Singapore: A good heart

I was to meet my colleagues at 9:45 am at the Commonwealth  MRT taxi stand. I had planned on taking the bus to the MRT station, but since I was running a bit late I decided to take a cab from where I was staying near Orchard Road and told the cabbie where I needed to be dropped off. On getting out of the cab I did not spot my friend anywhere, and after waiting for about 10 minutes I called her (fortunately there was a small bit of charge left in my cell phone battery). It soon became apparent that we were in different places. The cabbie had dropped me off at the Queenstown MRT taxi stand, one stop before the Commonwealth MRT. Although it would mean traveling in the opposite direction to where we were eventually headed, my colleagues told me to stay where I was and took a cab to come pick me up since this was only my second day in Singapore and I still didn’t know my way around very well. We then looped back from Queenstown and finally took off toward Jurong to go to the PCF preschool where we had a scheduled visit. When we reached our destination and got ready to pay the fare we found that the second cabbie actually charged us less than the metered amount. He had deducted the fare for the extra round trip distance between the Commonwealth MRT and Queenstown MRT to pick me up. He said that even if the first cabbie had mistakenly dropped me off at the wrong spot we shouldn’t have to pay the extra. That was the sweetest thing! I couldn’t imagine this happening in very many places around the world. What a refreshing and touching gesture of the human heart this was, especially when urban behaviors in fast-paced societies can more often be driven by the “time is money” mentality…