The Jinns down at Lim Kok Wing

When I used to work for the Bank, Carmel used to tell us to drive according to the speed limit, which was 50 km/h, at the bend by Lim Kok Wing. But I didn't go by that way when I went to work, so I never drove at 50 km/h in Cyberjaya. Even if it's to make a turn... well maybe at corners I do slow down a little bit. When I worked in Cyberjaya, I loved driving with the windows down in the morning, just letting the breeze refresh me. I don't get a chance to drive with the windows down to work anymore since I changed jobs, but on the weekends if I ever wake up early enough, sometimes I go out for a morning drive just so I could do just that.

It was such a pleasure too, working in Cyberjaya, if my day started at 9, I'd leave the house at 8.45 and drive at a leisurely pace. Which is what I loved about my last month working at the Bank. If ever I got offered a position in Cyberjaya again, with the same salary or higher, doing low stress work, I'd definitely take up the offer.

But Carmel, who was one of the Bank's VPs, had a very good reason for asking everyone to drive slowly at that bend by Lim Kok Wing. She posted memos all over the elevator walls to advise us. A lot of car accidents had taken place on that bend, and 3 ppl working for the Bank had even ended up in hospital as a result. But the most striking thing about it was that none of accidents were caused by cars crashing into one another. They didn't crash into buildings or trees either, cos there are no trees or buildings at that bend. All the cars either spun off the road or turned 180 or fell on their side or something like that. Drivers would be speeding down that road at a 120 km/h and suddenly brake (causing their cars to spin violently off the road) because they thought they'd seen someone crossing their path, when in actuality there hadn't been anyone walking there at all.

One of the ladies that I'd worked with that had been with the company since the start told me that in the beginning, local taxi drivers that operated in the neighboring kampung of Dengkil had warned the transport drivers of the Bank not to speed on the Lim Kok Wing road that led up to KL. The story goes that one day, one of the locals that worked in KL was using that particular road to go back home to Dengkil one night. When he got to that particular bend, he was surprised to see an elderly man hailing him by the side of the road. The elderly man was dressed in typical kampung attire of t-shirt and kain sarong pelekat, which was normal for someone to wear when going to a surau, so the driver wondered if this old man was lost and needed some help, as there was no surau nearby.

The driver then stopped the car by the road to inquire. "Pak Cik nak ke mane? Pak Cik perlu bantuan ke?" He asked, uncle, where are you going? do you need any help?

But the Pak Cik simply smiled and said no, he didn't need any help, just that he wanted to tell the young man not to drive so fast because his children often crossed this road to get home and they may get hurt if drivers are not careful.

When hearing that the old man had children, he assumed that they were about somewhere, so he turned his head round to see if he could see them, but when he turned around to face the Pak Cik again, he had vanished! There was no old man, and there were no children there.

The driver was very scared, but heeded the old man's words and drove slowly there, and warned others to do the same. Because obviously that road was used by jinns who lived in that area. Even though jinns reside in that other dimension parallel to where us humans live, we still have to respect one another. It's just the way things are. So those transport drivers that the Bank hired had scoffed at first at the idea of jinns crossing the road at that bend, but when accidents started happening there, they all began to respect the rule and drove more cautiously.

This is a true story. And one of many you'll hear of about jinns or the like when you're in South East Asia.