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May 15, 2009. Friday: Biting the bullet
After midnight, a Singaporean man boarded my taxi on Duxton Hill, one of the popular nighttime hangouts in town. He sat in the back seat and told me to go to “Kang Bahru”.
His words sounded strange so I sought confirmation, “Are you saying Tiong Bahru, Sir?” He said “Kang Bahru” once again, and affixed a “yes” in the end. So I started driving towards Tiong Bahru without giving a second thought to his weird pronunciation.
He was of medium height, in his late thirties or early forties, and wore a striped, short sleeved shirt, tucked in a dark colored pair of slacks. In the mirror, his face looked puffy and pale. His eyes were lifeless but not sleepy. He fixed his stares on the streets outside the window. There was a smell of alcohol in his breath, not stinky strong but unmistakable.
The route to Tiong Bahru via Cantonment was short and straightforward. After I passed Eu Tong Sen Street, however, the man said abruptly, “Hey, where are you going?”
I looked at him in the mirror and said, “You said you are going to Tiong Bahru. Right?”
“Kang Bahru is this way.” He pointed to the left.
“No. Tiong Bahru is this way.” I pointed straight ahead.
“I never said Tiong Bahru! I said Kang Bahru…, Kang…, Kampong Bahru!” He stuttered on the name of the street for a few seconds before he finally got it right. He had said it wrongly all along.
I braked to a stop and said, “Okay, this is not my fault. Kampong is a two syllable word and you didn’t say it that way in the beginning.” But I didn’t want to get on this guy’s nerves at this hour of the night. So I quickly added. “Never mind. It’s not a big deal. I will just make a U turn now.” I started to move to the right lane to make a U turn.
“Are you calling me a liar?” The man said belligerently, and stiffened his body away from the back of the seat, totally ignoring the goodwill I had shown him.
“I haven’t called you anything.” I tried to calm him down. “I am only saying if you have told me the street name correctly, we wouldn’t have to make this little detour.”
“Don’t you dare argue with me!” The man suddenly pitched his voice high. “When I talk to you, you face down!”
“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
I stopped the car, and turned to stare into his eyes, “What did you just say?”
Like a spear piercing through his forehead, my glare instantly stunned him, and sank him into the back seat.
He gawked at me soullessly, and murmured, “What?”
“You said ‘when I talk to you, you face down’.” I said through my teeth.
“No, I didn’t. I never said that.” The man mumbled. All the aggressiveness he showed a moment ago had drained dry. He now looked like a ten year old caught for shoplifting.
I suddenly felt sorry for him. I quickly turned round to the steering wheel, and said, “Forget it. You want to go to Kampong Bahru, right? I take you to Kampong Bahru. Let’s just get this over with.” I started the car again.
As if a dead fire came alive again, the man swiftly recovered from his momentary defeat after he realized that I wasn’t going to do anything to him. He sat up and started raising his voice again. “So what! Huh? Is ‘face down’ such a bad word? Is ‘face down’ such a bad thing to say? Yes. I said that! So what! Did I ever scold you? Did I ever say fxxk you? Huh? Stop the car! Answer me!” He was shouting and screaming hysterically now.
No matter how crazy and intimidating he made himself look like, I remained silent and continued driving. I decided not to be bothered by him anymore. I knew he was just a 银样腊枪头, (silver blade made of wax) as we call it in Chinese and I could easily scare the shit out of him again, if I wanted to. There is an abundance of this type of people around us, who are like those small puppies that bark at you ferociously when you pass by their homes. As soon as you turn to face them and give them a stern look, they sit back and shut their mouths. Of course, they will jump up and bark at you again after you turn your back to them. To people like this, I always want to turn my back and walk away as soon as I can. If I ever pause my footstep and turn around to spook off an annoying, empty threat, it will always be to a cute little puppy dog.
