The Taxis of Cebu (The Day I Renewed My NBI Clearance)

Someone's NBI Clearance

I was in Robinson’s Place Cebu earlier to renew my NBI clearance. I arrived at around 12 PM and the NBI office opens at 1 PM. The office of the National Bureau of Investigations is located in the 4th floor of the mall. To decongest the mall from a large number people—off to renew their clearances—the guards made us wait by the main entrance. We were each given a priority number. Me, I was number 68.

While waiting for our numbers to be called, we were all seated in the stairs by the entrance. We looked like we were about to get our class picture taken. We did have our picture taken thanks to an American guy—probably a tourist—he was carrying around a DSLR camera.  He was on his way inside the mall when he took our picture.

At around 1 PM, the first 50 people was let in to the mall. We had to wait another hour to be accommodated. Everyone was not impatient since they came in groups or in pairs. A guy came with her girlfriend. A husband came with his wife and kids. There was a group of boisterous men. Everyone had someone to talk to kill the time except me. I came alone. I did bump into a previous officemate but she came with her girl friends and she was seated 5 people away from me. I was the quiet the whole time.

Sitting on the stairs and facing the street, I noticed the names of the taxis that passed by.

In Cebu, most taxis have acronyms for a name. Some have human names—probably the names of their owners or someone close to the owners. There’s a taxi named Richielda as well as Christoff and Ann & Benjie. Some were named after animals—Duck, Spider and Tiger—another one was named after the king of spiders. One can ride Atlas—I wonder if it was named after the Titan. Twin Hearts is named after a Filipino TV series. Some cabs guarantee you a Softride, a Safeway and a Cool Transport. 

Then crazy idea struck. 'Why don’t I take down the franchise names of the taxis?,' I told my self. I took note of the names mentally. I wanted to write them down but I didn’t want the ones seated beside and behind me to be able to read my list. I also didn’t want to be called crazy by those people. I was able to note quite a number of names.

When I got home after I renewed my clearance, I was able to list these names:

2B	Airland	Ann & Benjie	Artville
Atlas	Caraga	Catz	Christoff
Cool Transport	Crew	CTC	Danny Noy
Duck	EC Friends	Friendly	Gilgal
Good Shepherd	Hadjie	Highland	HMJJ
Holiday	HR	Janox-1	Juscar
K Factor	Kein Cedric	Ken	King Spider
M&J	Mabuhay	Maligaya	MARMIC
MEG	Micaela	MMS	N
PPTC	R&F	RC	RD
SAMC	Regional	Reingold	Revolution
Richielda	Riya	RosaMC	RP
RP Corominas	Safeway	Sansei	Saregen
Scorpion	SD	Shurie	Softride
Spider	Sweet Baby	Thessie	Tiger
Tres Nina	Twin Hearts	Van System	VUDTRASCO
Zarlene	Zirk