Stupid Things You Do in a Foreign Country
Saturday, August 30th, 2008When you’re living in a foreign culture and do not know the language you frequently do things that you find in retrospect were very stupid. This is common enough occurrence that you learn to just go with it and laugh at yourself. Earlier this week I did something that is a great example of the type of stupid things we do every day.
As often happens, I had a business dinner that I needed to attend after work. As usual, I was running late leaving work. I recognized the name of the restaurant and quickly printed the Chinese version of the address, to hand to the taxi driver to tell him where I needed to go. Paula and I rushed home from work. Once we got home I gave our doorman the address of the restaurant and asked him to call a cab. He called and told me it would arrive in 3 minutes, which was good news because that would allow me to arrive just in time.
Unfortunately the cab did not arrive in 3 minutes. This is not too unusual, since it was the busiest time of the day for cabs and they often can’t find our place. So the doorman called again and continued to help me get a cab. Finally, about thirty minutes later the cab showed up. I was definitely going to be late for dinner. The doorman gave the taxi driver the Chinese directions and appeared to tell him how best to drive to the road into downtown Taipei.
The cabby drove off, took the usual turn 2 blocks from the apartment, but did not take the following left turn. He then started to slow down in front of a bank, which I thought was rather strange. Then he started reading the Chinese directions, obviously comparing them to the numbers on the buildings, and suddenly stopped.
The cabby thought I was a little strange when I started to laugh out loud. I had just waited over 30 minutes and paid US$3 for a taxi to drive me 3 blocks that I could have happily walked in less than 10 minutes for free. I really wish the doorman had told me the restaurant was so close, but he thinks a lot of things we do are strange so he did not think twice about this request. The good news is that I was actually the first to arrive for dinner!