Day 11: Trains and tastes

Bas Hendrikse

Joyce Pebesma

Dennis Muller

Mart Oude Weernink

Max Kerkers

Let me propose a thought experiment here. Suppose you are a student, in your third or fourth year, and you decide that it would be a cool thing to help organise a study tour. There is a mould for this: study tours have been organised by your study association plenty of times before. You just need a theme and a far-away place to go to, or maybe the reverse: you need a destination and a theme. After a lot of brainstorm sessions with some fellow students crazy enough to stick out their necks together, you settle on "Intelligent and Smart Cities" as a theme, and South-East Asia as target.

All well and good, but now what? How is a city intelligent and smart? Singapore has done your work for you already: they call themselves a "Smart Nation" so the main thing it to find out what they mean by that, and go with the flow. But what about the neighbouring countries, Malaysia and Indonesia? In what sense can their cities said to be intelligent and smart?

When I run this thought experiment in my head (which is the only way you can run a thought experiment) I arrive at the same answer as the OC: smartness lies in education and in infrastructure. Hence I applaud the choice of targets to visit in KL: UniMY and MaGIC for education, the SMART tunnel and (today) RapidRail for infrastructure.

While I'm at it, I also want to acknowledge the tremendous job the OC has done to make it all happen: for the two weeks I have been part of this magnificent experience, there have been no hiccups at all, everything has been brought off without a hitch. If it feels to them (as it probably does) as though they have had to struggle and improvise: yep, I can confirm that that's what it inevitably feels like to organise a major event; the trick it not to let that struggle surface. Which they have managed to achieve admirably well. So there: Joice, Bas, Dennis, Mart, Max: well done!

Ragged around the edges

In contrast, today incontrovertably showed that not all participants have been doing as well. This morning when it was time for the bus, two of them who shared a room had not shown up and did not respond to attempts to wake them up. Nor were they the only ones starting to look ragged around the edges. As for myself, despite a short night I felt quite ready to absorb whatever this last day would bring my way.

One thing it brought was rain. I had started to take it for granted that it would not rain at all, but as in Singapore, our last day in Kuala Lumpur proved otherwise. In this case that was mostly a blessing, as the heavier rain had fallen during the night (I vaguely remembered thunder) and now the temperature had cooled down at least five degrees.

Maybe because of the vestiges of rain, the traffic was so jammed that for once our early start brought us to our destination, the headquarters of RapidRail, just in time. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for our hosts, so those of us in need to do so could catch up on another 15 minutes of sleep, seated in yet another presentation (or sharing?) room, waiting for the show to begin.

Lecture at RapidRail

It began with a propaganda-like video on the joys of public transportation, followed by another, more informative video on the construction of a new railway due to be opened soon. The speaker from Prasarana (the mother company of RapidRail) then expanded on this, listing an impressive number of projects that were either recently finished, due to be finished soon, or underway. When it's all done, the train capacity will have increased by hundreds of thousands of passengers daily; this surely cannot but help to improve the traffic situation hugely. The amount of money involved is impressive too: where I thought that 2 billion RM for yesterday's SMART tunnel was actually not that bad, the 30 billion RM quoted for just one of the new train lines was enough to make me blink. Palm oil must be booming!

Rail lines old and new

What we actually had come for, though, was the fact that the trains on some or all of these lines are or will be driverless. Neither the video nor the presenter had stressed this point at all. When asked about it, it seemed as though there is little to be said: driverless yes, autonomous no, the whole operation is remotely controlled from the headquarters building where we sat. No intelligence in the trains themselves at all, they will not even brake if there is an animal on the tracks. That problem was waved out of existence by saying that the tracks were pretty much out of reach. As for cybersecurity, we got the same answer as yesterday: this is a closed system, not connected to the internet, so no problem. Plus, the communication between concrol center and trains is conducted through the electrical system, not an electronic network. Of course none of us are electrical engineers, so we were not in a position to judge the claim that there was no way to intercept or spoof messages sent this way.

