Conversations with Cabbies

In the chaos that is Manila, your life is ran by the cabbies. Like ferocious gang leaders, they roam the streets of the city with their own rules. They decide where they want to go, how much they will charge, what music to play, and what traffic rule to violate. Will I be late for work today? Only the cabbies know the answer. For many years my relationship with this city has been love and hate. Unfortunately, I only have hatred for the cabbies that infest its streets. Now that I have significantly mellowed down by listening less to aggressive rock, I decided to engage these cabbies in conversations. I understood why they feel the need to rule the streets. Life is so grand, with so many things happening that we do not have control of. We like to pretend sometimes that we call the shots.

Mr. Scarfeet

Mr. Scarfeet has three children, one is in college studying computer and two are in high school. He thought that his first child shoud be studying dressmaking since she would be earning money after six months of training. Mr. Scarfeet rents the cab that he is driving for 12 USD a day. On a good day he earns about 10 USD which is more than the minimum wage. Mr. Scarfeet would yawn occasionally during our conversation. He said that he wakes up really early everyday because he refuses to drive at night for fear of armed robbery.

Mr. Shy Smile

Mr. Shy Smile never finished grade school. He thinks that the Philippines is in the middle of Asia, strategically located between Korea, China, and Japan or somewhere in that area. He treasures the day when he learned how to drive (although seriously I think he never learned) because otherwise he would still be fetching water. He says that his old job was to fetch water for families that do not have access to clean and safe water. He gets paid 1/10 th of a dollar (maybe even less, I think I screwed up the conversion) for a bucket of water. It feels like being inside a sauna when you enter his cab. He said he was saving fuel by shutting off the airconditioning when he has no passengers. He regaled me with his ideas on how to best deal with foreign customers. He said the Americans hate being ripped off but they constantly rip off the whole world.

Mr. Revolutionary

Mr. Revolutionary believes that we should have another coup similar to what they had in Thailand. He believes that the current president is the reason for surging oil prices. I tried explaining to him that oil price is being dictated by world market but my account was left on deaf ears. We were driving by what seems to be a vehicular accident, and Mr. Revolutionary decided to stop for an entire minute or longer to gather more information about the incident. The cars behind us blew their horn in impatience, urging us to move along. Mr. Revolutionary never gave me my change.