上班族必備軟實力

[Richard honk, Richard beep, honk beep honk for almost 20 years.]

Honking the car or scooter horn is a primitive form of communication, like dogs barking. It expresses anger. “Hurry and move!”, it says. Geese also honk, with little hope of communicating anything complicated. If a goose wants to say that he feels a little down in the dumps and has a vague sense of foreboding, then what can he do? All he can do is honk.

The car horn is more important in Taiwan than in the USA. In America, the honk usually means, “Wake up! The light’s changed! Move your stupid car!” In Taiwan, honking has more meanings. Its main meaning is, “Wake up! The light is about to change! You should be moving already!” But there are other meanings.

Get ready to honk.

If you are in driving toward a traffic light that is already yellow and you know it will be red by the time you get to the corner and you are in a hurry and you don’t care about safety, you can honk your horn to let others know that you are not stopping. Your honk will let them know that your business is more important than their worthless lives. After all, that’s who you are.

Other meanings of the honk are, “Do you want to ride in my taxi?”, “What are you doing in the left turn lane if you are not turning left?”, or “I would like to procreate now.” One seldom-used meaning has to do with Kierkegaard’s theorizing on the evolution of thought in an enlightened mind, but that is nuanced, tedious, and few people understand it.

If I am driving on an inside lane and there is some motor scooter way out here when he should be on the outside as required by law, I will want to honk. If I am driving on the freeway and there are four lanes and each lane is blocked by cars driving side-by-side 20 kph below the speed limit so that nobody can get past, I will want to honk.

I am accustomed to driving in Taiwan now and I use my horn more than I used to. When I first started driving in Taiwan, I would go months without using my horn. Finally, I started honking for no reason at all, just to fit in. Now, I understand more about the customary instances where one should blast one’s own horn. Thank you for beeping.