Thursday afternoon and typhoon signal three is up. A pair of middle-aged women flag down a minibus along Caine Road as the rain buckets down.
The first passenger clambers aboard; the second woman has one foot on the bottom step, trying to collapse her umbrella at the same time as boarding when the concertina door slams shut on her. The driver does not turn around, he can just feel that the door will not close. He winds it back as the stunned woman struggles to regain her footing. Slam! Once more the unfolding door clobbers her with a hollow, visceral thump.
The first passenger holds the door open while the dazed woman gropes for something to support herself. The driver whips the door shut for a third time, narrowly missing its human target. Simultaneously he stabs at the accelerator pedal and the minibus moves off with all the smoothness of a bucking bronco on amphetamines, and the already-battered second passenger becomes a sprawling mass on the seats.
The driver's eyes were fixed on the road as he took the minibus from Pokfulam to Causeway Bay in the quickest possible time without exciting the interest of the police.
Unfortunately he was being continually held up and disturbed by passengers who insisted on boarding.
After years of empirical research - taking thousands of minibus and taxi rides - my findings suggest that if you take a normal well-adjusted Hong Kong person and give them the keys to a bus or taxi they are transformed into a deranged misanthrope.
Studies in the United States on the physical strain endured by long-distance lorry drivers show they suffer long-term back and neck problems, as well as constipation and dehydration. Add to these basic discomforts Hong Kong's constant traffic jams, unending exposure to carbon monoxide from exhaust fumes belched by light goods vehicles, and the irritating jingle-jangle of a good luck idol suspended from the dashboard, and it is no wonder passengers often complain drivers have all the inter-personal skills of a scorpion.