Happy New Year. Be blessed and be a blessing!

Monday, June 11, 2007

INTEC's Anatomy Part 2: Transport

Let's see. The transport in INTEC is mainly concentrated on those poor buses that have to make their trips to and fro from Seksyen 18 Cemara Akasia to Seksyen 17 INTEC everyday from 7am to 11pm, with one trip every 15minutes or 30minutes depending on the capacity of the bus and the amount of people on the bus. Of course, that's what they tell you. Here's my version of report about the transport in INTEC.

There are 2 types of buses operating from INTEC to Akasia, Cemara, and Cendana. From Cendana to INTEC and back to Cendana, it is currently run by the yellow Restu Barakah buses, while the purple INTEC buses drive students from Akasia, Cemara and also some main campus(Seksyen 2) student.

INTEC bus is fast sometimes and it can be really slow at times. The bus drivers are not exactly friendly but certainly better than Restu Barakah drivers. Usually, you will be able to get a bus at 7am to 8am without much waiting. However, from 8:30am onwards, it is especially hard for you to go to school at your desired time. Say, you have a class at 0900. My recommendation is that you take the 0730 bus instead of the 0830 bus because the 0830 buses will not be as full as the 0730 bus. When the bus is not full, the driver will not move the bus because he doesn't want to make an extra trip or two to pick up one or two students. So sometimes it is easy to be late to class because of the bus.

Also, in the afternoon, the bus service is sparse too. You might have to wait for more than 30 minutes just to get a bus to go to INTEC from Akasia/Cemara and vice versa. The main reason for this is because again, the bus is not full. See, the drivers like to send the students if the bus is full or at least 75% full. If you are in Akasia/Cemara in the afternoon and you are waiting for a bus, I strongly suggest you bring a book to read in the bus stop. It will be a long long wait for some of you. For those in INTEC wanting to come back to Akasia/Cemara, they will be facing a different situation. Normally, in the afternoon, you will see a few INTEC buses waiting in the bus stop but only one will be going to Akasia/Cemara while the rest are there for show only. For example, there can be 4 buses in the bus stop, but you have to go on to the right bus. Even if you DO get on to the right bus, you still have to wait. In times like that, I will just take a nap in the bus because it just won't move.

Here's a trick. I mention that the buses are slow. They are slow but occasionally, you can try to look for the bus drivers and demand them to drive the bus right then. You see, these bus drivers always hang out in one particular resting place. The resting place is exactly opposite the bus stop and all you have to do is to walk 3 minutes to their resting place, wake them up, and ask them to drive you back to hostel. They might give you some excuses like "No, the bus will only move at 1515. We must follow the schedule .....etc..etc.." They are just giving excuses when they say that. All you have to do is to get his attention by saying that you have something urgent or that a lot of people want to go back to hostel. With some effort, they will give in eventually to your request.

Night time buses are even rarer than the rarest species of the world. So, don't go to school at night. Also, if you are coming back from school to hostel, try to make a trip before 7pm. Usually, the "last" bus will leave at 7pm. Anything later than that will have to wait a long long long time.


Restu Barakah buses are quite similar to its counterpart. The only difference is that Restu Barakah tends to fluctuate a little bit more in terms of its frequency of trips. That is due to the fact that Restu Barakah only caters to the guys living in Cendana. There are not so many students living in Cendana Hostel, hence the bus service will normally deteriorate in its service quality. The Restu Barakah buses however, are equipped with automatic air freshener which will spray some air freshener at fixed time. So they smell slightly better than INTEC buses. Other than that, they are not much difference.

One more thing, do take note of the small A4 label on the bus's window pane. Sometimes Restu Barakah will change destination with INTEC buses. That means, instead of driving students from Cendana, Restu Barakah will in turn drive students from Akasia Cemara, while INTEC buses will serve the people staying in Cendana. Sometimes, when students organize special trips to different places, those reserved buses will also have the label on them saying, "GMI, Parlimen, Lincoln's Center" and so on and so forth.

Just as an alternative, if you are sick of waiting for the buses to arrive and you have some extra money with you, you can always walk out of the main gate in INTEC and take a mini bus home. Mini bus costs 70 cents for those without air conditioners while those that have air conditioner will charge 80 cents. Take the mini bus opposite the road because that is the one that will drive you to Seksyen 18 and PKNS for that matter. You can also hop on to a RapidKL(number 529) if you want to. It costs RM1.00 but the ticket can be used the whole day. For mini bus and RapidKL, they will stop in front of the Esso Petrol Station. That's where you get down. From there, you just have to walk another 5 minutes to reach Cemara/Akasia.

For those who wants comfort and speed, taxi is always available too. Just a short notice, taxis in Shah Alam DO NOT operate according to the meter. They will have fixed price for different destination. A trip from INTEC to Cendana might just cost you RM8 easily, depending on the kindness of the taxi driver. So if it is possible, avoid using taxis if you have other alternative to choose from.

That's about it for the transport in INTEC. One of my friends once said, "I think my best friend in INTEC is the bus driver. Even though he can be angry and fierce sometimes, at least he gets his job done." I don't know about you, but I agree with her to a certain degree. Librarians are irrational (they scolded a certain scholar for wearing round neck T-shirt) and guards are eye sores to everyone. (They hand out summons like they hand out free fliers) Till next time then.


Bus-sicked,
Leen

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

compared to librarians,busdrivers are nice ppl.there's this particular librarian i strongly recommend ppl to look out for: the oversized one who sits at the counter just to catch poor innocent students without nametags/jackets/longsleeves.the others are generally nice ppl.

librarian-sick,
*Eunice

Leen said...

Librarians have too much time in their hands that they have nothing better to do. =D

Not only that, they were not trustworthy, irresponsible, and greedy too. =/

Shalini said...

Actually, everything (except the kuihs) at the ADFP cafe tastes like poison.

Blearghhhh!

;-)

Nurul said...

Hi, im new to INTEC since i just registered for my ePJJ course in DPA. is there any public transport bus / taxi that will take us directly to KTM station in Sksyn 19? Thanks for your help, seniors.