Price increase of fuels: a long line in the cold night
Yesterday night, the television began announcing that starting from May 24th the new prices of fuel will take effect. My parents immediately asked me to fill the almost-empty tank of the car. Accompanied by my youngest brother, we took the ride to the closest gas station.
It was not far off, but we got halted by the one and only traffic light between my house and the station. The counter showed that we had to wait for 50 seconds. On our left and right were motorcycles with their riders dressed in all sort of thick clothing to protect them from the fierce coldness of the night. “Hurry up!”, I said to myself as if it would speed things up. I knew people everywhere are now rushing to the station, so I better arrive soon to prevent being the tail of a long line.
Some seconds before the light turned green, the bike on my right took an early illegal start, typical of Indonesian road users. The rest of the pack was more patient and didn’t scramble until the counter reached zero.
When I arrived at the Pertamina-operated station, it was 21:49. The place was filled with a horde of motorcycles queuing for the rightmost post and an almost equally numbered cars lining on the extreme left. I joined the cars, barely entering the gas station because of over crowdedness. We all wanted to squeeze the last drop of the old price. (I wished the digicam was working at times like this)
9 cars were in front of me, so I figured it would take quite a while. 3 policemen were on guard at the site, putting more order as deemed necessary. The two middle posts were for solar and were mostly empty with occasional big cars stopping by.
It took around 25 minutes to reach my turn. There was this cheap announcement printed on an A4-like paper which stated that every car can only buy Rp. 75.000 maximum. I still asked the guy to fill the car full tank anyway, but he refused. Good, he’s following rules.
Rp. 75.000 only filled a little past half of the tank. After arriving home, I did some little on the computer and soon went to bed, awaiting a bright… no… a more expensive tomorrow.
(I think I heard faraway sounds of people protesting the government as I closed my eyes…)
Tags: Car, Fuel, Gasoline, Government, Increase, Indonesia, Money, Motorcycle, News, Night, Pertamina, Petrol, Police, Policy, Premium, Price, Violation of law, Waiting
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
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