My greatest fear

Up until the journey down, the true balik kampung, the Raya festivities have been going well. Got up early on Hari Raya itself and had my baju melayu on without much fuss. This is really a bigger deal than it seems because I always have problems getting the buttons on, and even bigger problems getting the sarong to roll nicely, securely and fall neatly. If there is anyone to emulate in wearing this traditional dress, it would be to look at the Agong, or the PM, and copy exactly what they do. The post prayers binge was also controlled and I had only what I wanted without going overboard.

So things were looking like they were moving as planned. The second day is always the trip down to Muar, to Dad's hometown. We decided to go in 3 cars instead of the usual 2. Everyone would travel in relative comfort to Muar, and then onto Spore.

On the journey down, Nisa's car fell behind because H wanted to go to the loo and that car stopped in Seremban rest stop. This was where Nisa felt the brakes almost fail. Her car stopped and waited for 2 hours for the resident mechanic there to do a look see. To his credit, he admitted that this particular European car was beyond his expertise but he said the car could go on. When Nisa reported back and the Muar people diagnosed that the brakes probably needed bleeding. But after 2hrs of rest, the brakes seemed to be back to normal and she drove on. They failed again at the outskirts of Muar and she pulled into a petrol station. By now, it was some 7hrs since leaving the KL home and everyone was tired. Short story is that a mechanic was located in Muar who seemed competent enough to sort this out, and the car was towed to his workshop. Everything in Nisa's car was distributed between the other 2 cars and we continued the journey down to Spore. We left KL 11am and got into Spore at 1am.

If there were better circumstances to experience a car problem, I could not imagine. The brakes problem was discovered at a large reststop. The second time it occurred was at a petrol station. All of this took place in the day (it would have been a disaster if it were the night). And Nisa had her sister and brother with her. On top of that, the family was in Muar and could find a friendly mechanic, because they have lived there for an age.

The greatest fear in the travels up and down KL is to have a breakdown and it happened.