My teacher the cabby Fri, Nov 18, 2011 | tabla! By Sheela Narayanan Part of my job as a reporter is to talk to people, especially when they don't want to talk, but the one group I generally never have a problem with is taxi drivers. Singapore cabbies are a unique lot. Most of them can speak nearly all the four official languages and a host of dialects, they are founts of information on cheap and good eats (usually with spot-on recommendations) around the island and from their throne in the front seat, they hold court on just about every topic on this planet - from the economy to property prices to politics to personal hygiene. Sure they can be inquisitive, occasionally asking how much rent you pay or if you own your home as they pull up at your destination. But often they can be a divining rod on what is happening on the ground, giving their particular take on social trends. Best of all, they're by and large an honest lot. During the last general and presidential elections, the driver of nearly every taxi I got into had a prediction of the outcome and their own take on the state of Singapore politics. One was even an expletive-ridden diatribe... let's just say it was an interesting ride back home. A taxi driver even made his way into these pages because he told me that every time he picks up a new immigrant, he tries to learn how to say hello in their language. At that time, he could say hello in 20 languages - many of them Indian. One cabby, while trying to find out my ancestry, asked me if I was Amitabh Bachchan or Rajinikanth. I confounded him when I said Mammooty, the Malayalam actor. By the way, if you're new to this country and still trying to get to grips with Singlish, your cabby can be a great teacher: They are masters of the lahs and lehs. And if you hit it off with your cabby, he'll even share his list of "lucky" 4-D outlets. Now, that's a whole new topic for another day.