Eldrich Rebello's personal website

Tag: travel

  • Being young, oblivious and a brown man

    Preface
    Indians do not have the best reputation globally. We are, as a group, known to be rude, uncouth, filthy, have poor personal hygiene, and treat service staff poorly. Nowhere else is this put into sharper focus than on an international, direct flight to the motherland. Whether Phuket to Mumbai or London to Delhi, the problems are exactly the same. Bad behaviour, no respect for shared spaces, selfishness, entitlement and so on. Don’t believe me? Ask the cabin crew, especially the female ones, on any of these flights. Not every Indian behaves in this manner but far too many do. So many, in fact, that the pattern points to a deeper cultural problem, one that few Indians are willing to even accept. One of the most internationally known problems from India is sexual violence against women, most commonly rape. India’s statistics on rape are comically low, due to a combination of patriarchy, low reporting, the caste system, a lack of support for women, social ostracisation, a low conviction rate for rapists. I could go on. The mental burden of being a woman in India is immense. Your mind is constantly working. If you are in a lift with an unknown man, could he be a sexual predator? If he is, what is your escape route. If you take a cab home after a night of partying and the cab driver stares at your ankles, what could that mean? Is the driver a pervert or possibly a rapist? What is your escape route, sharing your location with family and friends?The surest sign that India’s women are second-class citizens is the fact that certain coaches (dabbas) on many local trains are women-only. The fact that separating women from men is seen as an acceptable solution is a problem unto itself.

    Back in 2013, I was in university in Helsinki, Finland. At the time, I had moved from Mumbai to Helsinki and had converted my Gandhis to Euros. One Euro was around 70 Gandhis so every single item in Helsinki was astronomically expensive for me. Milk was ₹ 75 per litre, as opposed to half that in the motherland. Bus tickets were similar, but this needs more explanation. The one thing I loved spending on was the university’s subsidized lunches. These were healthy, filling and cost only € 2.30, at the time. Excellent value for money and this shows where Finland’s priorities are – in the right places.

    The bus tickets, though, were another story. Helsinki uses a system of transit zones, concentric circles starting from the city centre. Because Helsinki is a series of islands, the city centre is geographically small. Annoyingly, my university was in the city of Espoo, just outside the Zone A boundary. No matter, the university and most destinations for me were in Zone B so a single zone ticket – around € 0.95 – would do. The university’s location, however, meant that all trips to the city required a two-zone ticket which cost € 2.70, or around three times the single zone price. In most situations, this was not a problem. The one situation where it was a problem was going to church.

    The nearest Catholic Church was in Helsinki, in Zone A. My Sunday route involved walking about 20 minutes to the bus stop, riding the bus for about 15 minutes, attending mass and then riding the bus home. The two zone tickets were valid for around 90 minutes. Sometimes, luck was in my favour and I could manage with just one ticket. Most days, however, I was not lucky and had to spend the full € 5.40 for two tickets. In the summer, I would walk to church and avoid the bus altogether. The walk was just over one hour and the distance was around five kilometres.

    The story here happened in the summer of 2013, probably June or July. The weather was nice, the temperature was pleasant and no rain in the forecast meant that I walked to church. The key aspect of this tale is this – there is generally a wide window of time in which people arrive at a scheduled event. Once the event ends, people generally leave in a narrower window of time. In this case, mass started at 18:00. People arrived between 17:30 up to just after 18:00. When mass ended, most people left within five minutes. Just why this is important will soon become clear.

    As I started walking back towards the university, I noticed a woman walking ahead of me, around 50 meters ahead. I did not know her so I paid no attention to her. There are two other critical pieces of information you should know about Helsinki. One is that Helsinki suburbs are remarkably similar to North American suburbs – wide roads, limited car traffic, and deserted footpaths. Although pedestrians definitely exist, the wide roads create the illusion of emptiness. Second is that the geography of the city (islands) means that there is often only one route between islands, walking or driving.

    Apart from this woman, I saw no one on the streets. I did notice that every ten minutes or so, this woman would turn around, look at me and then increase her pace. Ok, not my problem so this did not affect me. Eventually, heading west, we crossed the islands of Kuusisaari and Lehtisaari. Between Lehtisaari and Espoo is an arched bridge. You can’t see the opposite end from either side. By this point, the woman was around a hundred meters ahead of me. I now noticed that she was running across the bridge. I now dismissed her entirely and went on my merry way. I had my camera with me and was busy taking photos of the water, boats, and even a random snail. Eventually, I walked across the bridge, into Espoo.

