Having a bad 2 days... Will it get worse?

Mobile Phone Issue First, last evening (Tuesday), out of the blue, my new Nokia N95 (well, I bought it in June) developed an odd problem - when I would press some of buttons, the screen would “shift” and change colors (like to a shade of blue, then red, then yellow, then green) but it would also shift to the right a few pixels. Very strange - seems like a connection is loose? So I dropped it off with the repair guy today - note - not an authorized Nokia repair shop I am afraid as I don’t have warranty. Motorbike Issue Second, my bike finally (again) crapped out on me yesterday. I noticed what seemed an electrical problem developing over the last 2 weeks or so. But did I do anything about it? No. Big surprise. So now it’s stuck in my office’s underground parking with no electricity. I suspect it’s the battery. This be the 4th battery I fried in the last 3 years. This, on top of the headlight and all turn signals are out. Man oh man… Going for a ride - good for seeing rural Beijing! Finally, this morning, I woke up a tad late this morning (read: later than I would like but still on-time if I had my motorbike), which means, getting a cab would be out of the question. So I had to revert to a hei che - a black car - basically an unofficial car for hire. boy did this guy take me for a ride. Check this: [googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&om=1&s=AARTsJrZaHvyIlQB23t2dYMSLWDTC5YpXQ&msa=0&msid=114081299157522590496.000438ccb1d680a449127&ll=39.941067,116.522026&spn=0.09213,0.145912&z=12&output=embed&w=425&h=350] View Larger Map O.k., what are you seeing? This is a satellite photo of Beijing.  Duh! You see at the bottom left is my home - indicated with the little bed icon.  My office is near the top with the yellow flag icon.  The route I usually take is orange/yellow - following the city’s 3rd ring road.  I sometimes take the red route, which follows the city’s 4th ring road, however, this is usually very jammed with cars.  My “hei che” today took me along the blue line.  That’s right.  Here’s the (short) story: You usually negotiate the price before entering the car - I negotiated the “normal price”.  I have taken these guys in the past and haven’t had any issues.  Today’s guy was new. Never seen him before.  Sometimes these guys like to pick up several people at a time to maximize their profits.  I usually don’t like that but I figured today what the heck.  He knows where I am going, so I imagine and assumed (shame on me!) that the guy he wanted to pick up was going somewhere along the way.  Unfortunately my Chinese sucks big time so I couldn’t pick up the conversation between the driver and this guy. Well, if you look at the map, he followed the red route at the beginning, but instead of making the turn left to go north on 4th ring, he kept going straight - to the east.  I asked him what was up, he just replied “something something blah blah bleh bingdo dingo si huan you duo che blanke boo boo slip slip sloppy skank”.  Something like that! The key bit I got out of that was “si huan you duo che”, which means 4th ring has too many cars.  It did - as usual.  So I figured he knew a good short cut.  So I let him be.  Mistake. We kept going and going and going, passing 5th ring road.  I though there would be no end in sight!  (not really, but I am trying to add a bit of drama here…)  Finally he stopped (at the little fish icon in the bottom left of the map above) and let the guy out.  The driver then proceeded to do a U-turn - presumably going back to get back on track. Well, in the map above, when he starts turning right to go north (from the east), he drives much of the way along the fulu, or side road, to 5th ring.  It eventually ends, and then we do some creative turns here and there, when finally reaching a road I have seen before! It certainly was an interesting drive, even though I was quite a bit late for work.  East of the 5th ring road in Beijing is pretty much the dark ages…  Crappy roads, no tall buildings, more animal powered vehicles… My phone was acting up (see above) but I managed to get through the screen issues to get some GPS coordinates (the pushpins on the map above) - as I wanted proof where I was for my boss!!! What did I learn? If you need to take an illegal car/taxi - Make sure he doesn’t pick anyone else up - don’t assume anything.