About two months ago (at least this is what I see from the "prequel" of this post), my company started to require us to work in the office. So far, the experience in the office is pretty nice. I get to meet with my cool colleagues in person, go to lunch together, discuss with them quickly for code reviews and other issues, there's air conditioning (yes, I happen to not use air conditioning at home unless it's at night), there are significantly lesser distractions, and I don't accidentally extend my working hours naturally anymore like how I always did at home. So far, so good!
But, of course, there are some downsides. Such as, I need to spend more money every day for lunch, tolls, fuel. I also need to wake up about 2 hours earlier than what I need to when working from home, and the worst, I waste about two hours or more in the traffic every day, travelling to and back from the office.
So this is a blog post about... my experience with the traffic jams.
I also don't know why I'll have the idea of writing a blog post about traffic jams, but it is what it is.
I live in Mainland Penang, a place somewhere at the northern part of Malaysia. My office is at the Penang Island, which, is quite a beautiful place, and isn't too far from where I live. Assuming perfectly smooth traffic, I could reach there from my home in 40 minutes without speeding. The issue is, this assumption almost never happens, especially during weekdays morning and evening. Because obviously, I'm not the only person that lives in Mainland Penang while working on the Penang Island!
To reach the island from mainland, there are two bridges, we call them the Penang Bridge, and the Penang Second Bridge (it is named the Sultan Abdul Halim Muadzam Shah Bridge, which is the name you see on road signs if you're in Penang, but we usually just call it the Second Bridge). They start from different areas of Mainland Penang and connect to different parts of the island, so some areas are easier to reach with the first bridge, and vice versa. My office's location is somewhere in between the two exits of the bridges, so for me, both bridges are nice choices. Except that, if I'm using the second bridge, I will have to pay a little bit more for tolls, and the distance gets doubled due to the length of the bridge itself (it is about two times longer than the first bridge), and my home is really quite far from the second bridge. Hence, it is usually not the choice unless there are some incidents happening on the first bridge, such as traffic accidents that make the route impossible to use.
This is likely the first bridge, which is part of my route to work and back (for most of the times) every working day. Looking at the sky and the traffic... the photo is probably taken on a weekday afternoon? Photo taken by Aaron Lee on Unsplash.
For many others, the second bridge is also not a great choice, due to the same reasons. Hence, the first bridge is always crammed to the brim, every morning and evening, all while the second bridge is always chilling there from the other side with smooth and happy traffic enjoyed by a few.
But, there has to be a way around it... right? Like, going earlier?
That was the plan when I first started to work from office. Basically, to dodge the traffic in the morning, I would go extra early and hope that the traffic is better. However, it soon proved that it isn't that effective - it seems like there are also a lot of people who want to start working at 8, so unless I start my travel super duper early, it wouldn't make too much of a difference. Besides that, it also means that I'll have to rush a lot more after waking up to depart as soon as possible. This often results in me looking and feeling like a zombie in the car... well, it's not like there's anyone looking at me when I'm driving, but feeling like a zombie in the morning does affect the mood for the rest of the day!
Then, one day, I had some toilet business to do before starting the drive, and it took longer than usual - and I just decided that it won't hurt to start later, because I always arrive about one hour earlier than working hours with the usual starting time. Expecting to be caught in a massive traffic jam, I got surprised by how starting about 15 minutes later did not caused much differences in when I arrive - in fact, the traffic on the bridge seems to be slightly smoother than usual.
And that's the start of it. I changed my alarm to only ring 15 minutes later, and I take my sweet sweet time every morning to do my stuff slowly before finally starting to drive to the office. Sometimes when I start the journey, the sky is already somewhat bright, and I don't even need to turn on my headlights. Still never got late, and I often still arrive at least half an hour earlier than what is needed. The travel duration didn't change much, but it feels much more better, and I don't feel like a zombie that often anymore.
Morning is always an amazing time... but it is only amazing when you can see the sunlight yourself. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
Sometimes, I might be overthinking about this morning traffic, it doesn't seem to be as bad as I thought. But, that is definitely not the case for the evening traffic. Not a lot of people go to work at 7, but a lot of people go off work at 6...
Every evening, you can see the lights from the cars on the bridge, and from far away, you can already tell that it's not going to be over really quick. Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash.
