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Friday, August 26, 2011

Taxi-Twitch

E@L is in a taxi and the driver goes the wrong way (i.e. the long way) and is an ancient man with serious twitching issues (sigh - E@L attracts taxi drivers with Tourettes the way Bruce attracts desperate hookers) and, as he assumes all expats require refrigeration, has the air-con set to cryonics. He seems nervous and when E@L mumbles something about turning right and not left he looks back at E@L briefly in the mirror with a expression close to fear in his copper-cornea eyes and the twitches accelerate, though the taxi does not. He seems an overly cautious driver, perhaps because of poor vision and liver disease, perhaps because he wants to give snails a chance to get out of the way.

Taxi-uncle is slowly building up speed as they approach an intersection where he has to turn right (to correct his navigational error) and as the lane breaks off from the forward lane and starts to expand into two where the median strip narrows, he drives in the invisible fourth lane (so common in Asia, but also seen in Italy and France) between all the others.

E@L says, "Uncle..."

"WHAT!?" he screams in a panic and slams on the brakes; E@L is tossed forward, well he is forced to lean a little bit forward as the car screeches to a halt and blocks both of the right turn lanes and half the forward lane...

They are lucky there are no speeding cars, heavily loaded trucks, cement mixers, emergency or military (some army place full of ancient Jeeps nearby) vehicles coming up behind them (they have all overtaken the taxi already) or E@L would not be typing this.

No-one, in fact, would be typing this: if a post-mortem hacker tried to break into one of the four (including tab) computers they'd fail as E@L's password is unbreakable. No, not "unbreakable" but, you know,like difficult to crack. No, not "difficulttocrack" but ... Oh, you get the point. No, "yougethepoint" is also NOT E@L's password.

OK admission, it is "password", the No2 most common password in the world of cybersecurity (E@L is always second best, where is the justice in that?) and the encrytped sub-directory with all the good porn is called "allthegoodporn, and the password is "unbreakable".

[In Unrelated News: Winning joke at the Headinbra comedy festival: "The computer asked for an eight character password, so I chose Snow White and The Seven Dwarves." Boom boom!]

"Um," says E@L, completely amazed by the taxi-uncle's slight overreaction, but he continues, "uncle, could you please turn the air-con down..."

Taxi-uncle nods a few times quickly and mumbles something in an apologetic tone The taxi starts to move again, slowly enough for him to turn the fan down a notch way before they reach the intersection.

E@L slowly shakes head, puts his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of nose, sighs, etc...

~~~~~~~~~~~~



E@L

3 comments:

knobby said...

I always thought you invoked artistic licence when it came to taxi drivers but you now have proof!

expat@large said...

*I* have proof, or *you* have proof?

knobby said...

You have proof that you weren't making things up!

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