Taxi's across the globe

One of the things I occasionally struggled with in Australia was taxi-drivers that wanted to have a good chat. Now its not that I don’t understand the need for them to chat – its pretty boring sitting in a car all day and the brain goes numb from little interaction, but rather, after getting off a long distance flight or having just had a stressful day in the office, sometimes the last thing you feel like is an in-depth conversation with a person you don’t know in a small space.

Especially when they tell you their politic views which are vastly different from your own – and as a young woman (with a set of strong political views herself), it is a challenging situation to not argue when you are alone in a car with a complete stranger who is passionate about things such as ‘women not working’ (I am not kidding – after a long day, that was one of the topics my cabbie needed to discuss).

So where is my blog going with this– well here in the USA I have discovered a new cab driver – the New Yorker! These one’s don’t actually talk to you but just talk. At first I kept trying to understand what they were saying, and even enquired to be sure they asked me something, only to learn they are immersed in a conversation with some unknown person on the other end of an earphone. This conversation seems quite one way, since there is no break for the person at the other end to be responding.

The airport is a good 45 minutes to an hour from the airport, and Cute-ture takes me to New York 4 – 5 times a year, so after a few years of these taxi rides, I have realized that in fact I don’t have the same cabbie every time but rather there must be some test all cabbies do to see if they can talk non stop for 45 minutes in a mumble without a breath in between.

As for Los Angeles Cabs – well I think there may only be one cab in all of LA…they are very rare to see (not to mention to actually get one) so if you see it – jump in!