can do is just try to be supportive and wish them that everything will turn out well.

In conclusion, priorities are merely values with no arguable beliefs, they are goals with strong determination and nothing else will matter as a particular purpose has been set. The pursue to achieve our goals will not necessarily make our self look obsessive and unforgiving, however it is presumably right to say that priorities will prove someone’s consistency and as long as supports from our dearest environment exist, we will make it through with a proper pride to ourselves.

Busway: Hate It or Love It

Momentarily I realize that I have left the motherland of Indonesia for about four months and despite this, I always keep myself updated to the most actual issues occurring in the country. This week I found out that Antasari Azhar, which is currently our non-active Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Chief and whose murder conspiracy case had turned to be as complicated as I could possibly read in a novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Yesterday (20.05.2009) the composite stock price index (IHSG) managed to rise until 1900 points although at the end of the day it declined slightly; SBY chose Boediono which was the former governor of the central bank as vice presidential candidate for the upcoming presidential election; Plan crash two days ago in east Java which leads to almost 100 dead victims; I even know that our flamboyant and outspoken lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea had just bought a six billion IDR of red shiny Ferrari as a wedding present for her wife which is the national-widely known as the movie star of everything, Meriam Belina. In general, I am completely a well-informed big boy, albeit such cheesy gossip stories won't necessarily float my boat. But anyway, none of those had really the essence to give me the power to write this note. Instead, I do find something presumably interesting and quintessentially Indonesia, especially the capital city Jakarta, because it perfectly captures what I always have in mind about this country, which are irregularity and disastrous management in almost everything. This news however can be found in Kompas newspaper yesterday on page 33. The boldly written headline is provocative enough to turn your head to look at because it says: Crisis That Never Ends, and then you will see a big photo describing people queuing for bus at the Harmoni Central Busway shelter.

Now I should point out that this note is actually not planned before and you will not find it either in the upcoming issue tab on the left side of this note, it is just something incredibly unique and very indonesish that I just want to cock about. Basically, I just read the article and stumbled on the fact that Trans Jakarta Busway (TJB), which have been around ever since like in 2004 or so, is actually getting worse in providing service to communities. Following the success of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Bogota, Colombia, the city administration in Jakarta is set to collaborate with transport authorities in Bogota to create a whole new bus connection that connects every corners of Jakarta. Not trying to make it as if it is a big deal, but at the very early launch of the first route of TJB which passes through the posh district of central Jakarta, I was quite optimistic that this is the solution to massive traffic jam in Jakarta. And in the first year, it was indeed fast, comfortable and with a flat rate of 3500 IDR, it was cheap as well. In January 2006, another two corridors were added and a central connecting shelter which is called Harmoni Central Busway was built to complement the first one. It was still good actually because I even used it every Saturday to attend my German course. But then things started to go wrong in the next year because most people in Indonesia only know how to buy things and they have absolutely no idea how to maintain it. Buses broke down a lot; the interval time of waiting got longer and during the worst rush hour, you might spend nearly one hour of waiting; there is neither bus arrival nor departure schedule; gridlocks can be found everywhere because the special individual bus lane occupies the lane for public vehicles; accidents more often than not happened and the crash victims had always been motorcyclists; crimes in the bus are most likely to happen more often. I started to create a trifle less hatter to this particular public transport as it was announced that another four corridors would be launched in early 2007, mainly because the service was not as satisfying as it was in 2004 and it in fact created more traffic jams on the road. In 2008, the city administration ridiculously planned to add three more and one of them stretches across the front access road to my home! Truth be told, I am not saying that I don't want some part of the main road to be taken as a bus lane, because that would be blithering idiot. But the simple fact is, it does form another road clogs around my residence area. Now though, I curst that incredibly stupid nonsense of bringing such a useless idea of a proper public transport onto the road.

"By traveling with TJB, my life is considerably shortened."

So, after a total ten corridors, we only got thousands of passengers traveling with a massive discomfort on an individual bus lane with a long queue of other vehicles on the lanes next to it. As far as is concerned, things look bleak for this very public transport, but the most painful thing to listen is that PT Trans Batavia which is held responsible for running and maintaining the buses, admitted that they have financial difficulties to maintain the condition of buses after the subsidiary from local budget and expenditure (APBD) was reduced from 210 billion down to just 70 billion IDR per year. There is nothing else to say and the message here is then very clear, there are still many works to do in the future. This is plainly some ideas and please get the darn thing done well. The government could start by setting a more effective cooperation with countries whose public transport system works well, maybe like Singapore or Germany because these two countries do have a well organized public transport, and stop bragging that Trans Jakarta has the longest busway lane in the world!! The truth is, Trans Jakarta has a longer lane than Bus Rapid Transit in Bogota, don't exaggerate things because not all people in this country are imbeciles. The next is, mend the work ethic by campaigning a slogan "Do it well or don't do it at all." The other is, why keep spending money on adding corridors, meanwhile the existing corridors still haven't provided an adequate service. I seriously rather have less bus corridors than seeing those colorful buses bog down on its lane due to lack of maintenance and please get more buses because after a bus departs from one shelter, the next bus will come in the next decade, people simply wait too long and that is totally unacceptable. I also strongly suggest something useful, something essential, something efficient and it is called the schedule. By traveling with TJB, my life is considerably shortened because I have always become crabby and impatient if the bus didn't show up. Besides, I still find it odds that people is satisfied with the service of TJB, because recently they introduce a new service and it is unbelievably rediculous. Now, the bus won't depart from the first or interconnecting shelter if it doesn't have full enough passengers to transport. If you are an Indonesian, you would definitely realize that this is no other than a mikrolet or metromini. The operational manager stated that they couldn't possibly run the bus if there is no passenger in it and it is for efficiency as well. Now what in the name of all that's holy is that?! People pay for the tax and they deserve good service.

To summarize, I will not write any longer, albeit a longer note is by any chance still possible considering how much a let down at large this transport mode is. However, I will let you have your own time to process your own idea of how a public transport should provide a properly good service. But to me, TJB has completely failed and it will never gain my approval if there is no improvement in the near future. There are still tons of works to do if the people behind TJB want those who drive their own cars to work, switch to use TJB. They could say lots of thing, but I definitely want to see them do more. Otherwise, just work harder and buy a chopper. Have a nice weekend and enjoy!