Taxi Caballero

It's been a while since I've posted on my journal, as I haven't had the chance to ride a cab for a few weeks now. Funny though, I kinda missed the whole experience, for some inexplicable reason, even though I've been riding cabs, with regular frequency, for around 5-6 years now. Anyway, on with the show!

I've always had a fascination with taxi cab names. In this country, cab names can range from the absurd (while it may sound Japanese, the name doesn't really mean anything) to the mundane (yes, that's quite ordinary around here). As with my last post, I decided to find out what this particular cab's name meant...

...To no avail. I'm not exactly a linguist, nor am I well-versed in a lot of languages, so it's up to ol' dependable Google for the analysis. Unfortunately, the search turned up oddball results, and a couple of foreign-sounding sites that I couldn't decipher.

"El-Kar" could mean "The Car", using Mexican wordplay (like "El Terible" or "El Mariachi"). Or maybe, some sorta Middle-East jargon or location.

Maybe wordplay with Superman's real name? Or some sorta foreign, desert-related name (well, that's what comes to my beautiful mind, so sorry).

Or better yet, maybe the whole deal doesn't really mean anything at all. I should've asked the cabbie... although he would've stared at me with a similarly dumbfounded look. Oh well.

If anyone actually manages to uncover the origin of this cab's name, gimme a holler, and I'll credit ya' a portion of this blog entry. LOL!

Labels: Into the Fray

Seiji eh? According to this site, in Japanese, it means "lawful" or "a manager of state affairs". Heh! Anyway...

Last Thursday was literally a hellish day for me as I spent time fending off consecutive waves of midterm exams in school. Fortunately, banking on a whole, sleepless night's worth of mind-numbing preparation, I was able to ace all of them without difficulty. The task left me quite drained, both in the brain and in the body, so I rushed home as soon as the last exam was settled.

As luck would have it again, I managed to hail a cab just as soon as I left the campus grounds. In this insanely traffic-muddled part of town, it usually takes me around 10-20 minutes to find an empty cab that would actually ferry me back to the opposite side of the Metro.

I'm quite picky with the cabs that I ride, preferring newer car models, as I've had really, really, really bad experiences with the older ones. This cab was one of the ol' dependables - the garden variety white Toyota Corolla. No problemo there.


The ride was mostly uneventful - just exactly what my battered body wanted. The cabbie kept to himself most of the time, except when asking for directions. He drove with a cautious hand, properly minding traffic regulations, street lights, and speed limits - quite a rare trait for a cabbie nowadays, and most fitting for the "Seiji" act. I was left to my own whims, as usual.


Eying the interior of the cab, a familiar sticker caught my attention: "Use your extra time to earn extra cash! Earn up to P20,000/month, part/full time." I've always wondered about it. What exactly this job is... I haven't the faintest idea. Untested product guinea pig? Crash test dummy? Telemarketer? Septic tank cleaner? Your guess is as good as mine...



Halfway home, I glanced upon an awesome doughnut ad plastered all over the side of a passing bus. Mmmm... now that's good advertising. Too bad I wasn't in the condition to drop by the local doughnut delicatessen for a bite.

Near the end of the long journey, I dozed off a bit... and we missed out on the exit we were supposed to go through. Heh!

Taxi Caballero's Totally Unnecessary Cab Ride Assessment:

Speeding Skills - Average:
The cabbie wasn't a sloth, nor was he a maniacal speed demon.

Navigational Skills - Above Average:
He had good knowledge of shortcuts, and was able to traverse the route I wanted.

Ambiance Rating - Average:
Nothing really special about the cab interiors. At least it wasn't smelly or dirty.

Courtesy Rating - Above Average:
The cabbie was quiet, and had a calm demeanor. He had the courtesy to ask which routes I wanted.

Labels: Homeward Bound

Blogging. Again.

The concept isn't exactly alien to me like, oh say, differential calculus... but I've been there, a couple of times in my lifetime.

I've made my fair share of blogs in the time I've spent online. In fact, was there when blogging was still at its infancy stages. Yeah, there was a time when blogs weren't mainstream, and were incapable of raking cash for its owners. Yes, I'm a bit too old for an Internet dork, and yes, I realize I missed out on the bandwagon as well...

I've gone through a couple of blogs of my own, posting occasionally, but I never got to maintain one for a very long time. I guess I never really got habit of regularly posting the stuff I usually wanted to talk about, in all the blogs that I've gone through the years... and I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to start that now. But as always - I'll do my best.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, please bear with me, people of the Interwebs, on this blog... again. This blog project's mostly a "much ado about nothing" really - about my experiences on the road with a bunch of lovable, quirky individuals we usually take for granted and forgotten in the hustle and bustle of our busy lives... our good ol' dependable taxi cabbies.

There'll be other similarly uninformative posts on unrelated stuff as well because... I said so?

Anyway, this ride will be bumpy, full of potholes and detours, and will be rated as a potential PG-13 to R-18. Enjoy the show!

Labels: Musings