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Blossoming as a Cabbie
Canberra is full of cherry (and plum) blossoms at the moment, and just walking along Kembla Street outside the taxi company offices at lunchtime brings back memories of April in Hiroshima, when I made a quick trip to Japan. That was an interesing experience, not least for the problems of communicating with taxi drivers!
A lot of Canberra's cabbies are recent immigrants, and they must find comunication difficult sometimes.
Dinh ("call me Dean") sat beside me in the classroom, and I could see that he would have problems. It's not just talking with the passengers; a cabbie also has to be able to speak with the despatchers, and Dean was advised to go slowly on the radio.
Mind you, he's a man of considerable ambition, and I would not be at all surprised to find him master of a fleet of taxis in a year or two. He got the telephone numbers of everyone else in the class, and I dare say that he might want me to drive for him in times to come.
Thursday was pretty easy. We watched videos and had more discussions about driver behaviour. Managing stress and alcohol featured heavily, and both have a tendency to become vicious circles. I can see how easy it would be for a day to start off poorly and get worse. Poor fares, other drivers, computer system delays - a cabby can get stressed up to the point where he picks a fight with the next passenger to look at him wrongly.
And then there's the temptation to have a few drinks after a shift.
As professional drivers, we're limited to a blood alcohol level of 0.02, which isn't much. A glass of wine or a small beer for me.
We're advised to keep up our fluid levels during a shift, take a good solid break and eat healthy food, and when we get home, go for a a brisk half hour walk to get rid of the adrenalin and testosterone.
We did a test on cab ranks, and despite a few surprises - the test questions didn't always gel with the study materials - I passed. We all passed - with only a handful of students on the course it's pretty hard to fail.
Most important session on Thursday was the presentation from the driving assessor, who is employed by the government to test applicants for a "T" endorsement on their licence. We'll have to front up in our own cars, clean and roadworthy, and drive the assessor around whichever cab ranks, important locations and places of interest he nominates, using the shortest practical route and paying due care to passenger comfort and security.
It should be a doddle, as we were given a handout describing the conditions of the assessment and the list of places we could be asked to drive to.
We aren't allowed to use the street directory in finding our routes for these places, but we will be given a street address as part of the test, and we can look that up on the map. As the instructors remind us, there's ten thousand streets in Canberra, and we can't be expected to know them all.
But we should know how to find the airport, railway station, Parliament House, War Memorial and so on.
One applicant was told to go to the railway station and admitted he didn't know where it was. Another took the assessor a long way around the lake. We're allowed a certain amount of leeway in selecting routes, but adding five kilometres is not on - that's eight extra dollars for the passenger, and liable to result in a complaint.
Another test was cancelled before it began, because the vehicle had two bald tyres. Again, there's a certain amount of leeway, but asking the assessor to be driven around in an unroadworthy vehicle is just not on!
Friday's instruction was devoted to first aid. We had an instructor come in, a young lady from Queanbeyan who manages the aquatic centre there, and had a lot of practical experience in resucitation under her belt. She brought in two dummies with her for us to practice resuscitation.
Cabbies are liable to have to deal with minor medical emergencies, especially if someone has called for a cab to take them to the hospital, instead of an ambulance. Car accidents and drunks are other possibilities.
We dealt with the sort of scenarios we might find, such as epileptic fits, diabetic and asthma attacks, poisoning, burns, broken legs and other horors. I suggested that first aid for a diabetic passenger might consist of a Tim Tam (a sweet chocolate biscuit) and after she agreed that this would work, I kept on suggesting it as a universal cure-all.
Sara would chalk up the initials of a mnemonic on the board and ask us to supply the words. "Cardiovascular?" one student would suggest. "Compression?" another ventured. "Chocolate!" I declared confidently.
But despite my helpful input, we worked through the scenarios (though I pointed out that we were unlikely to encounter box jellyfish in our cabs, especially in landlocked Canberra), managed to keep our dummies alive, and finished as lunchtime came around.
The fleet manager came down to give us a pep talk while Sara packed away her instructional aids. ("I'll see you on Sunday for lunch, Dad," she said, and the fleet manager smiled and nodded.)
To nobody's surprise, we had all passed the course, and we were wished the best of luck in our future careers.
Next steps for me involve my medical exam on Tuesday, receiving police clearance that I have a clean driving record and no major crimes to my credit, the practical driving test, and buying a uniform. With any luck I'll get these done over the next two weeks. The police check takes four to six weeks, which means I've got two weeks to wait as a minimum, because I submitted my request a week before the course began.
I've got a few other things to occuy my time, such as memorising my shortest routes, and the numbers of the various zones on the computer system. Zone 1 is Melba, out in northern Belconnen, and zone 34 is Braddon. Knowing these numbers will save time when I'm out on the road, and I won't be chasing a job on the other side of the city, or stopping to look up the list.
A lot of Canberra's cabbies are recent immigrants, and they must find comunication difficult sometimes.
Dinh ("call me Dean") sat beside me in the classroom, and I could see that he would have problems. It's not just talking with the passengers; a cabbie also has to be able to speak with the despatchers, and Dean was advised to go slowly on the radio.