Compared to the traffic when going to work, the traffic when going back from work is significantly more troublesome and worse, and there aren't a lot of solutions to it apart from staying in the Penang Island until everyone else had went home. You can try alternative routes, and use applications like Waze and Google Maps to find them, but you'll realise that it doesn't help quite a lot because at the end of the day there are only two bridges to go out of the island. Even if you choose the second bridge to go back (which is, smooth as usual), you'll still probably get caught in the traffic in the expressway later on after you exit the bridge. There's just no escape.
They say that there are five stages of grief, and while this isn't grief, I can feel that I really went through all of them regarding this dumb traffic situation. It first started off trying to convince myself that it isn't that bad (denial), being mad that it is actually really bad at some days especially Fridays (anger), then starting to reduce expectations on the traffic and the time I needed for the drive (bargaining), gets kinda depressed looking at any unexpected long queue of cars in any place (depression?) and finally reaching a state where I can go "no thoughts head empty" while following the slow crawling traffic created by thousands of people who have to drive back and forth the island just like me. At the end of the day, there's no choice and I have to accept it anyway if I'm going to do this every working day for the foreseeable future. It is what it is.
Sometimes, I think that the traffic is there for me to wind down after a day of coding at work... Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash.
If I have to stay in my car for about 2 or more hours every day, I might as well find ways to make the time in the car more enjoyable. After all, if life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade. Or, lemon jam, if that's your thing. Finding a good playlist or podcast to play along the road is important, and luckily Spotify is a thing! It is quite convenient to just download a few new albums with the WiFi at the office to try them out on the way home, and so far, a few nice gems had been discovered like this. My friend also recommended me to just watch anime while getting stuck in the traffic, as the traffic really moves slowly enough to reasonably do that. But, I think that is still a little bit too dangerous. Even if I don't bump into the car in front, I might not notice the police by the roadside, and it'll be quite troublesome and awkward getting caught like that!
My driving habits also slightly changed in these few months, thanks to all these traffic problems. Previously, it is all about taking the lane that is the closest to the exit I'm going to take, since it is somewhat difficult and tricky to switch lanes in heavy traffic, as it heavily depends on the other side to cooperate and let you do so (and if they don't, you'll be stuck there awkwardly blocking the lane while waiting for a next chance). But, if I'm going to be in the lane for so long, why won't I just pick the lane that is the most comfy to drive in, like the leftmost lane? In Malaysia, we have left-hand traffic, so the leftmost lane is the place to chill around if you aren't looking to be fast. It is also the lane closest to the scenery beside the road. Penang is a beautiful place, and it would be quite wasteful to not enjoy the view of the pretty sunset, calm seas, buildings on the shore and the mountains in the distance while slowly crossing the bridge.
If you fly a drone high enough in the Penang Island, you'll get a view like this. The view from the bridge is noticeably different (it's mostly the sea instead), but hopefully this gives a glimpse of the view of the place. Photo by Christoph Theisinger on Unsplash.
After all... if you don't notice how slowly you're moving, you won't really bother about it, will you?
I still remember that afternoon, when a recruiter from another company that I applied to called me on the phone and tried to bring me to their interview session. When they called, I had accepted the current job offer, so I was refusing it (since I don't think I will want to reject the current one after accepting it), but they insisted really hard and used a lot of reasons to convince me to give it a try. One of the points they kept on using was about the traffic - they kept on explaining and elaborating about how bad the traffic is when travelling to the Penang Island and back, and how I should really consider the option they are offering since it's closer to where I live and I should be spending lesser time on the road! In the end, I did went to their interview (can't really say no to an invitation when they spent more than an hour on the phone just to bring you there, eh?). But, just as expected (or planned), I didn't accept their offer.
After about a few months of trying out the real deal by myself, I think they didn't exaggerate it. But, at the same time, I think it's more about how do one look at it. When the bridge is congested like that for every single working day (or even on weekends, depending on the time of the day), you know that I am not the only person who have decided that it is fine to do so. And, I think, for one to be crazy (?) enough to think that this is okay, they probably have a pretty specific mindset in them to get them through it every day.
What it is - how do I know? But I think I'm close to figuring mine out.
Hi, I'm Lilacse, I write stuff about coding, sometimes games, and sometimes other random life stuff like this. You can probably also find me posting in communities like Programming and Dev, Hive Gaming, and STEMGeeks.
I don't post often, but when I do I try to make sure that it's good :3 if you like what you just read, feel free to follow and see you at about an undefined time later~
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