Today I went to a special building, only a 10-minute drive from my office, to get a physical exam needed for a special visa. The administrative assistant of the Psychology Department accompanied me. We set off about 8 am. He mentioned a vision exam so I went back to my apartment to get another contact lens. (I wear just one, so that I have good vision both near and far.) Then we tried to get a taxi. We found one but, stuck in traffic, it went nowhere. After 10 minutes or so, we got out. We decided to go in the administrative assistant’s car (he prefered to take a taxi because he didn’t know where the building was.) It’s now 9:10 am. We set off. We reach the building around 9:20. Oops — I forgot my passport. We get a taxi to take us back to campus so I can get it. The driver tries to cheat us by taking a long route. On the way back — on a reasonable route — we get stuck in traffic again. We get out of the taxi. We’d like to go back to the exam building, pick up the administrative assistant’s car, and take a different route back, but that would require crossing six lanes of busy highway to get a taxi going in the right direction. That’s too scary so eventually we get a taxi that goes back to campus via another route. Now it’s too late to do the exam. We’ll try again early tomorrow. For some reason — exhaust fumes? too much sitting in a car? — my head hurts.
More What a difference a day makes. I went back the next morning and there were no problems at all. We found a taxi easily, the trip was fast and smooth, the exam didn’t take long, and the trip back was fast and smooth. We passed a man trying to start his car in the middle of a big street.
When my MIL visited China in the late 80′s, she came back with the story that crossing the street was so dangerous that she took a cab. We laughed. We adopted both our daughters from China and I want to testify that nothing could get me to cross a street! The pedestrian has no “rights”. One morning our guide tricked us into crossing a busy street because she thought we were wasting our money on taxi fare. It was a very scary minute.
Melinda