Merry F'N Christmas. Whoop-De-Doo.

.:On Taxis And Humbug:.

Taxis have officially ensured that I would continue my tradition of humbug-ness and have nothing but contempt for the entirety of the Christmas season yet again.

I think this past year has shown to me the kind of lengths people would go through all in the name of greed and selfishness, and it sickens me to the core that they are doing it all in the name of having a “merry Christmas.”

Newsflash, you jack@$$: you’re not the only one celebrating the holidays.


While DOTC claims Oplan Isnabero has been a success, my personal experience for the last two weeks has proven otherwise. Cab drivers have been very brazen because they realize that unless they were caught red-handed by the agents themselves, concerned citizens reporting in would not really be able to have strong cases against them since it will almost always boil to a “your word against mine” scenario more often than not.

With this knowledge in mind, all they really had to do was keep their eyes peeled for DOTC officers in the area, and if there are none, they will refuse passengers and attempt to contract those who are desperate enough to bite the bullet of a 300-peso ride for something that would normally hit less than 150 on the taxi meter if they actually bothered to turn it on.

So throughout the past two weeks, I’ve seen cab drivers drive by with their windows open (An obvious tell that they plan to pick and choose passengers.), and tell everyone how “traffic” it is. It’s your job, you bastich! You’re being paid to take your passengers from one point to another, so that whole bit about “traffic” is a pretty stupid excuse when it’s the effing Christmas season and it would be heavy traffic wherever you go. It gets even worse when your destination is so near, yet they still tell you “+50 tayo, sir, ah?” I was in Cubao, asking to be dropped off in Katipunan. At two in the morning. There was no traffic whatsoever. And you have the gall to ask for +50 on your meter? Screw you.

Instances like these made my shake my head in disgust, as I watched cab drivers left and right try to pull one over their passengers each step of the way. It felt like for every one good cab driver I ran into, there were fifty evil clones mucking about, just ready to spread their own brand of holiday cheer. And the “Para lang po may Pamasko ako! Merry Christmas po!” That line! That just really puts the icing on the cake right there, considering how less sincere words could never be uttered by a cab driver who really just wants to guilt-trip you into accepting the fact that he would charge you a king’s ransom just to take you home.

Given my normal level of disdain for Santamas Christmas to begin with, these cab drivers have successfully taken any holiday cheer I may have had hidden in my psyche someplace. It took me an average of one hour at any time of day or night to find a cab, and it was ridiculous how the ratio of empty cabs whizzing by the taxi line in favour of a desperate guy on the curb who’s clearly willing to pay through the nose went from 20% of the time to 80% of the time. Just last night, I was in line for a cab from 11PM all the way ‘til 1:30AM. You know how many cabs needed to swing by before I could get my ride? Eight. Eight freaking cabs conveyed passengers in a stretch of almost three hours. That is ridiculous.

But what really crushed my spirits that night was the guy three places ahead of me, not just because he was the unlucky guy who waited around an hour at the front of the line before he got a cab (How frustrating can that be?), but more so because he had to do this with his three-year old daughter who cried herself to sleep while they were waiting for a cab.

It was heartbreaking how many cabs swung by outside the taxi lane and tried to hit the guy up for 500 bucks just to get to the Katipunan area, pretty much the same place I was going to. Think about it: the average trip to Katipunan from Megamall will cost you about 110 bucks. The @$$holes wanted five times that much because they didn’t see the kid and feel pity for the single father’s situation, they saw it as an opportunity to blackmail the guy into ponying up the cash to get home.

Where were these DOTC agents? This was Christmas Eve in SM Megamall, folks! If there was ever one place DOTC should’ve been last night, it should’ve been right there.

And that’s what Christmas has boiled down to: the pinnacle of how the world truly is dog-eat-dog. Instead of the so-called goodwill and love for all mankind that the Christmas propaganda is good at spreading, we see rampant greed, selfishness, and outright nastiness, all for the sake of having a little extra cash at the end of the year. Let’s sell our integrity for a couple hundred bucks! If people have been selling out for so much less, is it any wonder why so much corruption runs wild on this whole planet? I can assure you that money-grubbing taxi drivers are only the tip of the iceberg.

Merry fucking Christmas, everyone. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year: because we see people for what they truly are. The Christ they so profess to idolize and emulate must be so proud.