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Thursday, May 10, 2007

Morbid Curiosity

From the Wikipedia

Morbid curiosity

A morbid curiosity is a compulsion, fixed with excitement and fear, to know about macabre topics, such as death and horrible violence (see also: snuff film). In a milder form, however, this can be understood as a cathartic form of behavior or as something instinctive within humans. According to Aristotle, in his Poetics we even “enjoy contemplating the most precise images of things whose sight is painful to us”. (This aspect of our nature is often referred to as the 'Car Crash Syndrome' or 'Trainwreck Syndrome', derived from the notorious inability of passersby to ignore such accidents.)


This curiosity makes it a nightmare everytime there's an accident anywhere in KL or on any highways. It's so much more stressful when the accident happens on the opposite lane. not blocking any of the 3 lanes you're on...

Anyway I could confidently say I don't indulge in my morbid curiosities... at least on the road... I would look at an accident whenever I'm a passenger but I insist the driver should not slow down and if I'm the driver I won't even look directly. What I can see out of the corner of my eye and at most a glance, if the traffic really crawls, would be the most I'd get of any accident.

3 comments:

amyheidi said...

I hate that too. The jam (the myth that there is no traffic jam in Brunei is not true) is terrible, and since the car in front of me slowed down, I had no choice but to slow down as well, and thus look at the commotion going on.

There was one time where it was really terrible. All four lanes were jammed, because there was an accident at the other side, a car plummeted down the riverbank. Scary.

Ahmad Hilmi said...

Aha, okay so Brunei does have traffic jams... I actually believe the myth.
Yea... there's no way to get free once people start crawling for a look...

I once almost hit the car in front of me because an accident just happened on the other lane and the car slowed down from 140km/h to about 50... It was a police car too!!! I cursed the driver for being an idiot and being an idiot policeman :D

amyheidi said...

It's the way one construct the myth. If they say 'no traffic jam at all in Brunei', then that's not true, but if they say 'all-day around traffic jam do not exist in Brunei', then that's partly true.

The jam here is not as terrible as in Jakarta (macet, they call it over there) or KL, and it is only very terrible during the morning, lunch hour and evening, and during weekends at the most happening part of Brunei.

My friend who came from Singapore and KL hates the Bruneian traffic jam, as you can see that the reason for the jam was due to no car pooling. Haha. Like for instance, mom and I goes to the same university, but we use different cars because of the different timetables that we both have.

My god, such an idiotic policeman. Why would he want to slow down when his colleagues are working on it?