Having a bad-cab-day in Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): It's Wednesday morning and your coworker storms into the office, flings down her bag and heads straight for the coffee machine. She gulps the scalding coffee, composes herself somewhat and snarls, "You won't believe what happened to me on the way to work."

You sit there with a knowing grin on your face as she relates to you yet another bad-cab-day tale.

A bad-cab-day in Jakarta is just like a bad-hair-day anywhere else. It is when, no matter what you do, you are driven about the city by the cabbie from hell. As you listen to her fury, you relive one of the many bad-cab-days you have lived through.

Bad-cab-days start out innocently enough. After a bowl of cereal, some tea and a flick through the paper, the telephone rings. You are told by the nowhere-near-apologetic person on the other end that the taxi you ordered the night before can't make it. Before you can ask why, the person hangs up.

Stupidly, you shrug it off and decide to hail a cab from the corner. Knowing it may take awhile, you rush out of the house, forgetting your lunch. It is now just late enough in the morning for the sun to have some sting and for the traffic to have picked up. You stand, eyes squinting into the haze, ever alert for an empty cab.

Cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses crawl pass, honking at anything that moves. If you are fortunate enough to be a foreigner, the honking increases as the drivers draw near. But there it is, just up the road -- a taxi.

Waving your hand frantically, you are sure that he sees you. But why isn't he slowing down, or indicating that he will pull over? The taxi light is on, implying that the cab is empty, but it zips past anyway. Shielding your nose against the noxious fumes belching out the back of the fast disappearing taxi, you see that there actually was someone slumped down in the backseat, their head barely poking above the window. A person who has fallen into the trap of not insisting on a metered fare and has negotiated with the unscrupulous driver.

Grumbling, you turn just in time to wave another cab down. The driver swerves across traffic but still manages to over shoot where you are standing. You rush toward your prey as fast as the rutted pavement will allow, but out of nowhere someone grabs hold of the handle and disappears inside the cab. A cool breeze from the disappearing cab's air conditioning slaps you on the face for good measure.

Before you have time to throw that oh so convenient brick you picked up on the way to the corner for scenarios just like this, another cab pulls up. Exhausted, you swing yourself onto a very worn seat. It doesn't matter that it feels as if you are sitting on the axle and the air conditioning isn't working, at least you are in cab and on your way.

"Kemana mister?" the cabbie asks, rolling the "r" until he sounds like the bajaj that is blocking the street in front of you.

You recite your practiced description of exactly where you want to go, but notice a frown creep across the driver's face. You quickly change tack and describe your destination in a different way. He grunts.

"Sepuluh ribu rupiah mister," he insists, craning his neck around to give you a clear view of his my-children-must-eat-look.

Your feeling of panic instantly changes to anger, but you politely explain that it would be best to use the meter as the regulations state.

"Rusak," is the driver's only reply to your polite request.

Refusing to be the victim, you go to get out of the cab, but then, out of the blue, the meter fairy fixes his meter and the cabbie grins his consent to take you.

Unabashed by his recent attempt at extortion, the driver begins a conversation centered around his views about the government and if you would like to buy the lady that just crossed the road -- it turns out that she is his sister.

Engaged in this diatribe, he speeds around a corner before you can tell him that he has turned the wrong way. A quick think through the "pros and cons" of staying in the cab brings you to the conclusion that it would be best to get out. The driver has other ideas but you convince him to stop, throw some money his way and get out just as he darts off.

Standing on a dusty corner, you take solace in the fact that he didn't have time to call you ugly and can't throw rubbish in your yard, which seems to be the favorite retort to foreigners in the letters column of your favorite newspaper. While you contemplate your good luck, a gang of pubescent school boys saunter by. Only after they have passed safely by, do they work up the courage to taunt you with oaths before all 32 of them set upon the fat kid on the other side of the intersection.

By now it has turned into a joke. That blind rage has metamorphosed into a laughing fit. You are still laughing when yet another taxi, from a more reputable company, pulls up. The driver salutes you with a polite "selamat pagi" and asks where you want to go. In a flash you are back on the right track and you begin to relax. Absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Just as you take out a magazine to read, the cabbie begins his banter of questioning where you are from, how long you have been in Jakarta and if you are married. You humor him by trying to explain exactly where Iceland is located, and try to get back to your magazine when he tunes dangdut music in on the radio.

To the accompaniment of blaring love songs, you crawl through a traffic jam until the driver sees a bit of open road ahead of him. He accelerates to a least 40 kmph, which is only fast if you are weaving in out and out of traffic in a car that hasn't had its wheels aligned since it rolled off the assembly line. Your concern doesn't turn to fear until he careens down a toll road off-ramp while looking over his shoulder to ask you if you need a driver.

To get your mind off of the Metro Mini coming at you head on, you point out that if you had the need for a driver you wouldn't be risking your life in his cab.

A few more screeches and near misses later and it is over. You are sitting outside your office rummaging through your wallet for the Rp 6,250 taxi fare. You give him a Rp 10,000 note with your shaking hand while wiping your brow with the other. He, of course, doesn't have the Rp 3,000 change you want. He won't budge from his seat to find it, so you must ask the warung operator on the corner. You hand over the exact amount with a smirk so big that the driver doesn't have the courage to ask for a tip.

The water jug burping out your coworker's third cup of coffee in 10 minutes jars you out of your recollections. Knowing what your colleague has just been through, it would be wise to wait until she has put down her coffee before reminding her that the trip home is only six hours away.

-- Jim Plouffe