A few nights ago, my wife Lydia and I went out to dinner at a restaurant down the street from our residence. About halfway through the meal Lydia
got a
small piece of shrimp shell stuck in her throat. She wasn't choking,
but it was painful and hard for her to swallow The nearby clinics that
could have taken care of her were already closr the evening, so that
left only one alternative--a trip to a hospital ER, the closest of which is about 5km (3 miles) from our area.
Just
our luck it was a rainy evening, and taxis were hard to come by, but
we finally got one. However, due to the cab scarcity, the driver took advantage of our situation and
demanded a high flat rate instead of running the meter. Under the under the circumstances we had
no choice but to accept.
Just as we got in and the driver was about to pull into traffic, he crossed himself, which is a common gesture here in the Philippines among devout Catholics beseeching God's protection at the start of a journey.
.
.
A couple of blocks into the trip, Lydia suddenly coughed, which
dislodged the shell, so no need for the ER after all. Even the driver said something to the effect that God is good. So we turned
around and went home. However, traffic was so heavy that the metered fare
wouldn't have been much more than the driver's demanded amount anyway.
So we paid it. And all things considered, we were just so glad that Lydia
was okay that the fare wasn't worth arguing about. But the point is if the cabbie was so pious, he had a strange way of showing it by exploiting an urgent matter to squeeze extra money from his passengers. I can't help but wonder how much more he would have socked it to us if our need had been really dire.
. 
