Taxi Driver in Taipei

If I'm not mistaken, I thought I've read a post in Brodie's blog about meeting with a taxi driver which turned out to be a really intelligent doctor with loads of experience or sth... (sorry that's a long post and the language is a bit difficult to understand... )

Anyway, I just want to say that I also have an interesting experience with taxi driver in Taipei! (and doesn't it look cool to post sth similar to ex-PAI? hahahahahaha)

OK, but surely you can expect that my experience would be not as high level as Brodie's. Actually the taxi driver I met... you could even call him a bastard, cos he beat his wife up. (OK now probably you would want to stop reading cos I'm just trying to copy Brodie to talk about taxi driver but I pick a terrible example... I would then tell you that cos this is my blog and my space to bla bla so I shouldn't really care whether you read or not...)

OK, back to the topic. Sphinx and I was taking this taxi at around 3am or sth at the street where the ex-MCP of @Taiwan Alan lived. There were two guys having a big fight and one of them is definitely drunk cos he's shouting loudly and he kept on smashing bottles onto the floor. We hopped on to the taxi and the taxi driver started to tell us off for watching them fighting on the pavement for such a long time (sphinx did!! I actually wanted to run....) Anyway the taxi drive kept on nagging us that it's really dangerous and what if they started to fight and dashed towards us and so on...

As he's talking (sometimes in mandarin sometimes in taiwanese), he started to change a topic abruptly and said "Hey miss I have a problem that I would like to share with you, would you mind listening to it and give me some suggestions?" We were like, wow, sure, would love to if we could help.
Then he started to say that his wife has left him for 5 months and moved to somewhere south in Taiwan. The reason was that he beat her up. He then said that he's very wrong in this but he was angry when he saw his wife being sent back to home by another man. He thought she had an affair. His wife explained that it was an annual dinner of the company and that man is just her colleague. He did not belive it so they fought with each other and he hit her.
He went on saying that he has a tough time to pay the installments for the newly bought house, driving taxi to earn money diligently, and also taking care of 4 children so he has great pressure. He knew that he's very wrong, and he talked with his priest and he regretted it very much. He thought his wife would come back because the children are here in Taipei, but recently he heard that his wife is going to open a store in the south of Taiwan and planned to live on her own there. He started to get nervous and he said other taxi drivers said that a mum of 4 children would not normally has an affair and would definiltey come back for the kids. But he's not sure, cos he found out that his eldest daughter (year 1 in university) is actually keeping in touch with her mum. She's not telling the father, so apparently she's not on the father's side and he could not count on her to find the mother. He now really did not know what to do and hence he asked Sphinx and me what we thought about that.
(at that time the taxi has already stopped in the destination but we're still talking) Sphinx and I said that he could first talk with his eldest daughter, but he should maintain this tone to his daughter as if he's talking to us, treating his daughter as an adult, asking her for suggestions on what to do, and sharing his feelings to the daughter. He seemed quite convinced and agreed that he definitely should not order his daughter to find her mother, but should really talk with her and convince her that he's really regretful and hope his daughter would help the family reunion.

Nobody really knows what would happen afterwards, but I feel quite emotional about this incident. The point is this taxi driver does not know how to handle relationships, does not know how to manage his family, he has a problem that he could not solved. He's so lost and desperate that he needs to talk it out in the middle of the night. He could turned to nobody, but two apparently naive and young girls (who forgot about danger and watched 2 drunk guys smashing bottles on the floor at 3am in the middle of Taipei) for advice. Talking to this regretful and helpless driver, I could offer nothing but some words of support and sympathy.

We all know that, there are endless pressure, misunderstanding, miscommunications, hardships in making ends meet, fights in family... several weeks ago in Hong Kong there are series of family violence and murder cases. They caught attention of media and society, but it has never been so impactful to me when I really talked to this taxi driver who was so lost and helpless in family relationships. Not sure if it makes sense, I hope there would be more education and more professional support on helping us in dealing with relationships, dealing with family. Math, English, Chinese, Science, History... are all important subjects in school, but why should not there be lessons on relationships, values, ethics, and love. I hope that we don’t just talk about relationship management as in a “customer” sense, as in a “business” sense, I hope we could talk about it in a family sense, in a personal sense.

I hope the taxi driver will be fine.