Mind you, he's a man of considerable ambition, and I would not be at all surprised to find him master of a fleet of taxis in a year or two. He got the telephone numbers of everyone else in the class, and I dare say that he might want me to drive for him in times to come.
Thursday was pretty easy. We watched videos and had more discussions about driver behaviour. Managing stress and alcohol featured heavily, and both have a tendency to become vicious circles. I can see how easy it would be for a day to start off poorly and get worse. Poor fares, other drivers, computer system delays - a cabby can get stressed up to the point where he picks a fight with the next passenger to look at him wrongly.
And then there's the temptation to have a few drinks after a shift.
As professional drivers, we're limited to a blood alcohol level of 0.02, which isn't much. A glass of wine or a small beer for me.
We're advised to keep up our fluid levels during a shift, take a good solid break and eat healthy food, and when we get home, go for a a brisk half hour walk to get rid of the adrenalin and testosterone.
We did a test on cab ranks, and despite a few surprises - the test questions didn't always gel with the study materials - I passed. We all passed - with only a handful of students on the course it's pretty hard to fail.
Most important session on Thursday was the presentation from the driving assessor, who is employed by the government to test applicants for a "T" endorsement on their licence. We'll have to front up in our own cars, clean and roadworthy, and drive the assessor around whichever cab ranks, important locations and places of interest he nominates, using the shortest practical route and paying due care to passenger comfort and security.
It should be a doddle, as we were given a handout describing the conditions of the assessment and the list of places we could be asked to drive to.
We aren't allowed to use the street directory in finding our routes for these places, but we will be given a street address as part of the test, and we can look that up on the map. As the instructors remind us, there's ten thousand streets in Canberra, and we can't be expected to know them all.
But we should know how to find the airport, railway station, Parliament House, War Memorial and so on.
One applicant was told to go to the railway station and admitted he didn't know where it was. Another took the assessor a long way around the lake. We're allowed a certain amount of leeway in selecting routes, but adding five kilometres is not on - that's eight extra dollars for the passenger, and liable to result in a complaint.
Another test was cancelled before it began, because the vehicle had two bald tyres. Again, there's a certain amount of leeway, but asking the assessor to be driven around in an unroadworthy vehicle is just not on!
Friday's instruction was devoted to first aid. We had an instructor come in, a young lady from Queanbeyan who manages the aquatic centre there, and had a lot of practical experience in resucitation under her belt. She brought in two dummies with her for us to practice resuscitation.
Cabbies are liable to have to deal with minor medical emergencies, especially if someone has called for a cab to take them to the hospital, instead of an ambulance. Car accidents and drunks are other possibilities.
We dealt with the sort of scenarios we might find, such as epileptic fits, diabetic and asthma attacks, poisoning, burns, broken legs and other horors. I suggested that first aid for a diabetic passenger might consist of a Tim Tam (a sweet chocolate biscuit) and after she agreed that this would work, I kept on suggesting it as a universal cure-all.
Sara would chalk up the initials of a mnemonic on the board and ask us to supply the words. "Cardiovascular?" one student would suggest. "Compression?" another ventured. "Chocolate!" I declared confidently.
But despite my helpful input, we worked through the scenarios (though I pointed out that we were unlikely to encounter box jellyfish in our cabs, especially in landlocked Canberra), managed to keep our dummies alive, and finished as lunchtime came around.
The fleet manager came down to give us a pep talk while Sara packed away her instructional aids. ("I'll see you on Sunday for lunch, Dad," she said, and the fleet manager smiled and nodded.)
To nobody's surprise, we had all passed the course, and we were wished the best of luck in our future careers.
Next steps for me involve my medical exam on Tuesday, receiving police clearance that I have a clean driving record and no major crimes to my credit, the practical driving test, and buying a uniform. With any luck I'll get these done over the next two weeks. The police check takes four to six weeks, which means I've got two weeks to wait as a minimum, because I submitted my request a week before the course began.
I've got a few other things to occuy my time, such as memorising my shortest routes, and the numbers of the various zones on the computer system. Zone 1 is Melba, out in northern Belconnen, and zone 34 is Braddon. Knowing these numbers will save time when I'm out on the road, and I won't be chasing a job on the other side of the city, or stopping to look up the list.
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I can just see you coming back here in a few months and telling us you had a baby born in the back of your cab!
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No females in our class. We had me and Dinh, a postie planning a second (more interesting) career, a firie who wants to work the odd extra shift, and a mechanic looking for a way to get out of the workshop.
Not too many lady cabdrivers here, though I have seen one or two.
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Feh! It takes three years to acquire "The Knowledge" to become a cabbie in London... :-) You often see a trainee on a scooter with a map strapped to the handlebars driving around town.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/677048.stm
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But we should know how to find the airport, railway station, Parliament House, War Memorial and so on.
I know where two of the four are, what does that count for? :p
And I'll bet the other two are fairly well signed. Totally unrelated but I found Canberra to be a pretty easy city to navigate around. Granted I had awesome help from Peggysmum but even the day I was on my own I made it pretty close to her place before I was turned around :D