Warning: intolerant rant coming up

Taxis are very, very cheap in Hong Kong. So cheap that to avoid someone stepping on my toes and breaking them again, I have been avoiding public transport and paying the 5 pounds a day needed to get to and from work in a red Toyota Comfort.

I feel guilty indulging this way, but not only is it necessary when I see the crammed buses and trams going past me while I sit in air conditioned luxury, it has also afforded me a cute snapshot of HK society.

Some drivers are polite, overly so in some cases. Others scream conversations through the radio. One morning, a driver was turning those metallic Chinese balls in his hand, proving that those souvenirs people bring back from Asia aren't complete tourist traps after all. Most of them have their radios on very loud (and anyone who has ever heard Cantonese radio will know how annoying this can be first thing in the morning – they like to put a song on, and then make comments all the way through it). Most are also on the phone, so as well as the radio I get to listen to loud Cantonese conversations, too. And the one I am typing this blog from has a row of statuettes of grotesque, cartoonish women with ginormous breats, one of which has a pair that jiggles with the motor's vibrations...

All of them make me nauseous really, or is that just the fact that I am using my computer in a moving vehicle?

Or perhaps it just because I am intolerant. Krusty tells me I have an illness which makes me hear more than others. Maybe. But I just think people are a little rude sometimes...