Roy Tang

Sometimes the best stories come from the strangest places.

Tonight, I was tired, I just wanted to get home quickly and unwind. So I took a taxi, just outside Megamall. The driver had to ask me where I was going, and luckily my choice of destination was favorable to him. Now, to be honest, I really hate taxi drivers who choose passengers based on where they’re going. Not only is it illegal, it’s annoying. So I didn’t really like it when he turned out to be a chatty driver.

On our way down East Avenue, near the LTO offices, he told me how he had spent the whole day there yesterday to get his taximeter calibrated. Now, the government recently declared an increase in taxi fares, so taxis have been lined up in droves along East Avenue for days now.

For some reason, I found myself interested. He told me about how he was there since 5 in the AM, sleeping in his taxi (apprently a new one, or so he said) He told me about how the chairman (of what exactly, I’m not sure) didn’t know anything about cars and had to call a senior citizen employee to help her sort it out. She didn’t know much, he said, but she had guts. She stuck to it all day, stopping only to eat, making sure everything was in order, enduring the verbal abuse of the taxi drivers.

He said he was impressed with her, a diminutive woman in her late thirties, a bit attractive, apparently single. She hunched when she sat down, but when she walked, she stood tall – she knew how to carry herself. She was new to the office, he said, but she was eager to learn and she meant well.

He was a good storyteller, relishing the details of his story, I wish I could do it justice. I came away impressed, and not a bit ashamed. I was ready to dismiss him as another nobody, someone who couldn’t learn anything in life but how to drive a car. But the way he spoke, the words he used, they spoke of a subtle intelligence, a stoic understanding of events around him.

I should chat with taxi drivers more often.