It has a been a weekend of entertaining guests here in Chateau Lawrence. On Sunday we took all guests to see Selangor lighthouse, enjoy the view across the Straits of Melaka, feed monkeys, eat Chinese food climb into boats and examine fireflies at close quarters. A well-trodden tour for guests.
Collecting two of our guests, my parents, from the airport was a bit of a taxing experience though. Their touchdown time was 1545. Last time they arrived it took nearly an hour and a half to arrive in the arrivals hall sp I knew that leaving school at 1515 would allow ample time. Of course it wasn't as the unpredictable KL traffic was clogged in places where it usually isn't. Anyway as I arrived at arrivals and parked outside along with all the other hundreds of cars my phone rang announcing Lawrences seniors' arrivals in the arrivals hall. Children and I jumped out, ran inside, collected parents and got back into the car, giving an unseen official just enough time to put a parking ticket on the car. Carefully ignoring all the other cars parked there the official had made a beeline for the foreigner mobile and, seeing how I was parked on the end of long line of cars, not in anyone's way I was ticketed for illegal parking and obstruction.
Anyone who has driven in or tried to park in KL will understand that the prevailing style of motoring is freestyle: drive where you want to go; ignore everyone else and stop wherever you want to. The consequences? Fraught motoring, nail biting times at road junctions and loads of double and occasionally treble parking.
Alright so I had a parking ticket. Arse. And get over it Robin. Positives? The form was in English and Bahasa. Negatives? No instructions on what to do with the form apart from saying that details had to be registered within seven days. Registered with who? Where? I asked around and Malaysian colleagues at work told me to go to the police station nearest to school and pay. So on Thursday that is what I tried to do.
I went into Mont Kiara police station and was greeted by one plain clothes chap, one officer eating his dinner, a fireman smoking a cigarette and a television showing the National Geographic channel. I felt like I had stumbled into an Ionesco play. All I needed was the fire fighter to tell me that business was bad. I pulled out my parking ticket and asked to pay. "Cannot" said the munching officer. "Try going to Chinatown police station," said the fire fighter. Giraffes looked on. "But this is a police station," I insisted, despite its appearance. And surely I could deal with a traffic offence there. "Cannot." The combined efforts of the three police blokes, fire fighter and giraffes managed to tell me that I really should go to Chinatown, or possibly a place in Kepong, both police offices and neither of which the officers could give me an address for. I left.
The children all dance in another part of KL, the grandly titled Taman Tun Dr Ismael (TTDI), on a Saturday morning and the dance school is conveniently close to another, larger police station. I entered the station more in hope than anything else. The officer I spoke to was slightly better informed than the Mont Kiara Massive but, cunningly, was less use. She told me, as expected, I could not pay a fine to the police in a police station. Cannot. She saiid that there might be a police place in The Curve, a shopping centre not far away. I asked where in the shopping centre and she went quiet, preferring instead to deal with a plain clothes officer who needed some printing done. By the time the printing had finished she had forgotten all about The Curve and the possibility of a police station there. Kindly though she did offer an alternative. "Maybe Petaling Jaya." What? I asked all the right questions: where in Petaling Jaya? How far away? Road name? The officer paused and thought and then have me the following, priceless answer: "Look on google." So I was confronted with a police officer who, simply, had no idea.
AAGGHH!
Luckily I was rescued at that moment. A man with a French accent approached the desk and introduced himself as someone who had had similar problems to me in the past. In clipped and very welcome English he told me that there was a police station in Petaling Jaya that would accept money and he also pointed out a landmark that would help me find the place. According to the police officer the place might be closing at twelve noon, but then given the police's reliability and accuracy it might also be that twelve noon was giraffe feeding time.
I found the place, risking parking in a place that promised a RM 50 fine if one did not buy a ticket despite there being nowhere to buy one (at least if I got a penalty ticket I would know where to pay it) and dashed across several lanes of traffic into the wrong department. A officer grabbed my arm and redirected me to another office. Was this a example of the strong arm of the law? The fine payment office was a grim place. Lots of official looking people were milling around seemingly looking for things to do. Brandishing my penalty ticket I was ushered to see a very glum looking cashier who took set about lightening my wallet to the tune of RM250. Gad I had had to work hard to pay. Intriguingly in a country where you can often need your passport to go into a friend's housing complex I was not asked for any ID.