Tale Of The Two Cabbies

Two cabbies. Two taxi rides. Two stories.

And such contrasting experiences they were!

The first ride took place this morning when I had to take a cab to work. Upon reaching the destination, I requested that the cabbie turn into the parking lot located below my office. I didn't want to stop by the main road, because there were several buses behind us and I didn't want to hold up the traffic.

Which he did. But as he turned in, he said in Chinese "Ehh.. go into carpark need to pay leh".

"No", I protested, "you do not need to."

Then in a typical Chinaman fashion he insisted that he would need to pay for entering the parking lot, and added that he didn't see any other cabs entering the carpark.

So I said, "No you DO NOT need to. I've entered this parking lot many times and you do not need to pay to get in."

I was already immensely irritated by this stubborn retard when he decided to irritate me further by putting this question to me - "Then why I don't see other cabs coming in?"

He had barely finished his sentence when another cab turned into the parking lot. And so I threw the gauntlet back at him. "See? Isn't that another cab?"

Then, I decided to pay by nets and expected him to know how to use the NETS machine. Instead, that idiot basically stared at my ATM card as if it were some device from Mars, then proceeded to take an incredibly long time to process the NETS transaction, swiping my card numerous times without any success. That was, until I had to take over and do it myself.

What a spastic.

The second ride came in the evening, when we shared a cab to attend my company's dinner function.

This cabbie was different. English speaking, refined, rational and resourceful, one could always tell the difference. Although we were caught in rush hour, he suggested the best route to take to avoid the traffic jams as best as possible.

And these are the type of cabbies that Singapore needs more of, I believe.