After the presentation we were offered "refrshments", meaning once again a hot meal - and this at 11:00 in the morning. Any thought of lunch obliterated, we were led to a viewpoint from where we could overlook the control room. The setup was pretty similar to the one at the SMART tunnel yesterday. All of it was brand new and spic and span. The operators had about 6 screens each, which did evoke some jealousy among the students; however, the thought of watching those screens for shifts of 8 hours on end did a lot to erase that feeling again. I think you need to inject some fake emergencies from time to time, just to keep everyone alert. But that's psychology, another field that none of us are expert in.

Workshop

The last stop was a workshop. By some this was interpreted as a chance to switch to active mode and do something ourselves, like the Blockchain workshop on the very fist day in Singapore. That was quite far from reality though: here we were led to a mechanical workshop where the trains were maintained and repaired. Such large pieces of hardware are always impressive; it's an aspect that is largely missing from our field of study. That lack dectracts from the appeal of computer science to outsiders: typically it starts being interesting only when you hook up a computer to something that moves, such as a robot or maybe a train. So it was nice to be able to walk around and under the trains, even though it added little of value for the purpose of this visit. The conclusion must be that the public transport infrastructure in Kuala Lumpur, though very new, is not very modern, relying rather on tried and trusted technology from decades ago. Which I'm not disparaging: tried and trusted technology may be just the ticket for trains.

Driverless train

I did ask about the non-functional equipment we had noticed on the train line from Batu Caves on Monday, only to be told that that line was not operated by Prasarana. Nice save!

The very final event was the inevitable group picture. You would have thought that by now we had settled on a default arrangement where everyone know his place, but not so: we always wander around pretty aimlessly until everyone is in a position where they can see the camera. The routine on the other side is strikingly similar each time: one-two-three... click... one more... now a silly one!

It was a good thing that we had had what amounted to an early lunch, for the next and last item on the agenda was a food tour through Kuala Lumpur starting at 14:30. This left an hour for catching up on sleep. For once, we did not take our own bus but rather the monorail directly in front of the hotel, which is one of the lines that is operated by Prasarana. Sadly, it must be said that here, too, the functioning of the electronic displays left much to be desired: they were stuck on one station and hence worse than useless.

Fish paste, to be fried into keropok leko

Colourful and unknown fruits

Rambutan

Unfamiliar habits

Unfamiliar snacks

The food tour was run by a team of three ladies that took us via a number of restaurants and a large food market of the type you would hesitate to visit on your own: narrow walkways, unknown habits and mores. Along the way were were shown and got to taste many types of food and food ingredients. They have so many fruits and vegetables that I had never heard of and that I'm sure are impossible to get back in the Netherlands! I remember only a few of them: the rambutan (family of the lychee), the dragonfruit, the jackfruit and of course the durian; and on the vegetable side, the petai that I happened to have tasted just the day before. Also  murtabak passed by, as well as krupuk tapioka (I learned that the stuff we call krupuk in the Netherlands is actually just a type of krupuk, namely krupuk udang, for shrimp), as well as many more snacks and dishes whose names I did not catch or remember. We also learned about using your fingers as utensils while eating: there are special provisions for washing your hands before and after, and a proficient finger eater does not mess up his/her hands above the second knuckle. I could not bring myself to try it out though: table manners too ingrained, and my taste for new adventures was running out with the end of my trip closing in.

At one point we were filled to capacity not just with information but also with food, but on we still went to a next restaurant, until after regular dinner time. I have noticed that the food here is less filling than ours; nevertheless, there does exist a point after which you've just had enough.

To get back to the hotel, the monorail would have been the obvious choice, but the students have all acquired a taste for uber and most of them preferred to go that way. Never having used that service, I joined a group of three of them who had summoned a car, to see it in operation. Not a good first experience, as it turned out: the car was very slow in coming, just standing still for at least ten minutes (which you can track live via the app). There was no apparent traffic jam. You have to rate the trip afterwards and this driver got negative marks; the wish to avoid that is what is supposed to keep drivers on their toes. We did get to the hotel in the end, though so much later than the monorail group that they were not even there to ridicule us any more.

Given the time and my early start back home tomorrow, I decided to skip the foretold drinks in Petronas Tower 3. Been there, done that. Instead it was goodbye to the group, get the suitcase packed, set the alarm and... one, two, three... click.