Traffic contretemps
On Saturday morning, I was on my way to an assignment in the heart of the city and had just made a left turn into a junction, when this policeman on a motorcycle signalled for me to stop. So I pulled over and rolled down my window. He said that I had turned into the junction from the wrong lane. Huh? apparently only the extreme left lane was for turning, but I had been in the middle lane.
I told him I was very sorry, but I am not sure of the roads and I hadnt known that I was in the wrong lane. He asked to see my driving licence. Now, in Malaysia, everyone over the age of 12 possesses an identity card (IC), which theyre required to carry around at all times. In Nov 2000, the government launched a new smartcard IC that contains a 32K chip programmed with, among other things, driving licence info, not to mention a thumbprint for conclusive identification.
I hold the new card. Since the driving licence is incorporated inside the chip, technically we do not have to carry around our licence anymore. So when the policeman said he wanted to see my licence, I showed him the IC. He said, No, I want to see your licence.
I replied, Its all inside the card! I dont carry around a separate licence!
He said he didnt have the equipment to read the chip in the card, Thats why you should carry around a separate licence. Then he told me, Youll just have to follow me back to the police station so that I can check your licence. There we have the facilities to read the chip.
You see, this is Malaysia. Big dreams, great hopes, but horrible planning. Rush to implement the smartcard IC, never mind that the traffic police dont have the equipment to read the information stored in the thing!
I told the policeman that I was rushing for an appointment and asked him, I dont have time to follow you to the station! Why dont you just issue me a summons? But he said he couldnt do that. I cant cite you for driving without a licence. You do have one, I just cant check whether its still valid!
So he stood there and kept on asking me what I wanted to do. I said I would go back to the station with him, but he still kept doing some song and dance. I figured he was waiting for a bribe (this is pretty common over here), but I acted blur my specialty! *grin* In the end he took my IC number and my particulars and said that he would check them out when he got back to the station, and if necessary he would send me a summons through the mail.
Really! After that I took a wrong turning and when I finally got to the area I had to go round it twice before I found the exact place I was looking for. I was half-an-hour late and the event was well underway by the time I got there! Thank goodness I didnt miss much and managed to interview the people I needed to interview. Yup, I was working on Saturday :O