    The road here has since been redesigned but back in 2013, it was essentially a T-junction. One arm of the T went north, towards the university while the other arm went south, towards the Rovio and Nokia offices. I turned right, heading north. As I walked past a few trees, I was startled by someone yelling at me from across the street. I saw this woman, much closer, now yelling at me. She asked if I was following her. I told her that I was not, although from her point of view, I was. She asked me where I was going, and I explained that I was walking back to the university from the 6 PM mass. Somewhere in the middle of this, I assume she realized what was actually happening – we had started from the same place, around the same time and were walking to the same destination. Helsinki’s geography meant that we walked the exact same path.

    I did not realize at the time, but a couple of my friends later pointed out that she had likely called the cops, who were waiting nearby. This woman never did anything suspicious, at least to me, but she eventually crossed the street, I apologized and she and I started walking back to the university campus together. There was a likely signal amongst all this, that the cops interpreted as everything being ok. I have no idea what it was.

    During our walk back, I apologized several times. The woman (I will not name her) said that she accepted my apology but was nevertheless scared. She then added an important piece of context – the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape in Delhi. This was the brutal gang rape of a 22 year old physiotherapy intern, on a moving bus, by a group of men. Jyoti Singh was raped and then left to die on the side of a Delhi road. Women being raped in India is very likely something that happens every minute but this incident generated a lot of outrage because it hit too close to home for India’s wealthy and rich. One of us was the victim and we had to do something. This led to large protests, in Delhi and across India. Protests so large that the cops used force to disperse the crowds. Jyoti Singh eventually died but the whole situation received worldwide media attention, cementing India’s reputation as not just a lawless country, but an especially dangerous one for women. This was extensively covered across European media, and, understandably, scared a lot of women. Given that the Nirbhaya story was fresh in the media, the woman in Helsinki was understandably scared. I assume she worked out that I was not a threat, just a clueless man who happened to be walking behind her.

    In hindsight, I do not blame myself because I was naive. I do accept that a man walking behind a woman for over an hour on a deserted street (even in broad daylight) is a terrible idea. I am not, nor was I ever, a rapist but a random woman cannot verify that. Life for women everywhere is scary, even in the West. I cannot fully appreciate the mental burden of constantly having to worry about your safety. My safety is just something I take for granted. My baseline is India and compared to India, women in the West are safer. Safer, but not totally safe.

  • The full India experience

    I dread flights to India. This has been my opinion for as long as I can remember, including when my family lived in the Arabian Gulf. Every summer, we would visit India for about one month. At the start, I always counted down the days till we left, mostly because I hated life in Bombay. The flights, though, I loved. They were short, typically three hours, and I enjoyed the airline food. Once I started travelling alone, I learned to dread long flights to India.

    Last week, I made a last-minute trip to the motherland for certain unavoidable reasons. Many parts of this trip annoyed me. Like always, I planned this trip via le Moyen-Orient, entirely so I minimize the amount of time I spend on a flight full of Indians. Four hours is about my limit on flights to India. You are free to label me a racist, but the things I’ve seen on direct flights to India would make you a racist as well. I’ve seen food trays in the toilet bowl, puddles of water on toilet floors, Indian adults emptying cups of water on the cabin floor, Indian men drinking too much and then groping the cabin crew, Arab police called to detain unruly passengers, and these are just the memorable ones. I also remember burps, farting, seat kicking, questions about my salary, people trying to steal my seat and so on. Travelling with large groups of Indians is just something to be avoided.

    Flights via le Moyen-Orient involve transit via one of the Arab states. This time, I flew Qatar airways. Qatar is not a bad airline but it tries to be Emirates and fails. Emirates is the Dubai-based, state owned airline that led the development of the Middle East as a transit hub and they do sell a good product. Emirates planes are modern and clean. Dubai airport is large, but reasonably efficient. Doha airport and Qatar Airlines are none of these things. They are definitely not as bad as Air India, but more like a dollar store version of Emirates. Anyhow, transit via Doha was annoying, but ok. The annoyances are the long walk from your plane to security, around 400 meters. This is ok for the able bodied but is annoyingly long. During both transits at Doha, I passed only two toilets and there are no moving walkways. Security is fine, but annoying. The Qataris really emphasize that they have tamed the desert by shoving a tropical forest in the middle of the airport. Money and western technology were the real tamers of the Qatari desert.

    Post the Doha stopover, I arrived in the motherland, where my annoyance levels grew exponentially. Your first experience with Indian inefficiency is the carpet as soon as you exit your plane at Terminal 2 at Bombay. This carpet is old, obviously dirty, and has holes in places. I don’t know whether it is cleaned regularly. You then have to walk about 300 meters to the immigration counters but the journey there shows you just how broken India really is. There are moving walkways, but they alternate sides. In other words, you first shuffle to the left to use one, but as you exit, you then shuffle to the right for the next. Repeat about three times, despite there being two rows of the damned things. Why they are used this way can only be explained by ancient Vedic knowledge, which has obviously been lost in the slums outside the airport.

