LIFE

gas chamber in a traffic jam

As a public transportation user in Jakarta, of course we are familiar with the minivan bus or Angkot (known as pete-pete in Makassar), they are cheap, abundant, can be irritating sometimes but still they are useful.

And what does it has to do with gas chamber?

well, although the title sounds scary enough but it was how I feel about a week ago.
It was a beautiful morning, I went to work and took an Angkot to go the train station. Little bit traffic jam here and there, a typical condition in Depok when you leave your house after 6.30 AM.

Unfortunately, at one T crossing, we had to stop next to a bus with its exhaust pipe facing the doorway of our Angkot (uhm, an angkot has two doors for driver and front seaters and a doorway without door for the back seaters). In a second, we were enveloped with fumes coming from this bus, all of us in this angkot could barely breath, asphixiated, we were gasping for fresh air.. some of us tried to open the windows but it did not help much.
Ironically, it took some times for the angkot driver to realise this. He tried to steer his angkot away from the bus but he failed.
It was a horrible horrible three minutes, I could even tasted the fumes in my mouth hours after that.

Traffic jam - bus and - high leaded fossil fuels is a bad combination! I hate to think that lots of people in Jakarta should live with it. Pollution level in Jakarta is at the threshold of becoming inhumane and unbearable.

We have to stop this.

We really should.

posted by Rully @ 7:10 AM