Why I love taxi drivers here...

Just got a ride from a crazy, talkative old uncle, who dropped his wife off at the same time as picking me up. Had a fantastic stream of consciousness the whole ride. Here are a couple of memorable exerts.

Driver: You work over christmas or you go back?
Adam: Working a bit.
Driver: Me, I got to work, my wife, she say "No money, no honey", what can you do?
(the uncle was at least 80, and wrinklier than Yoda)

Driver: Where you from?
Adam: England
Driver: Ah, England... you married?
Adam: No...
Driver: Ahhh, International Bachelor, James Bond, Double O seven!
Adam: Hmmm.....

Taxi strangeness

Now that is a smart taxi driver....

and then Stephen Hawking's girlfriend said I owed her five bucks

I love taxis here. Like everything else they are surprisingly high-tech.
I discovered today, that if the driver doesn't feel like telling you how much to pay (and you are somehow unable to read the meter) he just hits a button and a female synthesized voice bleeps out "please pay five dollars, have a nice day". It feels like I've just been hit up for money by Stephen Hawkings girlfriend....

Venture Capitalist for taxi drivers...

I love taxi drivers here... I think about 1 in 5 are really great fun. Either they are very talkative or they are 'interesting'. The guy who drove us when we went out for dinner last night fell into both categories... He seemed to have mistaken me for either a publisher or a venture capitalist. The minute we got into the taxi (with me in the front seat), he started telling me about what bad drivers Singaporeans are. He went on to how badly people actually understood how cars work, then gave me this example. He'd heard of someone driving an automatic, when the accelerator jammed on the floor, leaving the car going at 210 km/h. The person hit the breaks, but this only slowed the car to 80km/h and it kept accelerating. The guy eventually crashed. He asked me what I would have done.... I said, as it was an automatic, that I would have put the car in neutral. He claimed I was only the third person he'd asked who got it right....

His basic premise seemed to be that if people understood how cars worked (especially automatics) then they would be able to avoid accidents. He also started describing a system similar to how pilots learn to fly, whereby you learn where to focus your attention.... In hindsight it actually sounded like a good idea. The guy claimed to be writing a book and just needed a publisher or an illustrator. I'm not sure that he actually wanted seed money from me, but more that he seemed to imaging that I had a whole network of contacts who might be able to help... In some ways, I kinda wish I'd got his number, I think it would have made a good book and might have been fun to work on....

He also claimed to have an invention and an idea for a website which were going to make hundreds of millions, he just couldn't tell me about them (I guess he didn't have a 'non-disclosure' agreement on him for me to sign)

(through the whole of this Minna and Nachen were sitting in the back trying really hard not to laugh)

Still love taxis and kinda wish I'd been an investor....