by Malaysians are so fond of making the LONGEST in Book of Records. For example, longest hours of speech, longest hours of gong hitting, longest hours of dancing… If you look at our addresses, their length make great records too. Very often, you would see Malaysia addresses similar to below:
Mr. Beng Long Long
1st Floor, Lot 4, Block C,
Fook Yu Apartment, Phase 5,
Lorong Binatang 3A,
6 KM, Jalan Ling Kun,
89743 Inanam,
Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah, Malaysia
Besides house number, you need to specify the name of taman, jalan, lorong, distance… Many years ago, our government introduced POSTCODE system (which is practically useless), to add more junk to the old lengthy address. Then I forgot who was the smartass who proposed the use of “fancy” state names such as Kedah Darul Aman, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Kelantan Darul Naim, Pahang Darul Makmur… Again it lengthen the already-very-long-address and makes more school kids fails Malaysia geography, and do nothing else… Probably that’s why sending letters from Sabah to Peninsular takes 10 days or more. FYI, in USA, no matter from what state to what state, it takes maximum 3 days.
Amazingly, despite the overly excessive details, I bet many of you still experience the difficulty of locating your friend’s house, if s/he didn’t give you a map or some direction hints such as landmark. I think POS Malaysia is so screwed up that until today, they don’t dare to offer next-day-delivery service to ALL addresses. To complicate matter, you also cannot use English or BM address interchangeably (see picture below).
Pizza Hut is one of the victims too. For me, it was an annoying experience to order pizza delivery. It takes them more than 40 minutes to deliver the pizza to my house. And EVERYTIME they would lost and called me for “step-by-step” direction. By right, if they can’t deliver the pizza within 30 minutes, we can get it FREE. We are so generous not to be so mean. But please lah, build a address info database or something, don’t call me everytime to repeat the same instruction, whenever I place an order. Sigh… Malaysians…
Our address is so long that my university overseas has problem to store my complete Malaysia address record into their database, coz their local addresses were only 2 or 3 lines, for example:
UK Address
26A Randolph Avenue
London W9 1BL
United Kingdom
USA Address
175 East 96th St
Apt # 21K, New York,
NY 10128 USA
BTW, their land are MANY TIMES bigger than Malaysia. Please learn from others… Anyway, we do make another record, the SLOWEST mail delivery service in the world.
You hit the nail on the head yet again. There are many things that can still be done to improve our country in this respect.
Another example: several years ago, the UK was (and probably still is) possibly the only country where mail can be delivered to ALL destinations by the mail service (eg, British Mail). I mean ALL – even in their kampungs and islands – yes they do have kampungs (rural areas). You might ask – but…kampung houses dont have numbers or any identification, so how to they know which house is which? Answer: They give unique names to EACH house. For example, Threadgold’s Farm is the name of the house I stayed in. I suppose the local authority would keep a database of all houses in the area to ensure nobody picks the same name, and to map the house names to its location. In that respect, I suppose each road there has a unique identifier too.
We MUST learn from and compare ourselves with more advanced countries, not crowing about how better off we are compared to those poor Africans, how cheaper is our oil compared to other SEA countries blah blah blah.
Couldn’t agree with you more. It’s about time to get rid of long addresses and keep them short.
It is proven that addresses can be short and ensured that mails in arriving at their destinations in less than 3 days.
People are, generally, turned off by long names. For example, what is “Hibiscus rosa-sinensis”? It’s a Bunga Raya. What is “Aedes aegypti” It’s a Nyamuk Aedes. What is “Peromyscus”? It’s a kancil.
Like biological names, long addresses are hard to read, memorise and write. Especially to someone like me who had flunked my biology exams.
So pity for the tourist who hold a map while scratching his head to find the right direction!!
Another thing that is really annoying is that for a similar house, we have different lot No. and house No., which one are preferred?
Just to add to this discussion, install Google earth to your computer, its free and look for an address say 144 spring st, in soho new york. See how awsome the power of it. Try and look for the twin Petronas tower, and lastly look for an address or try and zoom an area in kota kinabalu, or anywhere around the world. enjoy.
lrt: i think the pic for kota kinabalu is several years old – try u see Centre Point – the building next to it doesnt exist – still the old bus terminal!!! that means useless for new buildings. for natural landmarks (eg, Low’s Gully) ok lah.
i think mr. beng long long is wrong. after “6 KM, Jalan Ling Kun”, you should also mention “Off Jalan Too Lange”. otherwise postman cannot find the address…
have a good week! 🙂
u’re right!
even Singapore’s address also very brief de.
everytime I gave my address to friend, they wonder why so long one.
I am very disappointed the postman never find my location..they always screwed my address.. so i never receive packages from my overseas friends, even my travelling postcards never reached my sisters in kk but it does reached my brother in a small kampung in ranau (well, it’s with postcode which makes it easier i guess)..
Sometimes it’s just a waste of our breath complaining about it knowing when nothing’s been done. Perhaps we all could learn to live with it, and even have the benefit of the doubt that trivial things like this WILL improve.
On the address issue, I think there is a option to ommit certain infos; like 6km. Is there any signboard that suggest 6km? I don’t think so. Or developers should make the address easier for the buyers. Like 1st Floor, Lot 4, Block C can be simplified to BC1-4.