Monday, February 12, 2007



Of Taxi drivers


Since I was running really late for my project meeting this morning, I had not much of a choice but to cab to school. Thankfully, it was 9.35 when I boarded the cab and I was just 5 mins from paying the extra surcharge of 2 dollars. Haha, hey, cabbing to town ain't cheap at all with the ERP charges at 2 gantries. Grr.

Okok, anyway, I have no idea why just a simple utterance of my destination, SMU, can never fail to generate a whole discussion/conversation all the way from my starting point right to my school. The cabbie either mistook SMU as SIM or still thinks that SMU is located at the old campus at Bukit Timah. And then, they'll go on to ask about the new campus, the school fees and what degree am I studying for... Haha, most of the time I had to give this entire overview of the different courses and the school fee (mostly to substantiate why on earth we are paying such exhorbitant fees for a local university).

Ha, I realised I'm heading nowhere near to the main point of the cab ride this morning. Well, this morning's cab ride was somewhat out of the norm cause, the cabbie was this uncle who graduated from University of Canterbury, Christchurch New Zealand! HOW COOL!!!!! So we talked about NZ instead. I can so relate cause I've never been to a more lovely place than NZ (I prefer the South Island where the breathtaking scenery just leaves you amazed at the wonders of God's creativity)

So instead of hearing laments about the government and answering of questions on what I think of my school, I get to talk about the places we went to in NZ. Mount Cook, Lake Matterson and Milford Sound. I could really tell from his stories that Uncle cabbie really misses college life in NZ. He goes there every year end holiday (wow, pretty well to do cab driver). It was really nice talking to him. In my opinion, cab drivers are interesting people to talk to. Their POVs do make alot of sense at times.

It was a good thing I woke up late today cause I would'nt have this lovely and interesting conversation with the cab drive which brought back warm memories of touring NZ during the craze of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Haha I still recalled telling my sister that I wouldn't mind extra-ing as an ugly orc with no pay as long as I can run around on the plains. LOL! I was really serious about it.

I would really love to go back there again. This time round, I'll definitely try bungee (overwater).

Posted by Jo at 11:33 pm