Convo with a taxi driver

Missed the last train, so took a cab home. Kind of interesting since I mostly travel on foot, on bicycle or by train/subway. The driver seemed friendly, and I was also in a good mood, so we somehow started talking, about general stuff.
Talked about the price increase from Nov 2007, and how it would affect everyone, especially the elderly and those using wheelchairs. Actually, is there really a need to raise the price so much, even though there has been a rise in the price of fuel. The driver agreed with me that this price hike would really have a profound influence on the needy people.

Then again, sometimes top-down approaches, policies made by the bureaucrats from their ivory tower seem to have good intentions, and end up doing more harm than good. Ain't it so so often, we start out with the best of intentions, yet somehow along the way we get sidetracked, or we lose our sense of purpose, our direction, our vision, even our inspiration, our motivation, that we end up harming those we are trying to help.

Think i sidetracked and rambled on a bit, and back to the convo with the cab driver. We talked about how Japan seemed to have taken a turn for the worse, and he was surprised to learn that I was not Japanese (rather delighted when he praised my Japanese *grinz radiantly ) when I told him that Japan was a much easier place to live in when I first came 5 yrs ago. It turns out he knows about Singapore, because he had a Singaporean colleague in his previous job. Small world! He liked the Phillipines more though, and he told me a bit about the miserable living conditions there. Our conversation sort of got more sober after that, and we talked about the problems of international students here with regards to arubaito and the language, and the complex system that sometimes seems so unfriendly to foreigners.

He asked me my uni, and when I said Todai, he was surprised, as he tot I was from Waseda (prob cos I hailed the cab in the vicinity of Waseda; then again, a lot of pple tend to jump to conclusions, yours truly included). Even though Todai in recent years seems to be not as great as in the past, he said that Todai is Todai, Todai is number 1, even if the level is not so high.
Some things (like people's mindsets) never change.

Too fast, the ride came to an end, and I had to alight. It was probably my lucky day?night?, cos he gave me a discount too.haha I bade him farewell, and made my way home, in a good mood.