On Thursday, taxi fares in HK went up for the first time in about 10 years. The initial charge is now $16 instead of $15. Given ten years of even modest inflation combined with huge increases in the price of fuel, a one dollar increase per ride seems almost Scrooge-like.

Naturally it will take some time to adjust all of the taxi meters. In the meantime, our department of transport has come up with a new rate sheet to be displayed in taxi cabs. Now they might have opted for a sign that says “add $1 to the price on the meter” and let it go at that.

However, they seem to believe that this would be beyond the reach of most people. So the rate sheet has columns of taxi fares starting at $15, incrementing by $1.20 per line, going up to, jeez, I don’t know, $500 or something. The left side shows the fare on the meter, the right side shows that fare plus $1.

So if you look at the meter on a taxi and it says your fare is $24.80 and you cannot figure out how much you should pay (“um, er, $24.80 plus $1 equals? oooh, that’s a tough one, wait a minute, let me get out my phone and run the calculator program on it, oops sorry, I’ve got a smart phone running Microsoft Windows Mobile and it’s crashed, let me just reboot my phone, oh, I forgot, there’s an abacus in my briefcase somewhere, nice briefcase right? LV knockoff, AAA quality from Shenzhen, it holds my phone charger and my copy of Next magazine with the Edison photos and my lunch and a card with my name on it in case I forget, how much, well they were asking $2,000 but I knocked them down to $2,500, good deal huh? Yeah, LV is doing cases with Hello Kitty now, at least that’s what they told me in the shop. Okay, wait, that’s $24.80 plus $1, never mind, here’s a thousand, give me $1 change, that’s about right, huh?”), never fear, it’s been done for you.

Hongkie Town
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