Earlier this month after having gone to check out an apartment, I hailed a cab to return back to work. Upon entering the cab, the driver spoke to me in broken English, asking where I was heading. I politely told him and immediately after we began driving he had told me that my English was very good. I usually hate talking about this because my Mandarin and Taiwanese are both pretty terrible–something that I find really embarrassing to admit. Regardless, I continued on the subject and asked him about where he was from. Burma, he replied, which sounded more like “bulma” to me at first. Immediately intrigued, we discussed how people with American passports are not allowed in their country (now officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar), to which I began asking about when he decided to come out here.
As it would turn out, he escaped Burma some thirty-odd years ago, and after he explained to me how difficult it was I was in absolute awe. I am really not sure of the repercussions of your actions if you’re caught in that type of situation, but during those times Burma had devolved into a really poor state and was really unsafe to be in. Essentially, the only way to have gotten out of Burma is to have had a work visa–proof that somewhere in another country, a company required your services. The problem with this is that there was very little communication at the time coming in and out of Burma, and so to escape the country they would have to purchase stolen letterheads and forge an offer letter, and then after that they would have to purchase a passport to leave the country. The passport mind you, was roughly 20,000 dollars on top of the letterhead, which was already a few thousand. Keep in mind Photoshop or inkjet printers did not exist then.
After having gone through this ordeal, the driver told me that the visa was limited, and that his only countries of choice were Japan, Thailand, Singapore and a few other surrounding countries. He ended up doing a lot of manual labor somewhere in Thailand to pay his way through school where he studied mechanical engineering. Upon graduation he managed to find work out in the states where he spent six years of his life confined to a desk working someone else’s nine to five job. He grew tired of this work and returned to school to receive his MBA, followed by a few more years of work. At this point I was pretty dumb struck. Why would someone with a mechanical engineering background and an MBA be driving me, some stupid kid around in a cab?
By this point in the ride we were only a mile away or so from the office. I knew our time left together was limited, so I decided to ask why he decided on being a cab driver. To my surprise, his answer was really simple and straight forward,” Because I wanted to do something real, you know?”
I was pretty blown away.
Apparently he hated his desk jobs, working for other people, and to him being a cab driver meant freedom. He did not care much for worldly possessions but simply to connect with people on a daily basis. As we were two blocks from the office, he asked what I did for work and what I studied. I happily obliged and told him that I was a designer. Immediately he told me that what I did was important and left me with some words of advice, “If I could do it all over again, I would have stayed in one field, and worked at as many places as I could and grow that way. Move up, and not from side to side. This is something you should do.” I smiled and nodded in agreement, as if this was something that I had already figured out.
In my last few moments with him as we pulled up to my building, he pulls out his credit card machine and I hand him my card. He asks if I’m a student, but I tell him that I’m working and this is my building. The tone in his voice told me that had I been a student that he would have swiped my card without having added any tip. I quickly told him the amount to put, left him a generous tip, thanked him for everything and left.
