Story of Singapore Taxi Driver

Last weekend I managed to borrow two books from Bishan Library. First, it is called “Diary of a Taxi Driver”, written by Cai Ming Jie, a Singapore most educated Taxi driver, who holds a PhD in molecular biology from Stanford University in 1990. After working for 16 years as a researcher, he was laid off from the company and decided to become a Taxi driver. Read more about him here.

Diary of a Taxi Driver by Cai Ming Jie

He started writing his personal story as Taxi driver on his blog, then decided to publish it in a paper form in April 2010. However I couldn’t find his blog anymore. Perhaps it had been deleted.

Another book that I borrowed is “Cabbies: The Inside Story – Reflections of a Singapore driver”, written by Sam Hwang. It’s also published in 2013. It gave you a deeper insight about life of a taxi driver, based on his own and other cabbies experiences, such as: fare cheats, robbers, drunks, etc.

Cabbies: The Inside Story by Sam Hwang

You know, Taxi driver is the only job that reserved to Singaporean, which means, foreigners need not apply. This job is seen not as a fancy job. It even gives a conception that only lowly-educated society or dropout will take this job as a last resort. Well, not anymore. As you read the first paragraph above, even a PhD graduate could also become a taxi driver. So, don’t be surprised if the taxi driver who is sitting beside you is actually a Professor, Master degree holder, etc. And this book will change your misconception that society has.

The reasons I borrowed these books were because my hubby is going to become a Taxi driver. He has already attained his Taxi Driver’s Vocational License or TDVL and will join this industry very soon. He has a long time driving experience around Singapore, but zero experience as a Taxi driver and he will have to go through this, alone.

Therefore, other than me reading these books, I also encouraged him to read it as well, so he wouldn’t get shocked if he had to face many surprising experiences from various types of passengers along his journey. At the same time it could give him a clearer picture and broaden mind of what to expect to happen and what kind of responds that he could give towards different situations.

If you can’t have an access to read their books, you can also find other blog, such as this one: Diary of a Singaporean Cabby and Gintai. There, you can read many interesting stories too! :)

Actually, while reading those books, I wish I was one of the Taxi drivers. Hahaha… Not that I wanted to earn money through driving Taxi, but I was wondering on what kind of passengers that I would meet in a day and how uncertain the Taxi would bring me around from one place to another. 

Just like in a day, you can experience many things, meet different kind of people, face good and bad luck, etc. Isn’t it interesting? Then, just like Mr Cai, I would be very interested to write my experience into my blog hehehe… ^^

Well, at the mean time I am happy with my job and what I do. Plus, I don’t drive well. So, I’ll let my hubby experience it and tell me the story. Hopefully I can convert his story into one or two blog posts here and share with all of you, one day…. :)