THIS is where the new taxi stand rule in Singapore has got us.

Lunching at the Ember restaurant last Thursday with a business contact, we start talking about cars and he points out his - parked across the street.

He works in Clifford Centre in Raffles Place. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have driven there.

Ember is on the super narrow Keong Saik Road in Chinatown. The restaurant is justifiably popular because the food and service are great, but it's troublesome to drive there because you have to go extra early to grab one of a limited number of lots along the street.

"Take your time," read his text message in the morning. Even though lunch was set for 12.30pm, he said he would be there as early as noon, armed with a book to read.

Extraordinary measures are needed, it turns out, for extraordinary times.

My contact drives to work but usually prefers to zip around in taxis to meet his clients, which are mainly banks and other companies scattered in Singapore's Central Business District.

It's convenient, speedier and often cheaper, considering how carpark charges in the CBD have gone up in recent times.

But now he drives everywhere. "I haven't taken a single cab since the new ruling began," he declares.

Somewhere between braving the Battery Road taxi stand (where everyone in every building who wants a taxi now waits) to trying to remember which taxi stand is nearest his destination, he has given up on cabs.

We test ourselves and try to figure out which taxi stand is nearest to the restaurant.

I think that there is possibly one down the street near Chinatown Complex, which is currently being redeveloped.

But the one taxi stand we can be sure of is the one outside the Sri Mariamman Temple. It is a depressingly long walk away and we know it only because it was recently highlighted in the papers.

LADIES and gentlemen, Singapore's descent into taxi hell is now well and truly complete.

Let me recap what the Land Transport Authority's bizarre new ruling - that you can only board a taxi and get out of one at taxi stands in the CBD - means.

It means that between 7am and 10pm (in other words the 13 hours in a weekday that really matter), you cannot get into a taxi unless you are at a taxi stand.

Even if you book a taxi, you have to walk to the taxi stand to board it.

If you did not book a taxi, you wait along with a thousand other people who have converged on the same taxi stand.

Which means you have to bring an umbrella - just in case it rains - because the line will be long and taxi-stand shelters are often no bigger than bus stops.

You cannot - I repeat, cannot - get off anywhere you damn well please. So God help you if you are a tourist or a visiting businessman armed with only a building name or number.

And remember how the warm, lucky feeling you got because you happened to grab a cab someone just got out of? Gone, all gone.

In fact, if you spy an empty cab, you cannot get into it even if there is nobody at the taxi stand that is 50m down the road.

You have to walk that 50m to the taxi stand with the empty cab slowly trailing you and get into the cab when you reach the stand. I'm not making this up; I have actually seen this happen.

All this absurdity comes, amazingly, on top of a million other taxi-related problems in Singapore.

We have more taxi companies and more taxis on the road. But you still cannot get a cab in the morning when you are rushing to work or after 10pm in exactly the places where you would need one.

This is despite a hefty hike in cab fares and an inexplicably long list of confusing surcharges.

Talk to any well-travelled expatriate about Asian cities and this will come up.

We make such a big deal about how air pollution is taking the shine off Hong Kong as a major international business and financial centre, but here in Singapore, the taxi problem is equally legendary.

Last November, when I was in Tokyo, I went with some friends to a drinks party at a small, cosy club in the Shibuya area.
"You're from Singapore? Wait here!" was the response of a young Japanese woman I was introduced to.

Returning with pen and paper, she said: "Okay, give me the taxi booking number in Singapore. All the numbers please, arigato gozaimas! (Japanese for thank you)"

It turned out that she was a marketing executive with a Japanese airline who sometimes travels here for work.

When her friends gave her the raised eyebrow, she shot back: "You don't understand. Taxi number is the most important thing in Singapore. No taxi number, no taxi."

It's times like these that I secretly applaud the errant Singapore taxi drivers who openly flout the new taxi stand rule.

As far as I am concerned, they are national heroes, doing their bit to maintain the economic competitiveness that LTA seems bent on eroding.

"No taxi number, no taxi" is a phenomenon I last encountered in a small town called High Point in the US state of North Carolina (population: 105,297).

And when you ask which world-class cities have a similarly draconian rule on taxi stands, the best answer I have got so far is Auckland.

Although I have never been there, I understand that Auckland is a beautiful place. But is it the bustling cosmopolitan global city that Singapore aspires to be?

Like it or not, taxis are very much integral to the overall image of a city. And in urban centres such as Singapore, they are part of the arterial network through which the lifeblood of the city circulates.

Think of the busiest cities in the world where mega-deals are struck every minute such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Every other car on the street is a cab, and at every second of the day, someone in your field of vision is getting into one.

New York's famous yellow cabs are silent co-stars in movies and television series set in the Big Apple.

In the seminal television comedy Sex And The City, Carrie Bradshaw hails a cab when it starts to rain. And Samantha Jones grabs one right after she storms out of a restaurant where she has just angrily hurled the contents of her champagne glass at her date.

Imagine if she had to walk 300m to a taxi stand.

Or if, right after your company clinches a deal with a top Japanese CEO and his entourage, you cannot send them off to the airport in a cab that is waiting at the doorstep of your building.

I don't think I'm being overly dramatic when I say that the basic rules of business etiquette are being rewritten in Singapore even as we speak.

In the past decade, Singapore has done well to up its game in the battle for companies, talent and tourist dollars.

Two glitzy casinos are coming up and the Formula One night race is coming to town. There are happening new clubs and restaurants and an event calendar packed enough for an iconic magazine such as London's Time Out to launch an edition here.

Singapore has embarked on a journey and it knows where it's headed in the decades to come.
But is there a taxi stand there, I wonder?

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Mar 16, 2008.