I Rode a Cab and it Was Rocking

"Sunshine in the rain, love is still the same, sunshine in the rain..." so goes the song inside the cab I took this morning. If I closed my eyes I could imagine myself in 1) a bus in EDSA listening to 90.7 Love Radio For Life 2)Lush in Ly Tu Trong St. surrounded by writhing bodies in red light dancing to "Lousy Songs Night". On this same night they will probably play that awful version of the Happy Birthday song; and 3) a jeep in EDSA listening to 90.7 Love Radio For Life. But so goes the music scene in Saigon and I'm not going to complain about it anymore.

The star in this blog entry is actually the cab driver. Many times I would catch him looking at me in the rear view mirror as though gauging my reaction about his music choice. From time to time he would press the CD player forward or backward (by the way, the CD was made up of maybe two other songs and the rest are a handful of remixes of the sushine in the rain song), adjusting the volume louder and still a little bit louder then looking at my reaction. Napaisip tuloy ko: should I keep fix an annoyed look so that he'd get the message and stop the song (kasi annoying naman talaga yung song)? Or should I humor him and bob my head to communicate that I'm so into it? I decided to bob my head ever so slightly just to test, but I couldn't go through with it without laughing. In Manila, cab drivers like to debate about politics and showbiz; in Singapore, they say cab drivers talk wayyy too much it's annoying, New York cabbies - we all know about them as they have been portrayed in so many movies as the aggressive, curse-a-minute, interesting, all-knowing creatures; in Vietnam, will cabbies here soon be known as cool dudes who listen to techno music and double up as Sirs-Mix-A-Lot? I highly doubt it, which makes this cab driver quite memorable. Is it a global requirement to possess some kind of stamp of character to become a cab driver? (Come to think of it, maybe cab drivers are a microcosm of the society they belong to. Filipinos in general like talking about politics and showbiz (especially their own), Singaporeans in general talk a lot and are very opinionated, New Yorkers, well we know about them, and Vietnamese - I am still learning everyday what they really are like and what sets them apart. It's worth thinking about I guess).

So far my experience with cab drivers in Saigon have been made up of 3 kinds: the one who cannot for the life of him understand the name of the street I am saying (even if I've said it many times to other people and they've understood me), the one who plays tricks with the meter OR tours you around, and the one who does his job quietly and decently as he (and everyone for that matter) should. This cab driver today was a first. And as for the song he picked? It was playing in my head the whole day.