There is no peace in Kuala Lumpur

There is no peace in Kuala Lumpur. If you live in a terrace house that is, in a housing estate where you have no large compound in the front of your house to call your own, the space for real privacy; unless you live in a big bungalow house with a compound of your own, in a piece of land of at least 10,000 sq. feet in area. But how many of us can afford those sort of houses in Kuala Lumpur nowadays.

Kuala Lumpur is polluted, maybe in a sense with environment pollution, which is also true, but with other form of pollution. Noise, man made mostly, nuisance disturbances, again man made, and disturbing the peace, which is unavoidable with the way of life that we lead.

Before you wake up in the morning, you hear the first pollution, if you can call it that. I am not trying to insult the Muslims in Kuala Lumpur, and I am a practicing Muslim, but I am just being true to the situation, The call for prayer starts at about 5.45 am (not always but near enough). Its loud, and it urges Muslims to wake up and come to the morning prayer (Subuh) at the mosques (large and small mosques). One of the sentences in the call that tells you " Its better (for you) to pray to Allah than to sleep". A good Muslim will heed that call, but there are very few good Muslims left nowadays. But to those who pray then I call them good Muslims.

Then nature will start calling, birds begin to chirp and crows cracking their voices in search for food. (If you live in the kampong you can hear cock crowing along with the call for prayers but in Kuala Lumpur you may just hear some faint distant cock morning crow if you are lucky). And bulbul will sound their knocking like sound as the sun rises, small birds flying about calling their mates with their special calls. Its always very pleasant to hear the nature’s morning call.

Then come the real pollution. First the bread man will come, honking on his motorcycle horn (the bread man is usually an Indian fellow) and adding to that with an air horn. Why they have to do that I do not know, as if we do not know that bread man has already arrived that morning. This is soon followed by the ‘puttu mayam’ man, honking on his horn as well, sometimes using air horn with slightly different tune from that of the bread man. ‘Puttu mayam’ are home made vermicelli, eaten with brown sugar and scraped coconut, these are also sold by those of Indian origin.

As the sun begins climbing up, another set of calls come. These are from those buying unwanted old newspapers, and old battery. "Old newspapers!" they would holler, blaring out from their lorries or vans loudspeakers. And its so loud and repeated many time that it becomes a nuisance, a pollution. In the early days they used to use loud hailers but nowadays these are recorded and amplified from their tape recorders or vide cassette players in their vans or lorries. I know they perform a service but I think they are more of disservice with their noise pollution. And in one day they may make many trips to your area or there may be others doing the same business. Imagine if they come to your area at every hour, you cannot get any peace.

Of course the fishmonger comes at about 9.00 o’clock, also honking his horns to attract attention to their customers. But the fish monger only comes once a day, and usually in the morning when the fish is still fresh. They do not contribute much to the noise pollution really.

And by late morning come the mattress men, in their lorries full of new mattresses, honking their horns also, announcing that they have arrived. They have their own special tune playing on the loudspeakers, you know well that they are selling mattresses. They sometimes exchange old mattresses with new ones, of course ripping off their customers with expensive mattresses and buying those old mattresses cheap. I suppose they make so much profit selling new mattresses that the old mattresses are just scraps to them. They may come to your area two or three times a day.

Then by early afternoon comes the ice cream man on his motorbike with a side car where they place the ice cream cold box, playing the music "Lollipop man", loud and long and probably staying around long enough to attract the children and at the same time to annoy you. They may also come three of four times a day.

I forgot to mention of the newspaper man who normally come early in the dark morning hours or early morning just about when the sun emerges. He does not make much noise really but if he uses a motor bike then you can hear him revving the engines going from house to house. And another motorbike riding guy that goes from house to house is the Postman. He also tends to rev the engines when making deliveries. Then off and on comes the courier man delivering the letters and goods but these are few and far in between. But if he comes, he tends to ring you doorbell unlike the Postman who delivers registered letters who tend to sound their horns shrilly to attract the house owner. He thinks that the house owners are dogs, responding to his shrill horns.

Then there is another group of people who are nuisance in your lives. These do not create noise pollution but they create other forms of ‘pollution’. These are people, salesmen, beggars and donation seekers. Salesmen come knocking on your gate or ringing your house-bells, and if you come out they tend to start their sales talk. Really these people waste a lot of your time. These sales people can be from selling gas-fittings to selling some cheap books, and this last class are sometime some sort of syndicate from some foreign countries. And beggars, there are quite a number of them, but they do not necessarily beg but they disguise their begging with something like selling odds and ends. And the other group are the donation seekers; they tend to pretend that they care collecting some donations for some mosques (the Muslim tends to go to Muslim house) or church donations (who do not approach the Muslim houses) or some building funds for some buildings used for religious purposes. But these people are very specific in that they do not really approach people of different religion when asking for donations. At least there is certain respect, but for me those asking donation to build mosques I am not so sure about. I end up thinking that some are cheat. These people are mostly from Kelantan, Kedah and Pattani. One newspaper reported that these people can squeezed from the public up to about RM300.00 a day each, and no one can vouch where the money goes to.

Come late afternoon, your street becomes the playground for the neighbourhood children. And the noise they make sometimes can be overbearing. But what can you do about it, the housing estate does not provide enough space for children to play football or any other game in. Malaysia has got this bad habit of putting up houses in every conceivable open space, be it in town or in a housing estate. Somehow nobody really think about the children needs for an open space or a playing ground (or even for adults), space to free their mind and body and to run around in.

You can shut your gate or even have your gate locked or latched or you do not open your doors but the noise pollution (and the other unclassified pollution borne on you) still persist and you cannot take a rest even in your home in the morning or a peaceful nap in the afternoon.

The noise does not stop until about 10 at night, even then you may still get some noise from cars which loose their way in your street or those who come home late.

Malaysia really is a noisy country, and nobody has ever attempted to control such disturbing town noise pollution (and other unrelated and unclassified pollution).

Some have resolved that problem themselves by living in condominium where sales men and these noisy vans and vehicle do not get to. But the solution is expensive, condominiums are expensive to rent or even to maintain. Is that the price to pay to rid yourself of noise (and other unclassified) pollution in Kuala Lumpur?