Tale of three Über journeys

First journey:

Mid-morning. An amiable, soft spoken, quite cultured petite bourgeois socially degraded by the driving forces of Chinese and Indian low labour costs, which made his once successful jewellery business become uncompetitive and therefore sack all of his 30 employees who used to earn more than he does as a Über driver.

Second Journey:

Noon. A lower middle class overweight chap in his late early forties, according to his tight shirt and oversized watch. A once resident of a now emerging area, which sees pale western immigrants zipping coffee in front laptop computers in places that look the same from San Francisco to Melbourne via Barcelona, those with a bearded pedant individual who at 39 discovered by reading a graffiti that the phrase “knowledge is power” is a Latin aphorism and not a Francis Bacon creation as his also pedant girlfriend who also runs the boringly Scandinavian looking café thinks.

Forced by marriage to live on the other side of the city known for having expensive Port Wine Tastes he never goes to, the driver cooperates with clients by playing a soft jazz music radio station and helping out with luggage.

Third Journey:

After lunch. A rude, battered looking old guard lad on coke, originally from Campanha, an economically depressed working class area which the tourism blooming has not yet brought speculation to, then it still looks the same as when people emigrated to the country side after rents regulations by a socialist government were equally helpless for owners and tenants. The only words the driver intended to say when he was not dancing the reagaeton from the radio with his restless jaw, were to fustigate Taxi drivers initial reluctance to allow Über to enter the market and let people like him have a job.