For the past 5 years or so, I’ve always driven myself to get around. On the average, I would say that I only take public transportation or cabs thrice a year.

My stress levels, however, have gotten to a point where I strongly detest driving on account of me getting pissed off by other drivers a little too easily, and a lingering fear that the bouts of road rage I have would, someday, end up in homicides. Multiple, violent homicides.

So yeah, earlier this week I was invited to attend a press event over at hotel near where I work. Since the venue was only 3 blocks away from the office and I really want to avoid driving as much as I can, I decided to take a cab to get there.

So I flag down a cab, get in and–before I go on–a disclaimer:

A lot has been said in this blog about people from the provinces but, truth be told, I have nothing but respect for them.

I mean really, how can you not respect people who leave their quaint little home town and cross the seas to find a better life in Manila? These people do seventy-hour weeks in department stores or factories so they can buy Magic Sings so they’d have something to entertain their drunkard friends the next time they come over the small-ass apartment they’re renting.

All this while overachieving people like me get high paying jobs landing on their laps, spend their time magically turning a good chunk of their salary into alcohol and end up blowing almost PhP 5,000 pesos on various sexy girl webcam access sites because they’re stressed and miserable. And horny.

That said, it turns out that the guy who drives the cab I got into is from the province and speaks little Filipino, let alone, English. Now, I usually sit in the front passenger seat of cabs and talk to drivers a lot so, after getting in, I said “The EDSA Shangri-La” and asked him how his day has been so far.

He replied in what sounded like heavily-accented Filipino, most of which I couldn’t make any of. So I thought, no biggie, probably not a good idea to converse with somebody who doesn’t speak much Filipino. It’s all good though, as long as he takes me where I need to go.

The EDSA Shangri-La is around 10 minutes away from the office. Five minutes into the ride, I get a feeling that the guy doesn’t know where the fuck he’s going. “You can turn right on the street after San Miguel Avenue” I suggested, he looked at me with a face that couldn’t be more unenthused and nodded. I took it as a “Yes, fat chops, I’m a cab driver, I know where the fuck I’m going so why don’t you just shut the hell up and relax?” So, I leaned back on my seat and did.

As we neared the corner leading to the hotel, I said “That’s the building right there [pointing], you can drop me off where it’s safe” Again, he looked at me and nodded, and again, I leaned back and tried to relax. As we approached Shangri-La, I noticed that he wasn’t slowing down to pull over. Already missing our destination, I said “You can just drop me off right here” even if “right here” was already a hundred meters past where I was supposed to get off.

At this point, I remembered why exactly I sit in the passenger seat whenever I ride cabs–So that I can easily open a can of whoopass on the driver if he tries anything funny like say trying to Kidnap me to hold me for ransom–and really, that was what was running through my head at that point. The guy, after all, was zooming farther from where I intended to get off at 60KPH. I said, more firmly “That was my stop right there, turn the cab around..no, on second thought, I’ll just get off here. Stop the car!”

I forget what I said exactly but I finally got him to pull the cab over at the EDSA side of the far end of SM Megamall–a good block away from where I wanted to get off.

Before getting off, I explained to him, largely through an intricate sign language routine, that I was trying to get off there [pointing to the Shangri-La] and not here [pointing down] but he just looks like he doesn’t get it.

I seriously could’ve gotten further in the conversation with a stray dog and, moreso, with a chimpanzee who, I’ve been told, are slightly more intelligent.

Seriously, what the fuck was that? I respect the fact that Filipino or English probably wasn’t the guy’s first language and he’s really just trying to make a living. But come on, how much Filipino/English do you have to understand and know how to say as a Taxi driver? We’re talking just knowing what left, right, turn around, “there” and “stop” means here.

How would you like it if you came up to me and asked “Mikey, I need the revenue projection report for our Q4 Holiday campaign” and me, staring at you for a good 10 seconds before finally saying “Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle.”

Christ.

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