Taxi Bleu

Another transportation strike is taking place today and it is raining. Not the little french rain that lasts for five minutes and then gets sunny, it's been raining all day, fairly steadily.

We have a cocktail party tonight. It's a dress-up activity. We've decided to take a taxi. We may take the metro home, we'll decide later.

There are two main taxi companies in Paris - G7 and Taxi Bleu. Taxis are not always available and on the day of a strike, there is a huge demand. Terry decided to call for the cab yesterday to assure that we'd have one. First he called Taxi Bleu. It was an automated system and he didn't feel completely sure that the taxi would come, since he didn't talk to a person. So, he booked a second cab with G7. Very bad move if two cabs arrive at the same time. You can only get in one of them and the other one is furious, as you can imagine.

I asked Terry to cancel one of the taxis. He tried and tried, but since it's the day of a strike, the lines are busy, even on the automated system. It's getting later and later in the afternoon and we haven't canceled one of the taxis yet. I decided to put my new cordless phone with a speaker phone to work. I dialed the number and got put into the recording/music system to wait for an operator. I walked around the apartment with the phone, did my chores, listened to the recording. The phone was my companion for a very long time.

Eventually an operator got on the phone. I started to explain that we needed to cancel the cab and when I got to the end of the sentence, I completely blanked on the work "cancel" in french, which is "annuler". Luckily the woman clairvoyanced what I needed, just as Terry rushed in the room to save me.

The taxi is canceled. Let's just hope the second one shows up.