People who know me well understand that I react very badly to daft regulations and even more badly to the people whose job it is to enforce daft regulations. Thanks to a recent updating of reciprocal protocols between Britain and Malaysia it has now become necessary for me to obtain a full Malaysian driving licence. Humble civil servants have agreed that henceforth citizens of each country can drive freely in each other’s realm for a year on their home licence after which they need to brave and uphold each others’ driving tests. So off I trogged to the S—- Driving Centre in Kuala Lumpur today for part one of a multi stage effort at gaining this qualification.
The initial logistics for today’s introductory theory class all went swimmingly with my message to the approved driving school being answered swiftly, copies of my passport and monies transferred and a place secured on today’s course arranged. Everything bureaucratic in Malaysia appears to happen through intermediaries, agents or just “some bloke” whose job it is to make things happen often by them then sub-contracting to their “guy,” “man,” or “I get my boy to carry for you.”
And today was no different. The driving school boss sent his Company Driver to meet me at a pre-determined location, arriving a polite 15 minutes late. (Stupidly I had arrived 15 minutes early.) Along with another trainee I clambered in to the car, put on my seatbelt and the Company Driver roared off. On the way to the test centre he demonstrated an impressive array of driving inability including saving the wear and tear on his indicators, fluently crossing from lane to lane, exceeding all speed limits by 30 kmph and successfully dealing with an incoming phone call. I did wonder whether it should be him attending the theory day instead of me?
I arrived at the driving centre and while queuing to register witnessed fine displays of small cars and motorbikes being driven around an obstacle course for would-be motorists. Apparently these folk were taking part three of the six part training process. More of that soon.
Registration involved yet more passport action followed by volunteering a thumb print which was quickly digitised. Apparently wise people in the past used to turn up to driving test centres, sign in at the start, clear off and then return to sign out at the end. The thumb print is apparently the way to stop this. Having submitted my thumb I was given a weighty text book, practice question book and told to wait in block D for the 9 o’clock start.
Nine am came and went and gradually more and more people trickled in. Following a colleague’s advice I carefully selected my seat as close as possible to the back row, without fully hiding in a dark corner and carried on waiting for the 9.00 start. After being invited to write our names, passport numbers (again) and arrival times in a large book the trainer, Mr E began the course at 9.54 am. With a cheery greeting and assurance that he was exactly the right person that everyone in the room could not do without he began the course by making sure everyone introduced themselves.
Next item on the course was making sure that we, all 43 of us by now, fully understood that the course was due to last for six hours, and to test this understanding he encouraged us to chant the answer, followed by the very important matter of what to wear when completing the training to be a driver. Before the advertised tea break, at 10.30am which Mr E quite uncharacteristically did manage to get to on time, he gave us all detailed fashion advice for stage two of the quest to become official motorists.
Stage two is the computerised test in which aspiring drivers have to answer 50 questions on a computer and get 42 correct. More pressing though is the dress code. Men have to wear trousers and a collar, I assumed that the collar should be attached to a shirt as well, correctly as it turns out because he also assured us that we should not wear sexy clothing either, especially and slightly disturbingly “rubber pants.” I suppose I should be relieved that one does not have to take computerised test dressed only in “rubber pants” mostly because I am not entirely sure where to obtain such garments and they would probably be far too sweaty in the tropics. Jeans with holes in, transparent clothing and sandals are also frowned upon and so best avoided, Mr E pointed out. Moments before the tea break he declared he had no idea why this dress code was enforced so stringently and then after 36 minutes of training it was break time.
The restart and 11.00am came around far too quickly and then Mr E really got into his stride (after one more chant that we were in the course for six hours.) He then spent an exciting two hours of time explaining at great length the next stages of the driving test process, all the possible licences that one can apply for and clarifying the official driving test route, which apparently only includes right hand turns. Just before I started to scream in agony it was lunchtime for one hour.
After lunch it was back to more of the same nonsense and Mr E coming into his own when offering advice about the state of mind to be in when motoring. He cautioned students should avoid driving when suffering from “work problems, home problems or funny problems” and spent far too much time asking people how they should try to avoid driving when tired. Before managing to finish on time, despite not being able to start on time, he shared his advice about how to deal with police when they choose to stop motorists as well as how to avoid paying fines.
All in all Mr E appeared to enjoy his day, well he must enjoy his work as he had been doing this sort of training for 21 years and I left feeling I had been cheated out of a day of my life. Still I have the computer test to look forward to followed by 6 hours of test school driving, 10 hours of road driving, a pre-test and the full test. Luckily I have my weighty textbook to study in the meantime along with a practice test book full of errors although Mr E assured his students that the textbook in its new form is sometimes accurate and sometimes not. Equally unpredictable is the old book, which he did not seem to be able to give to me. What a shame.