Once Upon A Tree

I was driving to work today along the usual route I always use. I've been working around this same place in Petaling Jaya almost my entire life except for one time when I worked in Kuala Lumpur cos my office had a branch there. I grew up in PJ and practically know all the shortcuts in PJ.

My current office is just a stones throw away from the very two first jobs I ever held. From my place, I travel along a short distance of the federal highway and then head into the old Subang airport road and use a back road that leads to my office. It saves me from having to traverse the infamous federal highway morning traffic.

It's a nice little shortcut (well it was a shortcut a few years back, now everyone knows about it and it's perpetually congested) with a host of trees surrounding the route. It used to be a beautiful drive to work, serene, calm and practically empty save for a few cars.

Of course, over the years, a lot more cars started using this shortcut but it was still a beautiful drive into work cos of the greenery that surrounded the place. But of late (well, more like a few years now), I've noticed that they've been steadily cutting down all the trees along the area and building some stupid condominium or mall and the place looks so horrible these days. In fact, as congested as it is, they're still cutting down all the trees and still building god knows what and ruining the land.

Gone are the trees that lined the roads. Gone are the coolness of the air. Now instead, you've got cars indiscriminately parked along the roads causing horrible bottlenecks, dust from the ever present construction lorries, potholes that would lead you to China if you fell into it with the temperatures going up due to the lack of trees.

The rest of the world is trying to save the earth yet we're on a totally different page in this country. The rule of thumb here is 'if there is a teeny weeny space, let's make a mall/apartment/commercial centre/condominium there'. Just chop all the trees away, who cares about global warming and all that. Let's just make more money to fill our pockets! Unless you're living in some rural area out of town (which is somewhere I'm inclined to go and stay one day), then you'd be hard pressed to even find two sets of continuous trees lined up in a row, let alone a single tree!

The world used to be a better place to live in when I was a little kid. The outdoors were a heaven to be in. There will be a time when the only trees you'll be able to show your kids or grand kids will be from an image gallery in Google cos we wouldn't even have enough resources to make the paper to print them on. Even as I'm writing this post, they're clearing a whole new section of trees along the route I use to work ... siggghhh ...

On a more cheery note, this weekend will be the Standard Chartered KL Marathon and I'm totally looking forward to it :D Notice how anything to do with running cheers me up these days ... LOL! Though I've been to races before I've still got butterflies in my stomach thinking about it. There's gonna be a heck of a crowd there cos it's been estimated to have 22,000 fellow humans taking part!

This will be my second competitive 21K run this year after the Energizer 21K debacle a few months back. I really hope it's a better organized race cos with 22,000 people, the logistics will be hell. While I'm totally on edge waiting for race day, there are two things that I'm not too keen about. One is the fact that wifey will be starting her 10K run at a different start location (though she ends the race at the same place as me) and the second is the parking.

They've suggested about 1,000 parking bays around the surrounding area but you have 22,000 people taking part, do the math and you'll know parking is going to be hell. Worse yet is you have to park before 4am at these areas cos after that they close the roads cos the marathoners start at 5am. I only start my run at 6.15am and wifey starts at 7.00am and we're both not at all keen at having to wake up around 2-3am and head to the race location before 4am just to get parking and then wait 2-3 hours for the race start.

But due to the ever ingenious and reliable wifey, she came up with a plan :D She suggested that why don't we check into a hotel near the race location on Saturday so that we can get up much later and just walk to the race venue. And after the race, we can just walk back to the hotel, take a shower, grab a nap and then head home. I thought it was a brilliant idea and we've decided to check into a hotel nearby (still checking out hotel locations) on Saturday night after tucking the boys in to bed and walk to the race the next day. The walk will serve as a nice warm up session too :D That will solve all my parking and waking up early issues. I wonder if these hotels have any wii consoles to keep me entertained ... hehehe ...

With that said and done, I'm totally looking forward to the race. I can't wait to collect the race kit tomorrow at Bukit Jalil. Oh and any suggestions of hotels around Dataran Merdeka area would be welcomed :D
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