The shortcut

When I told the cab driver my destination, he shook his head and clucked a bit.

"Water main break in Wan Chai," he said. "Lots of traffic."

That explained the traffic jam outside my apartment -- on a street that maybe sees a dozen cars in a busy hour. The line of taxis was already stretching toward the hospital when I left for my yoga class at 9:15. When I came home two and a half hours later, the line was even longer.

I left for work an hour after that, and managed to flag down the clucking cabbie.

As we approached the main road, he pointed up the hill. "It will be faster, I think, to go up," he says.

I nod, having no interest in sitting in traffic. I've watched the cars crawl by for most of the morning. I just want to get where I'm going.

He zooms up the hill. Except for a couple of stoplights, we don't stop. Not until we get to Wan Chai, where the water main has broken. The traffic slows to a crawl.

"No worry," my driver says. "I know a shortcut. OK?"

Normally, when a cab driver says "I know a shortcut!" I worry that I'm being taken for a ride. Inevitably, such shortcuts add lots of time -- the meter clicking away all the while. But even the long way around can't be worse than what I can see ahead, so I wave him through. "Shortcut is OK," I say.

A short while later, we're on the highway zipping toward the office. When he pulls up in front of the building, the meter reads $72 -- only $5 more than it usually does when I take a taxi to the office. Considering the zoo we just passed, I see this as nothing short of a miracle.

I hand him $80 and move to get out of the car. It's far, far more than I usually add -- Hong Kong is not a city of tippers -- but if it weren't for his shortcuts, I'd still be sitting in traffic somewhere. "Mgoi!" I say. I wave off my change. "It's OK," I say. "You keep it."

"Is far too much for me!" he says. But I wave and slide out.

He is smiling as he drives away.