Klang Open 2009 folly

Earlier this month I decided to join a chess tournament all the way in Klang. Vastly overestimating my directional capabilities, on the day of the tournament itself, I proceeded to take off with my good friend Chan to the tournament place. We left around 7.15am, pretty early considering the night before we were playing pool over at Asia Cafe and obviously was lacking much needed sleep. Especially when sleep is needed the most in a chess tournament.

I have to really criticise my discipline. I purposely left Asia Cafe the night before so that I could sleep more. So I left at 10.45 and reached home about 11pm. I was telling myself that I was going to sleep straightaway because the next morning I had to wake up at 7am. But no that wasn't the case as I soon found myself talking on the phone with my good friend Addy because she sent me an sms and I was too lazy to reply her back. So I just called her. And the intended 5 min conversation lasted for 40 mins. Great. So preparing for bed and all, I went to bed at 12am.

I got around 6 hours of sleep the most. Then miraculously chan came to my house at 7am (he normally wakes up at 2pm), and off we were to the chess place after briefly discussing our maps to the place for about 5 mins. The plan was to follow the federal highway until we see Persiaran Sultan Ibrahim and then turn left. The thing was that I had never been to Klang before and obviously wasn't familar at all with that place. Furthermore, we are going specifically to Kampung Jawa which apparently is not a famous and big place in Klang.

Driving we were along the federal highway when suddenly we were already at the end of it and we ended up at the Pulau Ketam jetty. If you had read my posts before, I just went to Pulau Ketam a few days ago. No, this was not right. I was suppose to end up at Persiaran Sultan Ibrahim. But luckily somewhere near we saw a building called MPK. And there was an MPK on our map too. So looking from that landmark, we tried to figure out our way to Kampung Jawa. The ironic thing was that MPK is at a four-way road. So when figuring out our way we had to drive in all 3 other directions to try to "get" the map. After trying for like 1 hour, we were obviously lost.

Then we just decided to call my other friend, Sheun, who was following the school bus to the tournament to see if we could meet up with them. They said OK and to meet at the Petronas petrol station, which was near this Masjid with a yellow top. So apparently we were near a Masjid with a yellow top and there was a Petronas station nearby. But somehow we couldn't find it, and we gave them another call to go ahead first and we shall try to make our way there. Just right after the call, we managed to find the Petronas place, but obviously they were gone already. So we were again lost and trying to find our directions.

Then there was another friend, Zhuo Ren, who lived nearby the Klang komuter station whom had not leave for the tournament place yet and was going to, so we thought we'd follow him. But because of our lack of patience, we decided to try to "find" our way first and he ended up reaching the place. We thought that the Klang komuter station was the one near the Pulau Ketam jetty because it said Pelabuhan Klang.

Little did we know that the three forementioned events combined to become a disaster because...

TURNS OUT THAT THE PETRONAS MY FRIEND WAS AT AND MY PETRONAS WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT

and

THAT PELABUHAN KLANG AND KLANG ARE TWO DIFFERENT PLACES

and

THERE WAS TWO MPKs IN KLANG AND WE WERE AT THE WRONG ONE.

which spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

It was all so ironic. We decided to call Sheun to ask her to go ahead because we somehow couldn't find the Petronas station even though we did pass it before, and before we could find it again, we just had to call her and ask her to go ahead first. So when we did find the Petronas station, it was too late because we thought she was there before, when she wasn't at all! And then our impatience of not waiting for Zhuo Ren for about 15 minutes could have actually saved us about 1 hr 30 mins when we would have known much more earlier that the Komuter station he was going to was totally different to the komuter station that was near the MPK building and the Pulau Ketam jetty. And there was no way we would know that would be two MPK buildings in Klang because heck I had never been to Klang before so how would I know!

So the $1,000,000 question is: SO HOW DID WE KNOW?

It was all really thanks to Zhuo Ren. When we finally tried finding the place for over 2 hours, we gave up. We drove to the Pelabuhan Klang komuter station and asked Zhuo Ren to come all the way from the tournament place back there to come pick us up. He was kind enough to agree. And when he actually did arrive (after driving through much traffic jam), we found out his description of the place "with alot of mamak stalls" contrasts hugely with the place we were at which was near the river of Malacca. We kind of got the idea that we were at the wrong place already. But weren't too sure about the Petronas and MPK yet. So we drove to the area around Petronas, stopped by, and asked a few people for some directions. One of the locals said "Kampung Jawa tu jauh la sana", little did we know how "jauh" did he meant. And we even drove to North Port, where all the shipping containers were, and asked more people. And after telling us to go on the Kesas highway, it finally dawned on us that we were in the wrong direction.

Upon arriving at Klang, not Pelabuhan Klang, it was a totally different story. We got lost again in the city area which was tres confusing. All in all, it took us 4 hours to reach our destination, Kampung Jawa, but yes we did eventually find it. We missed our first round of match and we gave our happy opponents a free walkover. Leaving at 7.15am, we finally arrived at 11.15am. It was an experience which consumed lots of my petrol and apparently I am an expert of Klang now.