As someone who used to take cabs to and from university and work (I don’t have a car), I can tell you that for every nice, honest cabbie out there, there’d be five unscrupulous ones. Although I don’t really have to take one anymore, thanks to the boyfriend who graciously offers to send and pick me up so I can save more money, I do have to resort to calling for a cab when he isn’t available.

We all know about those who overcharge, don’t use the metre and basically take you for a ride just to cheat you out of a few Ringgit. And on principle, I usually don’t take these cabs. Some of them seem to assume that just because you can afford a cab or board it at a posh place (e.g. hotels, tourist spots), you are immediately fair game.

I’ve once hailed a cab down the street from my condo to get to where I used to work. Off we headed to the LDP (in PJ). I directed him to take the route past One Utama as that was the better way. And all this while he had his radio on so he can listen to the operators requesting for cabs.

All of a sudden, while we were waiting at the traffic light, he turned around and told me to get off. When I asked why, he said he wanted to pick up another customer who’s going to the airport, which of course was much more lucrative than the measly sum (RM8-10) I would pay. I stood my ground and refused to budge, insisting that he fulfil his part of the deal when he agreed earlier to send me to my destination.

I suppose in this dog-eat-dog world, a cabbie has to fight for the most “valuable” customers. I understand that. But you don’t kick someone out in the middle of a journey in order to do that. It’s just not right and unfair to me. If I had known, I would have hailed another cab. In a way, I felt cheated.

Of course, after a few seconds of arguing with him, I got off at the intersection to One Utama. Conveniently for him and luckily for me (he did tell me the same thing), I was able to get another cab outside the mall.

That’s one of my most memorable bad experiences with a cabbie. How about you? Do share them with me if you have any!

PS: During one of our lunches, Aileen, Steph, Debs and I shared our “horror” cab experiences and jokingly said we should compile all these stories into a book. Maybe we should, hmm.

I’m not one for very mushy songs but of course, being the paradoxical (and emotional) person that I am, I can’t resist some romantic songs once in a while.

These are currently on my playlist with a few having been there for a long time.

I’m not particularly good at relationships. When I was younger, it was all about fun and experiencing new things. Now, half of me wants to find something more stable though the other half still wants to have fun and not settle down so fast. Quarter-life crisis, anyone?

Perhaps it’s the guys I attract or am attracted to. They say you’re attracted to bad boys (those your mum warned you about) in your 20s as it’s a period of exploration and discovery. How true!

Friends would warn me about the guys I date and yet I keep thinking, “What’s wrong with having some fun?”. Yes, I risk my heart and sanity in the name of fun and experience. Not that I always throw caution to the wind, though I usually just jump straight in without thinking rationally first. Then I’d think back and see what a fool I’d been.

I look at friends who are in long-term relationships with their first boyfriends and I’m half-filled with trepidation. “Why would they tie themselves down so fast, so young?” I ask. But on the other hand, I also feel a slight twinge of envy; that they’ve found stability and love so early in life.

I guess we’ll all go through the “bad-boy phase” at some point in our lives, except for a lucky few (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it). As cliché as it sounds, we all learn from our mistakes. Then as we get older and wiser, the right guy(s) would saunter in. Or at least, that’s what I hope. LOL!