Close shave

Due to my own folly, I have missed a flight before, and that was in 2010, eight years ago. That is why nowadays, I try to give myself a comfortable margin of time to get to the airport. Any airport, whether local or international. But earlier this week, my wife and I came very close to missing our train ride back to Penang.

You know what happened? The notorious traffic around the Midvalley Mall. It's really getting out of hand, especially on weekends. I was staying at the Cititel hotel there and I had a train to catch from the KL Sentral transport hub at 2.40 pm. Fine, my daughter would be around to drive us to the station.

So what time should we leave, I had asked her. No problem, she said, two o'clock would be fine. Forty minutes. Ample time to get there. How about 1.55 pm, I asked again. What's the difference, she replied, between 1.55 pm and 2 pm? No reason to dispute the logic of someone living in the Klang Valley. So I agreed. Let's make it 2 pm then, I replied. Her car was parked in the hotel carpark. All it would take was to scootle down to the carpark and away we would go.

But we didn't reckon with the weekend traffic. Even as we wanted to get out of the Midvalley shopping complex, people were trying to get in. Thus, the jam was at an almost standstill. Maybe I should have heeded all the warning signs. Two days earlier on a Friday, a friend had grumbled that it took him one hour just to leave the Midvalley. And another friend had commented that he took at least 45 minutes to leave the Mall for KL Sentral on the following day.

Anyway, eventually, we did leave the carpark on Sunday at about 2.05 pm. The fault's mine. I had failed to have my parking ticket validated by the hotel and that had cost us some precious minutes. Never mind lah, dad, my daughter assured me. Waze - she had the Waze app on her mobile, see - says we should arrive at KL Sentral in 16 minutes.

Stupid Waze. It's supposed to be clever and be able to detect traffic jams and recommend the fastest route to any destination. But it failed miserably this time. My daughter hit the jam even as we got out from the hotel's carpark. And you know that you must take a circuitous route round and round the Midvalley complex before you can head out in any direction.

I was desperate. My daughter was desperate. My wife was desperate. We were all desperate. I knew that there was no way that we could arrive at KL Sentral by 2.30 pm. Yup, 2.30 pm would give us some minutes to rush to the departure gate for the ETS train north. But no way can we be there even at 2.40 pm.

Luckily, I had the presence of mind to tell my daughter of a change of plan. Forget KL Sentral, I said. Let's head instead to the old Kuala Lumpur station in Jalan Hishamuddin. The ETS train was also scheduled to stop at the KL Station at 2.47 pm. And that's what we did. And we arrived there at 2.43 pm. Jumped out of the car, removed our bags from the boot and rushed into the station. No time even to say a proper goodbye to our daughter.

Horrors, Platform One was blocked off for KTMB's upgrading work. No signage at all to tell me which platform the train would stop at. Worse, no soul in sight. So I took a chance. Maybe it would be Platform Two or Platform Three. I saw a tunnel ahead and we ran down it, pulling our bags along. A quick left turn and another left turn. Oops, running UP a tunnel with bags was different from running DOWN one. But we made it. Huffing and puffing, we made it. We saw some KTMB staff and they confirmed that the ETS train hadn't arrived yet.

Feeling quite relieved, we sat down on a bench. But no sooner than having sat down, we saw the train tootling in slowly and stopping right in front of us. So we made it. Not quite from KL Sentral but from the old KL Station. We actually made it to board the train. With less than a minute to spare. Now, that was quite an experience. But not worth repeating, I tell you. Too much stress.