Prepaid taxi driver, trying to scam, or just rude?

Yes, I can see that; but never know how to produce it myself -- interestingly, your ctrl-alt-4 gives me ¤. Different keyboard set-up, no doubt --, so just don't bother. E does it for me, as in E 30, for thirty Euros, at least if it's clear in context, or I'll spell it out. I guess it should or can be installed under a key on modern keyboards over here, but anyway I've never bothered, and mine certainly doesn't have a dedicated key for it (cheap Japanese imports, no doubt?)

Layman ol' me I think it's just about what fonts you have installed for your browser to read and/or produce, or perhaps for your whole system. I miss a few that I should be able to install from my Windows disk, but shhhh.... since I don't have the disk, that's not possible. I've looked around the web some for such downloadable fonts, but could never get them to work, so figured it's not worth the trouble for scripts I can't read, anyway. It would just make some pages look better. (Bengali indeed I think my box can't read, so I was wondering if that Rupee sign were perhaps in e.g. Bengali. I can certainly read it in Hindi, but not as produced above.)

So anyways, what was that about Agra taxi drivers?

Mach

Try ctrl-alt-5
€

Thanks I am afraid I'll just forget it again, though Hey, as said, I get by fine without it (A little too often for my liking literally so ) (<-- What was that rule about smiley overkill?)

It is native in Lion since mid 2010 However seeing that Microsoft in its latest version of Windows 11, has not yet gotten around to incorporating it (Too busy building an ipad killer..... remember zune ) I present to you -

Foradian Technologies Enjoy !!!!

I think you have to have the font.

This luddite is sticking to "Rs." and Euros have always been things I never wanted to know about!

Now that we're wildly off-topic anyway, I get this not infrequent thing where my keyboard stops giving me the right diacritics. I've no idea what causes it (touching a wrong key, you'd think, but then which, and how to undo it? It is always just like kebang in the middle of a session); a restart seems all there is to it, it will then be fine again.

Maybe I should look into my tobacco residue in there, but anyone know a swifter way around it?

Back to topic:
Hi Issokay, from this other thread
(I just don't get Varanasi. ) I got the idea that the behavior of this rude taxi-wallah is still bothering you. I still think that on that morning, some bad circumstances came togehter to made that happen.

There is your part, and there is the drivers part.
You can not avoid touts (although some citys are bad and some places arent), nor can you change their ways. But I think there are a lot of things you would do differently next time, and even the same guy would not go this far with you ever again. You were new to India, you were tired. Your partner had fun with this guy and probably encouraged him.
I think if both of you start to deal with touts differently, you will not have such a bad experience ever again. Not in Agra, where touts are notorious, not in Varanasi. They will try, prehaps, but you will stop them before you feel uncomfortable.

Do not worry: every newcomer falls into into a touts trap at least once, thats why they are still trying it. But you will not fall again. Does your partner also feel so bad about the incident?

You have probably used the CTRL and SHIFT key together. If you do this again things are back to normal.
It is a change from US to Dutch keyboard settings.

Thanks! So much That's it, and so it's another of those modern irritations fixed.

You are bang on, I definitely agree. My partner feels a little bad about it, but we're still of different views on it. However, we went to the IR station today, took a taxi, we're able to effectively ignore his questions for a while, acted like we may not have heard him, looking away & not making eye contact.but he offered to wait for us to buy our tickets, so since he charged me the prepaid rate and agreed to the same rate to go back I went ahead and agreed since he probably wanted to go back to Taj Ganj where he picked us up anyway. On the way back he did pull over to the side of the road and tried to pitch us something from some friend of his, Thomas, my partner, said no a few times and the guy persisted just as hard, this time it didn't take long for Thomas to just say "No! I don't care!" (about what his friend could do for us)

So he knows now that the best thing to do is not be entertained/entertain them because they just see that as an encouragement to keep their hopes up and play their "game", if you will. But it worked immediately when Thomas said that to him in a very serious, 'I'm getting sick of this' voice, and the guy immediately said ok and drove us back to our hotel rather quickly and furiously, the only time I've really been startled by driving in India. Paid the fair fare and got out without any real pleasantries, giving him little opportunity to try any more BS with us. So, you've certainly got to learn from your mistakes, and I was quite pleased that Thomas stuck to his guns. I could've kissed him right there, of course I didn't.

Thanks for the comment!

Great! I knew you can do it! Everytime you will get better. Stop worrying about it. But it seems its a new touting-tactic, this annoying stopping on the road. Let your friend talk to him really seriously, or a little shout or threat will help also. Man in india tend to ignore the women as long a a man is around, so prehaps better your partner does it. keep enjoying