My unresponsiveness to his provocation, however, was only perceived by him as an exhibition of weakness. He pressed home his advantage by escalating the level of intimidation: Now on every screaming word, he slapped his hand forcefully on the top of the leather seat in front of him, making a loud, deafening sound like gunfire next to my ear.
I bit the bullet and kept the car moving.
When I made the turn at the junction, he saw the building of Cantonment police headquarter on the corner. He screamed his slapping-accented demands rhythmically and frantically. “Go to the police station! I have got time to deal with you. Go! Go! Turn into the carpark! I order you! Go!”
His hand surely hurt like hell by now.
At the entrance of the police carpark, a policeman was standing on duty. He was an Indian, wearing a turban on his head, and looked to be quite senior, at least in his forties. I pulled over next to him and lowered the window. He leaned down and asked me, “Want to come in?”
“He is drunk.” Finding comfort in the presence of a policeman, I said in a mild and well composed tone. “And making trouble for me. What should I do?”
“Do you want to file a report?” The policeman asked.
“No. I don’t have time for that.” I said.
“Officer.” The man in the back quickly intervened. “I am not drunk. This driver made a mistake and drove me on a wrong way. And he’s got a bad temper. He accused me of saying ‘face down’ to him. Officer, is ‘face down’ really a bad word?”
“Where do you want to go?” The policeman asked him, ignoring his question.
“Kampong Bahru.”
“Are you going to the pubs there?” He pointed to the cluster of colorfully lit shophouses about a hundred yards away.
“Yes.”
The policeman now turned to me and said. “Why don’t you drop him off there and give him some discount?”
I said I wasn’t the one who had problem with it, and moved on.
Ten or twenty seconds later, I stopped outside of a bar on Kampong Bahru. The meter fare was more than $8. I told him that he could just pay me $5. He took out a $5 note, but yanked it beyond my grasp when I reached for it. He stared at me and said, “Answer me. Is ‘face down’ such a bad word?”
“Why don’t you just keep your money and get out?” I said to him emotionlessly.
He threw the note on the front passenger seat and said, “Man, I tell you. You’ve got a bad attitude! Bad, bad attitude!” He didn’t seem to want to leave just yet, as if he still had unfinished business with me, but left finally after a brief moment of indecision.
However despicable and condemnable his behavior was, which may or may not be influenced by his blood alcohol concentration at the time, he got away with his criminal abuse of me triumphantly, partly because I let him. I didn’t file a police report on him. But even if I did, I doubt it would make any difference. It’s ultimately my words against his. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t stupid, and he knew that if it comes to my words against his, he is in a sure-win position. The fact that he hysterically “ordered” me to go to the police station showed how confident he was that he would be favorably taken care of by the system, counting on his higher social status to give his words more credibility than that of a cabdriver in the eyes of police officers. The Sikh policeman, being as professional as any policeman can be, believed instantaneously in his words about my driving him in a wrong way and blatantly requested a discount on his behalf, even though in actual fact it was not at all my fault. It is taken for granted by the policeman, or the authorities in general for that matter, that if someone has to make a sacrifice in order to settle the problem at hand, it has to be one of those who have lower social rankings and therefore are less important to the economy, besides, of course, they are also so used to making sacrifices all along in their lives that just one more of it is always “affordable” to them.
I am sure this man has done to others many times in the past what he did to me, and he will do it again, even more uninhibitedly, as his confidence will be further boosted by the encounter tonight. To people like him, the pleasure, the ecstasy, the exhilaration, the nerve terminal stimulation they experienced from bullying and intimidating the “socially inferior” and getting away with it, is just too sweet to resist. It’s as addictive as cocaine and heroin. For those who live at the bottom of the society and labor hard from dawn to dusk to make their ends meet, what options do they have when they are faced with bullies like that? They have no choice but to bite the bullet, because the system is not on their side when it comes to words against words. This is the cold, hard fact of this mundane world we live in.
For me, besides biting the bullet, I document the encounter and post it on my blog.
