Many of the foreign born taxi drivers are from the subcontinent. You know, you've seen the Sikhs with their turbans and their long beards. Taxi drivers like them breed like rabbits in Canberra. While waiting for the next flight to come in from Sydney or Melbourne, these sub-continentals huddle in masses in the taxi underground carpark, exchanging stories about hot women they've had in the car or the three fares they had from the Airport to Gunghalin during the day. The comraderie between them is almost like Australian mateship, they exchange handshakes and hugs when greeting each other and call each other on their mobiles when there are lots of fares on a rank before we get a message on the taxi computer. Above all, they look out for each other. I have tried to join in on their huddles but they almost flatly refuse to talk English so it is difficult to break the mould. The probably also see me as a threat because English is my first language and Canberra is my home city.
I have made friends with one Indian from Punjab called Davinder. He left a good paying job at Coles to become a taxi driver. He was sick of carting heavy fruit and vegetables to and fro so he told his wife he was quitting and becoming a taxi driver. I'm not sure of her reaction but I know she wasn't pleased when he told her he was moving from day driving to night driving. Davinder loves to talk about 'jiggy jiggy' a term I have come to know for sex. He asks where I can get some jiggy jiggy in this town. He was awfully jealous when I told him I was seeing a Korean girl as he would love to jiggy jiggy with an Asian girl.
Not all of the foreign born taxi drivers are from the subcontinent. Another taxi driver I met, Gus, is from South Korea. He works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and probably makes about $900 a week gross. His wife doesn't speak a word of English despite having lived here for over 20 years. She can't get a job because of her lack of English speaking skills so Gus has to provide for his wife and their two daughters. He says he is a slave to the taxi and dreams of one day becoming a nurse or a bus driver. His licence is on probation as he has one too many speeding fines from being a little over enthusiastic about picking up a fare.
Moving on from taxi drivers themselves, I have noticed from my recent passengers that there has been an influx of Irish 20-somethings to the nation's capital. Some of them have such thick accents I can barely make out what they are saying. They all agree that the Irish economy has gone to the dogs so they have to immigrate in order to find work. So look out for the Irish, they probably steer clear of Irish pubs as they are nothing on the pubs back home. In fact, I took one Irishman today to the Queanbeyan Hotel. He thought that Queanbeyan was a 'mad town'.
When I first began driving, would have been in 2006, there weren't that many foreigners. It was just the old plates then, a few in the 900 range for the maxis.
ReplyDeleteThe drivers were often older guys, knew the city, knew how things worked, full of tales.
Alinga Street on a Saturday night was just insane. There would be an hour's wait for a cab at three in the morning. Just take the next one, drop them home, come racing back for another. Some mornings I'd reach into the bag and wonder where all the money had come from, there'd be wads of pineapples in there.
Airport work was another great lurk.
Then the government put more and more licences on and after a string of attacks in Melbourne, a whole bunch of Indians came up and the good days were gone.
I got out in late 2011, there was just no money in it.