Just in one day alone, I came across not one, but two weird taxi drivers.
1. Taxi uncle number 1 aka Crazy Taxi
During the 20 minutes taxi ride, he was honked by fellow drivers, mounted a kerb (!) and he braked like nobody’s business.
2. Taxi uncle number 2 aka Ancient Vehicle
The driver was quite old and so was the taxi. It was those kind of taxi I would have rode on when I was in primary school. There was even a small fan mounted on the dashboard. It smelt musky as well. It is like the kind of taxi you might find on Pulau Ubin. Really old looking. The license plate began with SH. So you can see how old the taxi really is. And to sum it all up, the ride was quite jerky. 
So some taxis drivers in Singapore are weird. And we are always greeted by the familiar colours and LED display on top of the car to indicate its availability to take passengers. Like this……
In Japan, it is much more interesting! They look like this:
Photos from PingMag - read full article here
The best thing is, those are not advertisements but rather logos or names of the respective transport companies. The star thingy on the last photo actually indicate that the driver is a master driver, meaning that he had not had a traffic violation or accident for at least a year. Talking about a safe trip home!
March 14, 2008 at 9:36 am
I agree with you Singapore is still far from being world class in terms of keeping terrorists and public transport.
Unfortunately, we have scholars who drive cars and not take taxis to draft policies and rules to inconvenient not just our own people, but as well as overseas visitors.
Digital information are spreading that Singapore is such a dumb place that has taxis in the CBD that behaves like buses since we have to flag and alight at the limited number of taxistations in the area is supposedly the core business area.
I do wonder how the business visitors would think about doing business when he has to lug his barang barang around if there happens to be no taxi stands. Then again, we got more reasons to pay more and accept inflation because we have to built more taxi stands ya da ya da….
March 15, 2008 at 12:32 am
legislation is always a double-edged sword.
on one hand it helps to control traffic flow and increase efficiency. then again, it may also reflect how inflexible our policies can be.
i think sg may need to do crisis communication like soon. With such information (taxis stands, ‘toilet break’, charity management issues etc etc) spreading, our clean and pristine image may need some defending.