Spelling blunder aside, this drawing perfectly illustrates how most Malaysians feel right now.
So, Malaysia has hiked up the price of petrol by about 41%. Starting midnight, fuel will cost RM0.78 more. So, my weekly RM40 petrol budget will become … RM57? Ouch!
A colleague just reported that a friend of hers called to say that roads are jammed up from people racing to petrol stations to beat the midnight deadline. (Malaysians are so kiasu…) In Ipoh, Chris had to face a long line of cars while filling up for petrol. Let the madness begin!
Malaysian bloggers are ranting about the whole thing now. I don’t think that they will be pleased to know that on top of that, electricity charges will go up 18%. I expect toll rates to go up too. Naturally. Then it’ll be the price of wan tan mee, and God knows how many 1001 things.
Who could blame people for being upset? Economically, things are not rosy on the home front. While petrol prices are going up, salaries are still static.
And the government tells us to “change our lifestyles”. I assume they mean take more public transport or something. (They also asked us to eat less rice at one point during the rice shortage thing). This is all great IF we had a good public transportation system. We have a crappy one.
When I was in San Francisco, I enjoyed their public transportation so much because it was so seamless and efficient. Plus, the city is so well organised and compact you can literally walk everywhere. You can’t really do that in KL as not only do our roads not adhere to a a grid system, there are not many pedestrian sidewalks. Plus, the weather isn’t conducive to much walking too.
A lot of people will probably think it’s the government mainly being greedy and all that. But the truth is, we’re not alone in this: fuel hikes are happening all over the world. It’s a little eerie, actually, because I’m reading this doom and gloom book - The Long Emergency (read an exerpt) - which predicts the effects of the depleting oil reserves around the world. Fuel hikes is one of them. Social unrest is almost guaranteed. And, yeah, wars. The world will probably devolve technologically because so much technology is dependent on oil. Diseases will return with a vengence because pharmeceuticals are also dependent on oil.
The book goes on to say that our children and grandchildren may not be able to travel in planes like we do. Air travel as we know it will become extinct in a few decades…
Let’s hit the sake, folks - it looks like it’s going to be a rough 21st century.
PS: My post-apocalyptic fundamentalist Charismatic roots is saying that the anti-Christ will probably “save the world” with an energy solution. What better way to be world saviour, right? Heh, so look out for the man!
