Tai WANDER YEARS

I am an American technology worker who just moved to Taiwan.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A strange story from my driver

On my last day of this business trip in the Netherlands I once again got to see the Dutch advance in the World Cup with a pretty convincing win over Uruguay. I couldn't keep the fleeting thought out of my mind that under any other circumstances, I would find a way to extend this trip and stay until Sunday for the final against the winner of Germany vs. Spain. All of Holland fears a German victory and with it, the feeling that Oranje is doomed. But for tonight, the streets of Eindhoven were filled with thousands, dressed in orange, smiling from ear to ear, and for the most part, reveling without rioting.




The possibility of extending the trip was out of the question as after living apart for 2 months, my wife and I would be flying to the same place from opposite angles as she was about to board a plane for Taiwan. I would land at about 7PM in Taipei and she was scheduled to get in around 5AM the morning after. As we were getting ready to taxi away from the gate at Schiphol, the captain came on to alert us that the blast shield on engine #3 had "blasted apart". The mechanics were checking things out and we were delayed; he said it may only take 1/2 hour if nothing is wrong. 1/2 hour later the pilot confirmed what everyone was hoping for, no problem found and we were on our way. I'm not so sure this was the best outcome as something must have caused the blast shield to blast off. But the plane has 4 engines so we should be OK with three, right? At one point on the flight (KLM), the pilot said something in Dutch and everyone erupted in cheers. I turned to the guy next to me, "Spain?!?!", yep, quite a surprise. We landed on time and my company's driver was there to pick me up. I was alarmed to find out that he does 90% of his business with us, which is a bad thing as when the business climate turns south, travel becomes very limited. I told him he needs to diversify his clientèle but he's afraid that if he's not available all the time, he will lose the account. Tough call.

He dropped me at the office and I paid him, in cash, as always. On may way from the office to the freeway he called my cell and I couldn't quite understand what he was talking about, something with the money and it being dark. I assumed he was claiming that I did not pay him enough. Then my cell phone died, good timing. I showered up and went out to meet some friends for drinks. I checked my email and had a message from Shirley, she was trying to board the flight in Newark, had been in line for 1.5 hours waiting for the TSA to inspect the cat carrier. If you haven't followed the rest of this saga, we are importing our cat, Tucker, into Taiwan. At this stage, Shirley had 45 minutes until that plane took off and she still had the cat and still had not gone through security. But that was the last I had heard and at this time her plane was in Anchorage , Alaska. They have several phone apps where I can see a live (5 minutes delay) map showing where the plane is. Awesome use of technology, though the mindless paper toss game is kinda cool, too. Fingers crossed that wife, and cat, made that flight.

I left the bar right before midnight when the MRT shuts down and made it home for about 4 hours of sleep before heading to the airport. I checked the phone again and it looks like the flight is landing 45 minutes early so I scurried off. It was absolutely no surprise that two minutes after I entered the airport at about 5:30AM, the limo driver called. He had some story about how his car was having electrical problems and he needed to borrow money. He said he could be at the airport in 10 minutes. So now I'm thinking he's claiming I stiffed him, now he wants to borrow money, is this guy making some story up to pay off a gambling debt before the Taichung mafia breaks his fingers?

He shows up and tells me that the A/C broke, it's 100 degrees out, he has a client to pick up, and he can have it fixed at 7AM when the garage opens. He needs about 8k NT (~250 bucks). I asked him what the story was with the money from last night... He says that I had overpaid him and he was trying to get me the money back and was calling to suggest that he just credit my account for the 500 that I had overpaid. Assuming he was truthful, that changed the whole story.

I scrawled up this contract on an envelope stating that he was borrowing the cash, 8500 in total, and I have no clue if this holds weight at all. But I have one thing in my back pocket...he begged me not to tell anyone at work about this as such a scenario would certainly jeopardize him losing all of his business. I told him, "this is between you and me...as long as you pay me back!" He was very grateful and hopefully off to fix his car. He said he'd wire me the money in a couple weeks. It's probably safe to expect a future blog post about the 8,000 I donated to my driver's gambling addiction that did NOT get paid back. I wonder if he bet it on Holland to win the World Cup. Probably so since the thus far infallible octopus has picked Spain. Now where is that wife of mine?

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