Overheard in a taxi
Sharing a taxi home with a co-worker, my attention was caught by the following exchange from the cab driver's walkie-talkie:
Unknown Station #1: ... German Bank, GERMAN bank, Jer-mu-nee, not DUTCH!
Unknown Station #2: ... Deutsche Bank ...
Unknown Station #1: ... (pause) ...
Unknown Station #1: (renewed insistency) German Bank. GERMAN bank ...
Unknown Station #3: (harassed sounding female voice, most likely operator) ok, ok, thank you very much, please keep quiet.
It all started up again a few seconds later anyway, despite #3's valiant efforts to keep the channel clear for real business.
Speaking of which, our taxi-driver was a ranter. He kept deceptively quiet for the first half of the journey, but once he found an excuse to start a conversation (his opening was spotting a traffic policeman by the side of the road, which allowed him to start on that perenniel rant about traffic police that cab drivers have), he would not shut up for rest of the journey. This, despite the fact that neither of us once replied to him in any way, or gave him encouragement to go on. But he could really go on. It was more of a monologue rant, with a captive audience, than a conversation.
After 5 minutes of this, I plugged into the iPod and tried to drown out the sound of his voice. Even so, his voice kept worming through on the quieter parts of the songs - it was surreal, like - 99 red balloons I WAS THERE LAST WEEK AND I floating in the summer sky 200KM! TWO-HUNDRED KAY-EM!! everyone's a DON'T GIVE WAY ONE! DON'T GIVE WAY!! etc. My co-worker, far more polite man than I, sat there and took the brunt of it.
tags:
overheard
taxis
Unknown Station #1: ... German Bank, GERMAN bank, Jer-mu-nee, not DUTCH!
Unknown Station #2: ... Deutsche Bank ...
Unknown Station #1: ... (pause) ...
Unknown Station #1: (renewed insistency) German Bank. GERMAN bank ...
Unknown Station #3: (harassed sounding female voice, most likely operator) ok, ok, thank you very much, please keep quiet.
It all started up again a few seconds later anyway, despite #3's valiant efforts to keep the channel clear for real business.
Speaking of which, our taxi-driver was a ranter. He kept deceptively quiet for the first half of the journey, but once he found an excuse to start a conversation (his opening was spotting a traffic policeman by the side of the road, which allowed him to start on that perenniel rant about traffic police that cab drivers have), he would not shut up for rest of the journey. This, despite the fact that neither of us once replied to him in any way, or gave him encouragement to go on. But he could really go on. It was more of a monologue rant, with a captive audience, than a conversation.
After 5 minutes of this, I plugged into the iPod and tried to drown out the sound of his voice. Even so, his voice kept worming through on the quieter parts of the songs - it was surreal, like - 99 red balloons I WAS THERE LAST WEEK AND I floating in the summer sky 200KM! TWO-HUNDRED KAY-EM!! everyone's a DON'T GIVE WAY ONE! DON'T GIVE WAY!! etc. My co-worker, far more polite man than I, sat there and took the brunt of it.
tags:
overheard
taxis
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