Cablog

Dragons

These kids sat in the back and requested to go out west. The cabbie asked to see the money. When they refused he threw them out, then gave as good as he got. Welcome to the Year of the Dragon...

 

Clowns

Well it's time for a update after being side tracked over a video project, finished just in time for Christmas. This precluded all else, including emails, blogging and other regular tasks. Except work, of course.

This damage above happened when a boy/punk stood in the middle of the road hailing wildly. He had already stopped one cab with the door wide open and upon seeing me approach he suddenly stepped into my lane. As I swerved he cocked his arm and punched the side mirror, smashing the glass and weather shield.

That was the end of the shift when the City was jumping and I had three hours remaining. I turned and caught up with the kid and four of his mates across the road. Obviously they were trying to get to Matraville or Malabar and no one in their right mind would accept such a fare at that hour.

They didn't run but loitered with a brazeness beyond their pubescant years, challenging me to do something about it. So I went around the corner to the police station. They were busy dealing with a mother looking for a missing daughter, and I was only half-hearted so I left.

Another incident happened recently down in the Shire. Same time, after 3am Sunday morning when three fellas aged around thirty five offered to pay up front from a nightclub in Sutherland. I told them don't worry about pre-payment, just get in and I'd take them home.

At the destination they simply got out and walked away with the excuse that $18 was too expensive. Six dollars each. The 'ol cab or kebab situation. In the dead of night I yelled after them, "You don't rob the poor, that's a dog act!"

For this I had to dodge a full plastic water bottle with an invitation to 'suck my c***'. So I headed to the local cops and found two patrol officers finishing their shift and looking bone weary. I told them not to worry about it.

Leaving Engadine I spotted the clowns in the front yard of a house on the highway. Now, thanks to Google I know the residents name and their sons working in the family business, their Facebook pages, and how a local politican advocated on their behalf in Parliament after a business contract with the Government went sour. Of course, he argued, they were a hard-working small business just trying to do the right thing. Or some such pap.

If it wasn't Christmas and I was the vindicative type I could have some fun with such information. I'm thinking of a recent link sent by a reader. It reports on a cabbie exacting sweet revenge on a dickhead passenger, via Facebook. It's beautiful.

Happy Christmas to all, but be careful - there's a lot of bloody idiots out there.

OZCabbie

The popular taxi industry magazine for drivers, OZCabbie has finally gone online.

Founder and editor Peer Lindholt has been a solitary and tireless advocate for drivers over the years and it's good to see OzCabbie now available to a much wider audience. For passengers it provides an rare insight into the industry nationwide.

Besides fearlessly challenging the industry mafia and government alike, OZabbie is also renowned for consistently publishing a ripper joke page. Well worth a visit.

Jokers

For the moment Cablog has taken a back seat to a mind-boggling adventure in the world of high definiton video production. So with Christmas upon us delivery is a priority, hence the dearth of postings. My apologies. Yet the beat goes on in the cab world.

In cabbie parlance, 'there's a lot of bloody idiots out there'. I explained as much to an aboriginal girl last night. “Sydney has five million people so there's a lot more bloody idiots here than you have back home. Be careful.” Home was a border town of two pubs and two police stations.

She was pretty agricultural, fresh off the bus and heading to see some Bangladeshi joker willing to pay the $110 fare. Whilst such a job could often go wrong I never doubted her honesty. Or maybe a fare rip-off early on Sunday morning had me too jaded to care.

“We never lived on the mission or in housos,” she explained during the journey. “We hate that stuff. Our old family street was ruined by them vandals. I guess we grew up middle-class, eh.”

She wasn't surly or cynical but open and honest in that earnest, country kid finished school and down in the big city. Coincidently she hailed from a town mentioned in a recent post thus, “We only got good abos. We don't need (security)”.

It was a great fare from beyond the wilds of Mt Druitt. The pick up address was a shabby mix of fifties housing commission weatherboard shacks and tiny brick bungalows. The street were littered with fallen rubbish bins and it seemed like only half the residents adhered to bin law – bring 'em in!

Being from a middle-class background she was staying in her sister's stylish new unit complex, the only redeeming feature in the drab landscape (and this was in the dark!).

“She's got a really nice unit,” she said, “but she lives with a criminal. Blackfella, eh," she chuckled. In the end the joker paid and I chuckled all the way home to an early mark.

Next post will report on some thieving white bludgers, the aforementioned fare evaders.

Queens

I don't suppose anyone made it to the Diva awards on Monday night at Fox Studios, or partied on at Kit and Kaboodle in Kings Cross? Fair enough, most would be reluctant to go out on a Monday night.

What irks me about carting drag queens is the amount of sticky glitter they leave over the back seat. Or fragments of feather. Yet those ankle-snapping 12 inch platforms are worry.

A big shout out to Queen Liz, an old favourite. During my birth she did but pass by St Margaret's hospital in Bourke Street.

This site is now groovy apartments opposite the Beresford hotel, a popular queen hangout and a stones throw from Sydney's oldest drag spot, the Taxi Club on Flinders Street.

Brides

There are numerous transport options for a bride and groom on their big day. They can live the dream by going the horse and carriage mode, the original taxi cab... Or they can simply take off their shoes and walk across the road to a beach ceremony, as my son and his wife did in May. That's the beauty of Palm Cove, Far North Queensland.

Years ago on a Saturday afternoon I collected a bride in full regalia with her father and a bridesmaid. She was late, of course, but with the meter ticking who cares. They were headed to a park on the cliffs at South Bondi for a windswept ceremony thanks to blustery summer breeze.

Late last night I carried a bride, sans husband, home from the wedding reception in Centennial Park. My booking was for guests with a young baby. After some mucking around I got them loaded and strapped in only to spot the bride and groom wandering off into the dark, looking for a cab. We took the bride.

She sat up front, happy and tired and chatted with her friends. The bloke was absolutely stoked when I found his lost cuff link, a family heirloom, in the grass outside the restaurant. This plus setting up the baby seat for them landed me a twenty buck tip. Sweet.

And it was pretty strange having a brand new bride sitting next to me, shimmering in a strapless white gown and updating her Facebook page. That was a missed photo opportunity.

Crashing

Posting is currently light due to a side project editing HD video footage. After years of knocking out short videos on the Nokia I decided it was time to get fair dinkum and move to a prosumer editor.

The only trouble is that despite running on a powerful new box this software still crashes. Sure, video editing is about the most intensive exercise a PC can undertake but still, a phone editor is more stable!?

Question: when was the last time new software was released bug-free after thorough testing, or is this now the role of the mug consumer? Sure seems like it, especially after Microsofts Vista fiasco. Feel free to chastise me for not getting a Mac. I have no excuses. Back next week.

Tough

After enduring a PC overhaul and upgrade last week I managed to wipe my entire email archive from the server. Only to learn the u beaut back-up drive doesn't automatically save certain email files! Don't trust external back-up drives, they're evil. So for anyone who has recently been in email...

Habib

Over the weekend Habib got off a Brisbane train and slowly walked to the cab sucking on a cigarette whilst eyeballing me. I was playing with the phone but had seen him approach, a big bloke in grubby trackies with a sports bag over the shoulder. From the back seat...

Munted

The weekend just gone in Sydney was, as they say, massive with four nights of full-tilt boogie. The weather was bleak, bitter or unbearable so I dressed for winter. The chill didn’t deter hordes of revellers, though, descending on the City to celebrate...having Monday off work. I still don’t know...