The Umpteenth Journal Attempt (Version III)

That’s it, I’m officially going mad. Or maybe I’m actually preventing myself from going mad. Or perhaps I’ve gone mad pre-emptively to avoid going mad, so it all cancels out.

It all started Wednesday morning. The night before, while I was still at the office, Dad SMS’ed: "Please take me to Halim airport, I have a flight to Bandung at 7:15." My first reaction was, "What?!" And then the rusty gears in my head started turning, trying to figure out the best time to leave for the airport and drive back in the opposite direction for the office. Given my penchant for getting woken at 5:30 in the morning due to sounds of heavy traffic right outside my window (curse you, Depok commuters), it meant we were going to have to leave earlier than that for fear of getting too stuck in traffic and missing the flight. Long story short, we left Cinere just after Fajr prayer, around 4:45. Got to the airport around 40 minutes later, and I arrived at the office (in Kemang) at 5:55 and got some much needed sleep. I must say, it felt great being able to cover such a distance in a relative flash.

This got me thinking. Technically office hours start at nine, but I’ve almost always arrived later than that. Heck, make it about 95 percent of the time. I usually get there at ten at the earliest, but on average it’s more around eleven, leaving around ten. It’s not that I don’t want to arrive on time, but…a few weeks ago I made a conscious decision to get to the office at nine. To anticipate traffic, I left the house at 7:30, figuring an hour and a half would be enough.

I got there two hours later.

So is it any wonder I opt to leave later, when the traffic is reasonably less insane? Where it takes just under an hour to arrive? Wouldn’t that extra hour be better served by getting some more sleep or doing something else more productive than giving the finger to assholes trying to steal my lane? Is it worth the aggravation being stuck on the road that long, and then arriving in a cranky mood and not being able to focus on work?

And then it suddenly hit me: what if I left the house at five, every day? It’d take considerable effort, especially considering I’m not a morning person at all. But thinking about the benefits…avoiding that goddamn traffic, for sure. I could also do a daily good deed by sending my stepmum to her office, rather than her having to take various buses all the way to Salemba - providing she wouldn’t mind leaving at that hour, of course - and the journey to my office would be in opposition of the morning traffic flow. This would mean I’d be at work several hours too early, but there’s a lot of things I can do in those few hours. Sleeping, for one. Maybe working. Maybe even finally giving the office swimming pool a go.

So yesterday was a test drive. As it happened, there was the Charlton-Liverpool game in the wee hours, and I usually make the effort to watch Liverpool, even if it means being bleary eyed at work. (Not that I get to work early anyway.) Anyway, the game started just before three, ended just before five. The end result was depressing (look up the scoreline yourself), almost made me wish I hadn’t bothered staying up. After the final whistle, had a quick shower and breakfast, and headed out. This was at 5:30.

As I said earlier, the problem with 5:30 is that, for some reason, the traffic outside my window is already heavy. It remains that way for several hours, including my usual departure time. My house is just before both a junction and a bottleneck, so you can imagine how convoluted it gets. I usually take a left turn just after the house into the complex, then re-emerge on the main street about fifty metres after the bottleneck, where it’s relatively less jammed. I tried that again at 5:30, but as it turns out, the portals inside the complex are shut until seven, so I had to go back to the main street again and go through the bottleneck. After those fifty metres, it’s still slow travelling: the amount of rain and traffic have combined to decorate the road with potholes. But after you navigate past, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

Still, it’s not really pleasant being stuck for however long, especially when leaving fifteen minutes earlier makes a world of difference. So my stepmum and I left at 5:15, arrived at her office at six, and I got to my office at 6:15. Wrote this blog post. And now, I’m going to take a nap. I could get used to this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.