A taxi driver's story

No, this is not a continuation of our column last July 21 which delved on a question the driver of the taxi I was riding on in Manila, asked.  His question, then, was about the traffic in EDSA.  This time, the driver is Singaporean, and we were on our way from Changi Airport to a hotel in downtown Singapore.  From the time we got in, the driver went into an unceasing litany of storytelling about almost anything under the sun.  It didn't help that we just arrived from Kuching, Malaysia, on-board Malaysian Airlines. The driver started off on theories about the disappearance of MH370. We were almost convinced on one theory when he will deviate into another diametrically inconsistent with the first one. His banter is a sure cure for insomnia.

Then he segued into the current affairs and economic outlook of Singapore. We learned quite a lot of interesting things very different from those we read in the news or posted online. From the perspective of an old man driving a taxi in that island city-state, what we know and what we believe might be very different.  It doesn't help a bit that Singapore is very adept at marketing itself to the outside world. This is not to say that what is reality to its citizens can be very negative. It's simply a case where they can have a very different point of view.

It was my companion, Ricky Dakay, who engaged the driver in a conversation, although 3/4 of the talking was still being done by the latter.  I only added a question, a statement or two, but I was intently absorbing what the driver said. It's really the best way to learn something about another country – let the common citizen tell you about his. This old man was telling us how a big firm in Singapore is now building an entirely new city in China. I suspect it might be their privatized "DPWH".  I learned last year that they were privatizing most of their government agencies, airports, telecoms, and yes, public works, included.  He's proud about the feat.

But what really caught our attention was when the one-sided conversation turned to personal and family life. It started when Ricky, who holds a doctorate in civil engineering, talked about the importance of education, especially advanced degrees. The taxi driver casually agreed, and revealed that he has three daughters, all graduates of National University of Singapore. And all of them have post-graduate degrees, one even getting hers from a university in the United States. Then he narrated about each of the girls, what they studied, where they get their masters/doctorates, who they wed, and where they are working now.

We were hesitant at first, because it would be a very personal question, but Ricky finally blurted, "If you have these very accomplished and successful daughters, then why are you still driving a cab?"  It was not really that we didn't believe him because we did – we can see that he was serious and very truthful. But we were still asking ourselves that question, too. He answered casually, "Well, a guy has to earn a living, … and it's only part time anyway, and only for 5 days a week. The girls are married and have families of their own, and it wouldn't be proper that my wife and I ask help from them. Anyway, this job earns enough."

Well, maybe one of the reasons why we asked is we had a different perspective, coming from such a country as ours, the Philippines. Because here, driving taxis is not something we look forward for our children to have as work when they grow up. It would be different in Singapore because over there, taxi drivers can send their daughters even up to graduate school. They're well paid, and because they're strictly regulated by their government, you actually feel safer riding in taxis there, without any fear of being swindled. There are a lot of honest drivers in the Philippines, too, but we all know we can't just trust anybody.

We need to go back to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) details, and most especially per capita GDP, or what we can call the per capita income. The Philippines' per capita GDP is around US$4,500 per year. In Singapore it's US$60,000. In short, the average Singaporean earns approximately 13 times what the average Filipino earns.  Even if prices in Singapore would be twice that of the Philippines, the Singaporeans would still have more in income to cover costs compared to us. That includes money needed for education.

We reached our hotel fast because, again, there's little congestion in Singapore. But the insights we learned took longer to set in. Sometimes, we have to learn and understand these things in order to understand why our people live the way they do. And maybe hope we could find better solutions to uplift people's quality of life in this country.