Kamikaze taxi

Saturday night, eh? Ended up hitting this Japanese restaurant that I've been a-hankering for for quite a while. Well, since I read a review about a year ago, and then discovered the place the old-fashioned way—that is, by walking past it—last week. It's all stick-ey, like yakitori-yum, with heaps of different varieties, so that the squid yaki came out wrapped round in a big circle, looking like some awesome white lollypop. Yum. And there were nasu dengaku ones and oh, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. And then delicious thick white fish sashimi, and other mouth-watering pieces of tenderness. All preceded by lychee martinis and washed down with Tsing Tao. Not bad for an evening which began with a "what's up?" phone call at 7:45pm.

So the locals ended up grabbing a cab home together from outside the Metro. While we're waiting, and this dude starts talking to us. He was looking for a cab too, and talking about all sorts of shit, kinda making three-quarter sense, about how he's an engineer and is spouting off all this stuff about the energy consumption of public transport. OK, seems like a nice-enough bloke. Then he decided to that he'd hail our taxi for us, which he cocked up, and so decided we should share his ride. Him to Fitzroy, us to NM. Hmm. Brunswick street wasn't too far out of our way, and he said he'd pay. He was pretty insistent, but seemed like an alright bloke, he didn't smell, wasn't cross-eyed, so we said alright. Well, he was in the front seat, so it was hard to toss him out.

And so he's crapping on about working in the mines up in far WA, how he was two months on, two weeks off, and he did it for six years and had a girlfriend the whole time, and then he quit to spend more time with her and it broke up after three weeks. So we're thinking this guy's a bit weird, and he keep saying he wants to go to Easey Street Fitzroy, but Easey's in Collingwood. Meh. I couldn't work out if he was pissed or loved-up or what, but he kept kinda forgetting shit.

Anyway, we get to Brunswick street, and he goes "Oh shit, I'm not going to Easey Street Fitzroy, I'm going to Smith Street Richmond." "WTF?" "Sorry guys, I'll pay the whole way, I've got $20 for the fare, it's ok, we'll just keep going". Um, no we won't. So we're like "Um, driver, can you stop here please", and again with spirit, louder and sterner. And louder and sterner again, until finally Mr Taxi driver stops and we jump out and bid our fucked-up friend farewell, much to his continuing protestations.

Lesson of the week: don't share cabs with strangers.