City living

I was reading the Sunday Star paper on 26.10.08 and a few stories caught my eyes. One of it was about the dearth (death?) of the world oil supply and the need for a better transport system. The former was written as an international article with an interview with the writer/director of Crude Awakening and the latter was on the news made by a group called Transit advocating for a good public transportation system. Both painted a grim picture indeed.

Reading them made me revisited this idea that I had once on living in middle of the city. The idea was that my wife and I can sell either one or both of our cars, sell all our houses and live in a condominium where the rent is substantial to enjoy the security and the comfort of being near public transport. Preferably within the KLCC or the KL Sentral area. We can then be near all the movie theatres, nightspots, eating places and other places that we need to travel for quite a while now to reach it.

Currently, we are living near the controversial Botanical Garden in Shah Alam where the road ends just meters from our house and we have a forest to feed us oxygens. Jogging was easy as we need to just go out of our house and the track will run nearly 3 to 4 km. Will this still be the case in a city living?

When I proposed idea this to my wife, it did appeal to her with some caveats. We did live in an apartment once during our early years of marriage and she hated it when she had to carry the groceries quite far as we were only given one parking space inside the compound. The solution will be, if we ever do it, is to have a good delivery service or a condominium on top of a shopping complex. Or at least adjacent to one. We can just trolley in our groceries.

The only transport problem may be when we want to go somewhere a bit far but like the people of New York, we can just rent a car. Just like what Jack Nicholson did in As Good As It Gets. Getting around places around us by walking will also makes us healthier.

This idea is still half-cooked but if we can somehow manage to convince our cats, we might just do it....