A taxi driver’s $8.40

This long weekend has a story of 2 taxi rides that taught me something about both:

1. Taxi ride from Eunos to nowhere

Ran late on Friday, and had to rush to a friend’s house for a party at 7. I flagged a cab along the road outside my house, and the taxi driver was a 50ish man, who was blaring Chinese music. I asked him to bring me to Serangoon MRT, and he drove off.

As it turns out, he didn’t know where Serangoon MRT was, and brought me all the way to Kallang. To compound matters, he never drove faster than 60km per hour, and it cost me $9.40 to travel along the route bus 13 was taking. To illustrate how slow he was, a bus 13 overtook us, while making stops at almost every stop along the way.

Frustrated, I asked him for a street directory when it was very clear he didn’t know where he was going. Turns out, he couldn’t read the street directory and asked me to interpret it for him. I reached my limit, and asked him to drop me at the side of the road. There, he asked me to pay the full $9.40- I protested: the trip usually costs $5-6, and not only had he brought me nowhere, I was now further from my destination and would have to pay more to take another cab there.

He responded by locking the car doors, and turned back and sneered in Chinese : “Young man, you better pay by the meter. You want to do anything about it, I’ll call the police”. I was shocked by his audacity, and was too stunned to do anything for a few seconds. I asked “do you really have a license?” (his taxi had no identification papers you usually see in taxis)- he reached into his glove compartment and took out some crumpled piece of paper and said that I had better pay fast (what irony!).

Being late, and not wanting to create a scene, I just paid anyway and took another taxi there. It cost me a total of $20 to get from Eunos to Serangoon- thanks to some taxi driver in Singapore who ruined what would have been a enjoyable 18th birthday for me.

2. NETs on a Taxi Ride

After the PSC psychometric testing, I went for a quick lunch with a bunch of friends, and had to rush to Katong for some course I was attending. Having 15 minutes to get from Bishan to Katong, I took a taxi from J8, and asked the taxi driver whether I could pay by NETs because I hadn’t had cash on me. He said it was ok, and drove me there.

Upon arriving, he tried to swipe my NETs card, but realised his NETs system wasn’t working. I was in a rush, and couldn’t agree to his proposal to drive me to an ATM, and then withdraw money to pay him. I gave him my handphone number and name, and said he could call me to collect his $8.40 from me.

I went for class, and promptly forgot about the matter. After all, $8.40 is probably the equivalent of the Macs meal, and I thought he’d probably forget about it too.

As it turns out, he didn’t. He called my handphone 2 times the following day, arranging to pick it up from my house. Since I wasn’t going to be at home, he said he would come to pick it up from me in school, and he would cycle from his house (he lives in Toa Payoh) since he would not have the use for the taxi on Monday.

It really woke me up from my spending habits- this cabby is willing to cycle 4km from his house to collect $8.40 from a student in school, and I spend more than that on a Macdonalds meal. The relative need of ordinary Singaporeans, and the relative affluence of us 18 year old students stands in stark contrast; what we 18 year olds deem as “normal spending” could easily be a fortune to a 40-something man. What does that tell us about ourselves?