On the road again.

"You don't do this full time, do you?"

Let's be honest; it has been a damn good year.

Last autumn, I went back to University to kickstart my career in teaching. Thanks to my student loan and government grant (because she hui zhu yi hao) I have been free to regain a semi-normal kind of life. I fall asleep in the evenings, I awake in the mornings. I spend my days as far away from car seats and customer service as I can, burying myself in books and bitching about how awful it is to be going to school with people ten years my junior. Indeed, I have risen from the grave, and rejoined the land of the living.

So of course, I'll be throwing it all away, starting the coming week.

I could give you reasons. Maybe an itch in the old accelerator foot (which sounds pretty nasty, come to think of it). Maybe a need to fly over the road, the night lights flashing. Perhaps something as simple as the joy of providing a service for my fellow man. Maybe a friend blew a tire, and as we worked to fix it, not a single cab driver stopped to help; perhaps it spurred me to return and bring a little sorely needed kindness to the night-time streets.

Sure. All of the above. But mainly, summer is coming up and I'm gonna need the cash. In facts, I should've gotten onto this a long time ago, but I've just been enjoying not being a cabby so very, very much.

Also, I think that'll be a fair trade, right? I get money, and this blog gets more content. As a matter of fact, remember the notebooks I mentioned back in the day? Well, as I was digging through the warehouse full of junk that I call my apartment, I came accross a portfolio. Lo and behold, it was full of taxi notebooks. So I figured I'd add some random samples from the first year as a cabbie. It won't be in lieu of regular updates, but it might be amusing none the less.

1/12/2011
Drove a woman to the other side of town. Very unpleasant. Chose a route that ended up in a traffic jam. After a while we arrived. She wanted to pay with American Express. Was shocked when she learned that wasn't possible. I explained to her that dropped AE because of fees.
"But you can't just drop a deal like that! I ride with you all the time, and always use American Express!"
Yes. Yes we can. No matter how often you ride with us, you, we, the car, the world is subject to reality and the decisions made in the face of that reality. Bitch.

3/12/2011
Listening to drunk people play "I have never" outside the cab. Subjects covered; sex at work, sex in your friend's bathroom, cunnilingus, sex on a football field, sex with strangers, sexual fantasies about 'Ralph'. These people are shameless. There seems to be a lot of toilet sex going around. I wonder where they're going. I wonder how many STDs they'll spread tonight. Now they're calling Jonny, who "doesn't drink, because he thinks he's so special". They're bitching about his age, visavi his sobriety. Good God, was I ever one of them? 
Well, yeah... At they're age, and their level of sobriety, I too would talk loudly about shit nobody wanted to hear, just to feel unstoppable. Weird how you never realize your motives until after the fact. Now they've decided that Jonny is the worst. Now they left. I hope for two things;
1. Somebody runs them over.
2. that they grow up.

7/12/2011

Boozehound with an extremely liberal view regarding traffic laws. Thought I was in my forties. He's had a driver's license "to and fro" for the past 20 years. He's had it confiscated for reckless driving so many times, its a wonder they keep re-issuing it.

"It's so disgusting to live like this, when you know that next time it might be you on that stretcher" - Old lady on witnessing a body being wheeled out of the retirement home I took her to.

"The fur business is older than prostitution. After all, fig leaves can only do so much" - spanish fur-trader. 

14/12/2011
Old lady. Had just visited her mother, who just turned 106. Wonderful mood. Was widowed at 33, had no money, and still managed to raise five daughters. Love you, old lady! and your mother too.

Woman. About 40. Terminal student. One daughter. Husband passed away a month ago. Kept driving in the wrong direction. Lady had the patience of a saint.

Earlier: Abba-impersonator, newly returned home after a tour in Istanbul.Was a stand-in for 'Anni-Frid' in an Abba tribute band. Big internationally. Played in Brazil: over 70 000 people in audience. 


I'm gonna call my boss now.