Ipoh August 2022 “The wrong Waze to behave”
01/08/22 04:50
Today I am driving from Ipoh to Lamut to pick up our son and partner who have been holidaying on a nearby island and then we all go back to our home in KL. I roughly know the route we are to take as two days ago we did the same journey in reverse. I shall be driving across Ipoh and then onto the main route to Lamut and it should take ninety minutes. As a matter of choice I use Google Maps to navigate but it has its weaknesses. In the UK I have quite often found myself driving down narrow lanes to save a few hundred metres or a minute or two on the journey time when those roads are so bad that I might well have lost an hour or more off my life expectancy due to worrying over the road conditions. Anyway that won't be a problem today as my wife prefers to use Waze in Malaysia and I am not going to be bothered by that choice.
About thirty minutes before we set off I confirm the route is the same as the one we used a few days ago. When we set off I have the phone placed where the gear stick is in a car. Not in my line of sight but a glance away should I need to do that. I press start and we set off. After 100m we get to the first road junction and the Waze voice says “Turn Left”. I am confused, that is not what I was expecting because turning left is the route back to KL. I glance at the phone and the Waze app is showing only the next 200m of the route. It is certainly taking me in the opposite direction to the one that I was expecting. A dread comes over me. What if I have entered KL as the destination and overridden the Lamut route? I don't remember doing that but this is going wrong. I can't switch the app into overview mode to see where it is taking me and I am now on a major road wirh no stopping places. As is (unfortunately) usual for me in these circumstances I start to lose my temper. Stupid app, stupid Waze, where the hell is it taking me. The answer a minute or two later is, the main toll road back to KL! At this point I just explode and rage against Waze. My wife is seriously unimpressed by this, picks up the phone and looks at the route. It IS taking us to Lamut but by a completely different route to the one I was expecting. We come off the toll road at the first junction and head over to Lamut in a now silent car. I tried to explain it was all Waze' fault but the jury sitting alongside me found otherwise. I switched into sulk mode and we arrived on time to pick up our passengers.
That evening, now back in KL, we went out for a meal. There was five of us sitting at the table and I let the others choose the food to eat. Of the three courses, one was what I had had for breakfast, another didn't appeal to me whilst the third was OK but I was still in a contemplative mode. I had been an idiot earlier today and I will just sit here and enjoy my glass of Coca Cola and nibble a bit of beef and rice. After all I am on a diet so joining in this meal is not important. A minute later an arm stretched out to grab some food and the glass of Coca Cola transferred itself to my lap. Everyone stopped talking and then started searching for napkins or whatever to dry the mess up. As I sat there a feeling swept over me “Stop behaving like a child!”. No voice, just a feeling that someone had just done that to get my attention and that someone was not the person who had accidentally knocked my cup over. One second after the contents of the cup had started to seep into my clothes I looked up and said “This is not a problem, please don't let it spoil our meal, look there is still a third of the drink in the cup!” Which of course meant that two thirds were on the seat, my clothes and now in my shoes but I was not going to let that ruin the evening. I grabbed some of the food that was left, ate it and joined in the conversation. Ignoring the obvious; I was a little damp in all the wrong places. No matter, I was now back in the right place with the one who matters.
About thirty minutes before we set off I confirm the route is the same as the one we used a few days ago. When we set off I have the phone placed where the gear stick is in a car. Not in my line of sight but a glance away should I need to do that. I press start and we set off. After 100m we get to the first road junction and the Waze voice says “Turn Left”. I am confused, that is not what I was expecting because turning left is the route back to KL. I glance at the phone and the Waze app is showing only the next 200m of the route. It is certainly taking me in the opposite direction to the one that I was expecting. A dread comes over me. What if I have entered KL as the destination and overridden the Lamut route? I don't remember doing that but this is going wrong. I can't switch the app into overview mode to see where it is taking me and I am now on a major road wirh no stopping places. As is (unfortunately) usual for me in these circumstances I start to lose my temper. Stupid app, stupid Waze, where the hell is it taking me. The answer a minute or two later is, the main toll road back to KL! At this point I just explode and rage against Waze. My wife is seriously unimpressed by this, picks up the phone and looks at the route. It IS taking us to Lamut but by a completely different route to the one I was expecting. We come off the toll road at the first junction and head over to Lamut in a now silent car. I tried to explain it was all Waze' fault but the jury sitting alongside me found otherwise. I switched into sulk mode and we arrived on time to pick up our passengers.
That evening, now back in KL, we went out for a meal. There was five of us sitting at the table and I let the others choose the food to eat. Of the three courses, one was what I had had for breakfast, another didn't appeal to me whilst the third was OK but I was still in a contemplative mode. I had been an idiot earlier today and I will just sit here and enjoy my glass of Coca Cola and nibble a bit of beef and rice. After all I am on a diet so joining in this meal is not important. A minute later an arm stretched out to grab some food and the glass of Coca Cola transferred itself to my lap. Everyone stopped talking and then started searching for napkins or whatever to dry the mess up. As I sat there a feeling swept over me “Stop behaving like a child!”. No voice, just a feeling that someone had just done that to get my attention and that someone was not the person who had accidentally knocked my cup over. One second after the contents of the cup had started to seep into my clothes I looked up and said “This is not a problem, please don't let it spoil our meal, look there is still a third of the drink in the cup!” Which of course meant that two thirds were on the seat, my clothes and now in my shoes but I was not going to let that ruin the evening. I grabbed some of the food that was left, ate it and joined in the conversation. Ignoring the obvious; I was a little damp in all the wrong places. No matter, I was now back in the right place with the one who matters.