Time to adapt, time to change..

Our recent petrol price hike threw most of the people into frenzy when the price of petrol increased 78 cents causing our usual cost of 1.92 cents/litre to 2.70 cents/litre! Initially when the announcement was made, it didn't trigger me that much since I know there's nothing much I can do about it but to get hit by it.

So I just lengang lengang and drove back to Penang from Kulim after work and then suddenly it came to me.

The sight of a huge overcrowded traffic was right in front of me and caused a standstill for almost an hour. The usual ride from Bukit Jambul to Queensbay that took only 15 minutes had taken me an hour to reach Queensbay that day.

I wonder what caused that traffic and behold, I saw: 2-3 stretches of cars tailing out from a petrol station a few metres away queueing to pump petrol! The queue was like 50 - 100 metres away from the station! And if you are familiar with the roundabout located in Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah (I hope I got the name right...), there are about 4 petrol stations located at the vicinity! The whole roundabout was at a complete standstill due to the overwhelming traffic that was going to pump petrol.

After a few days, I started to receive forward emails that propagate the falsehood of the government, some research about oil-producing countries against the petrol pricing, how we can boycott from Petronas to pump their petrol, how to maximize the total petrol you paid for and etc.For once, I think that this petrol price hike did served its purpose. Why?

1) There are basically too many cars on the road and most of them only holds 1 passenger.I guess we are too pampered in a situation where most families are able to own more than 1 car these days.Some of them basically needs the car for the means to work.That's totally a credible reason in buying a car.

However, most families are so blessed (I won't use the word pampered since I want to be gracious..:p) that every members owns his/her own vehicle or even shared among siblings. This is for convinience sake they say.Sayang your kids mah.Now you see lo what happens.Too many cars but too few people occupying in them.

I believe this price hike will wake some of the people up to start car pooling or actually start to make use of public transports.

2) People will start to consider on the other alternative plan: NGV (Natural Gas Vehicle)

Installing this would be a one time deal and the cost of having a full tank gas is way much lower than a full tank of gasoline.I won't go into the details on how much in comparison but it's very low lah..It's like comparing Ding Dang(50sen) with JOJO(RM2) [Those in my era surely knows these brands..hehe]..

The only con I can see from installing NGV is that most of the petrol stations in Penang Island do not have natural gas. The only petrol station that has it is in Butterworth on the way to Kulim Highway.Well..even though this may stop Penangites to consider this alternative but it doesn't mean its the same elsewhere.

Maybe one day, everyone will turn to renewable energy....be more environmental friendly..going towards solar...buy First Solar panels....hehe*

3) Makes people thinks twice before they go anywhere.

This cost hike may just cause people to change their lifestyle and to adapt with the cost incurred by cutting down their lepak frequency.Once there's a cut down on outings like that, surely they could save more money when they stay at home and read some books..or exercise..(highly not possible but it could happen!)

For what's worth, I'm not saying that this petrol increase is good which makes me very unpopular among people around me.What I'm trying to address here is simply we can't do much about it but to accept the change.Be worried or not, its not the point because the price will increase eventually in time.What I'm trying to emphasize here is that DiGi is right about its slogan, Time to Change.

Regardless of what the government promises, we should take it as pinch of salt and never put our full trust on them.Nope, not because they are corrupted or bad but plainly because there are too many factors around the world that are uncontrollable. I guess people love to blame someone else when bad things happen and never look on the positive side of life.

Lets take some time off and start to appreciate our life that God gave us. To be contented in life is one of the toughest thing to do but it's the best thing to do in order to appreciate our short span of life on earth.