World’s Best Taxi Driver
I took a trip to Busan this past weekend, awesome place. It's a huge city on the beach. It's full of fish markets where octopus crawl out of their tubs, squid jet around, and eels slither about. Every type of fish, urchin, shell sea animal, clam, all sold here and all alive! A trip to the market is better than most aquariums. Seriously! Have you ever seen a squid get its head chopped off and it's tentacles flail about? I have, it's a must see.
I had the pleasure of flagging down the "World's Best Taxi Driver". I can finally check that off my list of things to do. Of course he sees two foreigners and that equals a free English Lesson. This cabby wanted to know why people pronounce 'Motorola' differently. Strange? I didn't even know you could say Motorola any other way then, motor-ola. After a quick lesson on cell phones, he proceeds to pull out a small journal from his glove box & hands it to me. He tells me, "Best POP Songs. I learn all my Englishees." Oh yea? All your Englishes? Inside this man has HAND-WRITTEN the lyrics to every classic and over played rock song. He tells me, "I know one million to 10,000 songs!" Impressive, very impressive. From Elvis to the Beatles to Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand it's all here. Written in English with the accompanying Korean translation. After a quick opening karaoke session of my personal favorite Sweet Caroline we moved onto the good stuff, the Christmas Carol section. I was sitting in a cab, in the second biggest city in Korea, with a man who spoke very basic English, but knew every word to Silent Night, Noel, White Christmas, and Here Comes Santa Clause. He was in awe as I hit all the high notes to Silent Night, and loved my speedy bouncing chorus with choreographed interactive moves to Here Comes Santa Clause and Jingle Bells.