Posted by Mingjie Cai at 12:23 AM 61 comments Links to this post
After midnight, a Singaporean man boarded my taxi on Duxton Hill, one of the popular nighttime hangouts in town. He sat in the back seat and told me to go to “Kang Bahru”.
His words sounded strange so I sought confirmation, “Are you saying Tiong Bahru, Sir?” He said “Kang Bahru” once again, and affixed a “yes” in the end. So I started driving towards Tiong Bahru without giving a second thought to his weird pronunciation.
He was of medium height, in his late thirties or early forties, and wore a striped, short sleeved shirt, tucked in a dark colored pair of slacks. In the mirror, his face looked puffy and pale. His eyes were lifeless but not sleepy. He fixed his stares on the streets outside the window. There was a smell of alcohol in his breath, not stinky strong but unmistakable.
The route to Tiong Bahru via Cantonment was short and straightforward. After I passed Eu Tong Sen Street, however, the man said abruptly, “Hey, where are you going?”
I looked at him in the mirror and said, “You said you are going to Tiong Bahru. Right?”
“Kang Bahru is this way.” He pointed to the left.
“No. Tiong Bahru is this way.” I pointed straight ahead.
“I never said Tiong Bahru! I said Kang Bahru…, Kang…, Kampong Bahru!” He stuttered on the name of the street for a few seconds before he finally got it right. He had said it wrongly all along.
I braked to a stop and said, “Okay, this is not my fault. Kampong is a two syllable word and you didn’t say it that way in the beginning.” But I didn’t want to get on this guy’s nerves at this hour of the night. So I quickly added. “Never mind. It’s not a big deal. I will just make a U turn now.” I started to move to the right lane to make a U turn.
“Are you calling me a liar?” The man said belligerently, and stiffened his body away from the back of the seat, totally ignoring the goodwill I had shown him.
“I haven’t called you anything.” I tried to calm him down. “I am only saying if you have told me the street name correctly, we wouldn’t have to make this little detour.”
“Don’t you dare argue with me!” The man suddenly pitched his voice high. “When I talk to you, you face down!”
“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
I stopped the car, and turned to stare into his eyes, “What did you just say?”
Like a spear piercing through his forehead, my glare instantly stunned him, and sank him into the back seat.
He gawked at me soullessly, and murmured, “What?”
“You said ‘when I talk to you, you face down’.” I said through my teeth.
“No, I didn’t. I never said that.” The man mumbled. All the aggressiveness he showed a moment ago had drained dry. He now looked like a ten year old caught for shoplifting.
I suddenly felt sorry for him. I quickly turned round to the steering wheel, and said, “Forget it. You want to go to Kampong Bahru, right? I take you to Kampong Bahru. Let’s just get this over with.” I started the car again.
As if a dead fire came alive again, the man swiftly recovered from his momentary defeat after he realized that I wasn’t going to do anything to him. He sat up and started raising his voice again. “So what! Huh? Is ‘face down’ such a bad word? Is ‘face down’ such a bad thing to say? Yes. I said that! So what! Did I ever scold you? Did I ever say fxxk you? Huh? Stop the car! Answer me!” He was shouting and screaming hysterically now.
No matter how crazy and intimidating he made himself look like, I remained silent and continued driving. I decided not to be bothered by him anymore. I knew he was just a 银样腊枪头, (silver blade made of wax) as we call it in Chinese and I could easily scare the shit out of him again, if I wanted to. There is an abundance of this type of people around us, who are like those small puppies that bark at you ferociously when you pass by their homes. As soon as you turn to face them and give them a stern look, they sit back and shut their mouths. Of course, they will jump up and bark at you again after you turn your back to them. To people like this, I always want to turn my back and walk away as soon as I can. If I ever pause my footstep and turn around to spook off an annoying, empty threat, it will always be to a cute little puppy dog.
My unresponsiveness to his provocation, however, was only perceived by him as an exhibition of weakness. He pressed home his advantage by escalating the level of intimidation: Now on every screaming word, he slapped his hand forcefully on the top of the leather seat in front of him, making a loud, deafening sound like gunfire next to my ear.
