27 June 2007

It gets very annoying...

... when it takes you almost 2 hours to drive home in an island thats just a little over 10km wide.

The traffic problem has gotten to the extent that, if nobody at the department of planning (oh wait, I forgot, we DON'T have a department of planning) does anything, it will soon start to reach catastrophic levels. And by catastrophic, I mean me having to buy a DVD player and screen for my car, to watch movies and TV shows as I wait to get home, instead of buying them for the normal reason everyone else buys them (ie, to show off).

So it started off yesterday, another beautifully painful day at work (beatiful since my salary had just been credited into my account, painful because I had to watch my account balance get shredded by various deductions for various purposes), and getting into my car at 5pm, my wife called and asked me to pick up something from Al Jazeera Supermarket. So here I am, leaving the Seef Area and driving over to Al Jazeera in Zinj for a particular product we used to enjoy when we used to live in the US. Distance travelled? Approx 3km.

Got to Al Jazeera, and was informed that they only stocked it at their Juffair branch. So I got into my car and drove over to Juffair, which is around 1.5km away.

The stopover in either Al Jazeera branches didn't take more than 5 minutes at the most. So now, i'm driving over the new Hidd Causeway into Muharraq, and decide to stop and fill up on some gas at the Jasmees Station which was around another 3km away. Took about 10 minutes to fill up, and now i'm on my way home, another 1.5km away.

IT WAS 6:55pm when I stepped in the house! That's 1 hour and 55 minutes to get home! Now, deducting the time spent in Al Jazeera (a total of about 10 minutes), and the time spent at the gas station (another 10), that leaves me with a little over 1 and a half hours to drive 9km. Thats an average speed of about SIX BLOODY KILOMETERS AND HOUR. That's the speed of an average walking human. Or maybe a fast ape.

I've obviously left out the details of what happened when I was in the car; but then again, I am trying to keep this blog profanity free, so its all for the better.

So, a solution, anyone?


----------------------


Just a quick rough map to give you an idea of my route:

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain my friend, nowadays it's very hard not getting a cramp in your leg from pressing the brakes for such long periods of time!

plus, the rise of blood pressure when your stuck in a jam which really shouldn't be one and find some idiots who think they're Fernando Alonso and speed like maniacs in slow traffic with all disregard to their safety and those of others.

Once I get in the car I just turn into this roadrage Mr Hyde blowing horns and cursing every idiot with a lisence in Bahrain.

All I can say is الله يعيننا

LiB Team said...

I feel you bro, leave the profanity to us ;)

Eyad said...

ammaro, you have 2 options, you move out of sitra or purchase a motorbike.

If you move out fo sitra khair o baraka, but if you purchase a motorbike you have 2 options you either get killed by a speeding Saudi or get in trouble with traffic police.

If you get killed by the speeding Saudi khair o baraka but if you get in trouble with traffic police you have 2 options, you either pay the ticket and Blog about it, or you go back to driving your car to work.

If you pay the tickets khair o baraka but if you drive your car to work you have 2 options, purchase a bike or move out of sitra.

and it goes on and on and on!!!!

Ammaro said...

your comments amuse me to no end. and if you read the article correctly, its muharraq not sitra

'Citizen X' said...

Ammar,

I already use my iPOD for that, i've loaded some movies on to it to be watched specially in such circumstances, which basically means every time i'm in the car driving around.

It's gotten to the point where i don't feel like leaving home at all.

CX

Eyad said...

Moharaq and Sitra are the same to me, I don't discriminate!!

Anonymous said...

Ammar:
As a matter of fact by discriminating between Sitra and Muhrraq we can probably say you are islandist. :P

Seriously, it IS annoying. I don't even want to think how it will be like five years from now. Even worse, everyone on the road is frustrated! No DJ at no FM can help.