Traffic Jams and Marking Weekend

I love to work and hate to be idling unnecessarily. Thus, going to work is no real problem for me but the time we need to spend travelling (and not being able to do anything else) is something I dislike. What more, if we are met with traffic jams. And, I'm not considering at all about the stress and risk that go with it. So yesterday and the day before, I went through massive traffic jam. On Thursday, as I went back home from campus, got into a huge traffic jam in the stretch between Serenia exit and the KLIA-PLUS interchange.

The jam was caused by a trailer completely blocking the Seremban fork of the interchange. Traffic was diverted towards the Bangi fork. That means we had to do a u-turn at some toll northbound; I did my u-turn at Bandar Seri Putra toll which was totally packed with u-turning vehicles and those exiting at this toll. What should have been a 40-minute drive home turned into a three-hour plus travel. Given that I had to go to work the next day for a replacement lecture, I was on the watch-out to see if the blockage has been cleared and I found this on X:

So, the next morning as I went to work, I met with another traffic jam. In my mind, I will certainly be late for my 9am replacement lecture. Luckily, I was able to message one of the students to relay the message that I will be late. Now, the traffic jam this time was caused by a horrible accident. As I passed the scene of the accident, I saw at least one car completely wrecked (I can't imagine what happen to the people in it). During the jam, several ambulances went by. The 40-minute journey this time turned into one and a half hour journey.

To comfort myself during these traffic jams, I reminded myself that it is fortunate for us not to be there at the time of incidence, alhamdulillah. 

Travel time has increasingly become a wasteful part of our life. After Covid pandemic, we had the chance to reduce our work-travel time by allowing work from home for tasks that do not require our physical presence but I guess employer-employee mistrust is still high. Lecturing tasks are however best done physically as interactions can make them more meaningful, but extra lectures could easily be done online as academic staff had the experience of doing it during the pandemic. For replacement lectures, some of the students have indeed suggest that we just do online lectures but unfortunately this was not allowed.

This weekend, I will be alone with my eldest son as my other half with the youngest will be at Temerloh for an engagement occasion of her nephew. Before this, I was planning that I use this weekend to focus on the preparation of slides for my talk at SQST2024. Alas, I had this huge task of marking around 1000 exam scripts briefly mentioned in the last post. Below is a picture of part of the exam scripts that I need to go through.

Not visible in the picture are the exam scripts with the other examiners. I don't feel confident of finishing these. Already I'm feeling fatigue and growing back pain. May Allah help me.