This morning, I took a cab again, to fetch Feli to school for her librarian duty. She had to lug her backpack, another sling bag to carry her books, and 3 cardboard boxes for her PA (performing arts which is something like drama and part of normal school curriculum). All 3 things were heavy and the poor girl was struggling with it, so I helped carry the cardboards for her bearing in mind to use my arm strength (as I'm not supposed to carry heavy stuff yet).
We took this comfort Toyota Crown cab which has this cool mechanism to open the back left-side passenger door even if it is locked! Since I forgot to bring my EZlink card, I had to take the same cab back home, so Feli had to get down the cab by herself with her 3 bags. Hence the driver used this lever to open the door for her and she left without closing the door (because mummy always closes the door for her lah!) and walked off. Then the driver closed the door using this lever. It can open and close the door gently or quickly. He demo it to me when we were waiting at the traffic junction, and I was so afraid he would hit an on-coming motorbike as he showed me how the lever worked at least 3 times!!
Anyway, he was quite a chatty driver so I asked him how's business. He said he has suffered a 20% fall in business. He used to take home $100 per day, now it's $80...hence his monthly income has fallen from about $2600 to $1800 - $2000 depending on how long he drives. He says lots of passengers have lost jobs so they don't take cabs anymore. He has been driving for 3 years now. He counts himself lucky though cos he'll not be retrenched. He was retrenched once when he was working in the shipyard and was not able to get a perm job after that. He worked as a hospital ambulance driver on a 1 year contract but pay was low. He's the sole breadwinner with 3 school going kids and his wife doesn't work.
However, it was amazing how difficult it was to get a cab today compared to yesterday! Yesterday was a breeze...less than 1 minute. Today was like every cab had a fare and we had to wait like 7 minutes to get one and there was a lady behind us (in an unofficial queue for cabs outside Mel Park) who asked if we were waiting for a cab. I guess everybody was late for work/school today, like we were ;)
Love
Theresa
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