I bit the bullet and kept the car moving.
When I made the turn at the junction, he saw the building of Cantonment police headquarter on the corner. He screamed his slapping-accented demands rhythmically and frantically. “Go to the police station! I have got time to deal with you. Go! Go! Turn into the carpark! I order you! Go!”
His hand surely hurt like hell by now.
At the entrance of the police carpark, a policeman was standing on duty. He was an Indian, wearing a turban on his head, and looked to be quite senior, at least in his forties. I pulled over next to him and lowered the window. He leaned down and asked me, “Want to come in?”
“He is drunk.” Finding comfort in the presence of a policeman, I said in a mild and well composed tone. “And making trouble for me. What should I do?”
“Do you want to file a report?” The policeman asked.
“No. I don’t have time for that.” I said.
“Officer.” The man in the back quickly intervened. “I am not drunk. This driver made a mistake and drove me on a wrong way. And he’s got a bad temper. He accused me of saying ‘face down’ to him. Officer, is ‘face down’ really a bad word?”
“Where do you want to go?” The policeman asked him, ignoring his question.
“Kampong Bahru.”
“Are you going to the pubs there?” He pointed to the cluster of colorfully lit shophouses about a hundred yards away.
“Yes.”
The policeman now turned to me and said. “Why don’t you drop him off there and give him some discount?”
I said I wasn’t the one who had problem with it, and moved on.
Ten or twenty seconds later, I stopped outside of a bar on Kampong Bahru. The meter fare was more than $8. I told him that he could just pay me $5. He took out a $5 note, but yanked it beyond my grasp when I reached for it. He stared at me and said, “Answer me. Is ‘face down’ such a bad word?”
“Why don’t you just keep your money and get out?” I said to him emotionlessly.
He threw the note on the front passenger seat and said, “Man, I tell you. You’ve got a bad attitude! Bad, bad attitude!” He didn’t seem to want to leave just yet, as if he still had unfinished business with me, but left finally after a brief moment of indecision.
However despicable and condemnable his behavior was, which may or may not be influenced by his blood alcohol concentration at the time, he got away with his criminal abuse of me triumphantly, partly because I let him. I didn’t file a police report on him. But even if I did, I doubt it would make any difference. It’s ultimately my words against his. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t stupid, and he knew that if it comes to my words against his, he is in a sure-win position. The fact that he hysterically “ordered” me to go to the police station showed how confident he was that he would be favorably taken care of by the system, counting on his higher social status to give his words more credibility than that of a cabdriver in the eyes of police officers. The Sikh policeman, being as professional as any policeman can be, believed instantaneously in his words about my driving him in a wrong way and blatantly requested a discount on his behalf, even though in actual fact it was not at all my fault. It is taken for granted by the policeman, or the authorities in general for that matter, that if someone has to make a sacrifice in order to settle the problem at hand, it has to be one of those who have lower social rankings and therefore are less important to the economy, besides, of course, they are also so used to making sacrifices all along in their lives that just one more of it is always “affordable” to them.
I am sure this man has done to others many times in the past what he did to me, and he will do it again, even more uninhibitedly, as his confidence will be further boosted by the encounter tonight. To people like him, the pleasure, the ecstasy, the exhilaration, the nerve terminal stimulation they experienced from bullying and intimidating the “socially inferior” and getting away with it, is just too sweet to resist. It’s as addictive as cocaine and heroin. For those who live at the bottom of the society and labor hard from dawn to dusk to make their ends meet, what options do they have when they are faced with bullies like that? They have no choice but to bite the bullet, because the system is not on their side when it comes to words against words. This is the cold, hard fact of this mundane world we live in.
For me, besides biting the bullet, I document the encounter and post it on my blog.
Posted by Mingjie Cai at 12:23 AM 61 comments Links to this post