    Then is immigration, where I generally speak only if spoken to. The lines are slow, the tech regularly breaks down and the “officers” are often rude and uncouth. Not the best introduction to a country trying to grow its tourism sector. Let’s go on a minor detour here, shall we?

    While waiting in a glacial line at Indian immigration, you might decide to connect to the airport wifi. This is a completely normal thing at any civilized airport. In the great nation of Bharat, it is not. Connecting to the wifi at most Indian airports requires a one-time password, the beloved OTP in Bharat. But wait, you can only receive this OTP via an Indian cellphone number, which requires an Indian SIM card, which most international travellers do not have! Ah, a Catch-22. What to do? Not to worry, the Indian bureaucracy has a solution! You queue up in front of a pair of machines, of which only one is working. You scan your passport and boarding card and the machine might spit out an OTP for you to use on the WiFi! This is on a good day. On a normal day, there is a line of 200 people, both machines are broken and you decide to just not use the wifi anyway.

    Immigration is often a pain in Bharat, for numerous bureaucratic reasons. You are forced to fill in a form that includes questions such as where you plan to stay, your local contact number and so on. How will a tourist have a local contact number? The answer does not matter, for the Indian bureaucrat wants it anyway. To do what, no one knows. Remember, the Indian bureaucracy is like a black hole, a relentless sink and shredder of information, so much so that information triplication is the norm in Bharat. This “arrival card” includes information already in your passport, but must be hand written for reasons unknown. The immigration “officer” will scan your passport anyway, so what is the point of this card?

    Once you are past this, you then arrive at customs. This is where a bunch of power-tripping bureaucrats (sometimes scammers) dressed in white can ask you random questions, demand bribes and generally harass you. India is one of those countries where the lowest, most unimportant bureaucrat, has tremendous nuisance value. Customs is the prime example of that, because this time, Ramesh at the scanner could not understand why I arrived from Doha without alcohol. He would not accept my answer that alcohol does not interest me. Instead, he forcibly scanned my bags, found zero alcohol and then repeated the original question. After two rounds of this, he let me go.

    Outside, I needed a taxi. Taxis need payment and payment in India needs either cash or that UPI system. The trouble with the UPI system is that you need an Indian phone number, which I did not have. Cash was the alternative. The trouble with cash is that, generally, you cannot buy Rupee notes outside India. If you have literally zero rupees, there are no bank ATMs at Mumbai airport so you are forced to accept extortion-level rates from the currency exchanges at the airport. Ah, welcome to Bharat, where every transaction requires detailed knowledge and without that knowledge, you will be cheated, conned and extorted. Such an amazing country!

    I then followed the signs to P4 (unsure what the P stands for), as that was where the prepaid taxis are. Prepaid taxis are great because you tell a person at a counter where you’re going, they determine the cost, you pay and are assigned a taxi. No haggling, no hassle. This is one of the few things that works at Bombay airport… is what I would have said if the counter was easy to find. It is not. As soon as you exit the lift at P4, you are presented with a “Taxi and tour” counter. Brightly lit, this must be the correct spot? It is not. This is yet another example of extortion where the semi-literate fools at this counter will listen to your destination, type out a number on a comically large calculator, and present this to you as a fair fare. I am not new to these schemes so when I heard ₹ 1,200, I told the man to nibble on my gotas and walked away. I found a black and yellow taxi and asked where the payment counter was. It ended up being behind a pillar, not visible from the lift and dimly lit. I paid ₹ 590 for a taxi, which is completely fair.

    This was just on my journey out of the airport, and I was harassed or misled four times already. One by the wifi, once at customs, once by the cash, and finally by the taxi stand. Welcome to Bharat, please do your best to enjoy the harassment, pollution and filth.

    Yet another planning disaster is the supposed “modern” metro. There is a metro station at the Bombay airport, provided you expand the definition of “at” to include a station 300 meters away. I tried to use the metro station but you have to walk outside on a broken road, carry your bags down a flight of stairs and trudge through 400 meters of tropical humidity to reach a train. If your destination is in the western suburbs of Mumbai, you have to change metro lines and the geniuses who designed the metro lines assigned some lines to separate companies, meaning there is no direct transfer between stations. You must exit one line, deal with the chaos of a Mumbai road, buy a new ticket, traverse the farce of “security”, and then be told that large bags are not allowed on the metro. Is the expectation that people using the airport will arrive with zero bags? Here is the reason why ridership on the airport metro line is at 11% of projections.

    Bombay is one of those cities where you wear an N95 mask outdoors, so you do not inhale pollution equivalent to smoking dozens of cigarettes. I decided that we needed an air filter at home. Ok, I went to a shop to buy one. I found a model I was willing to buy, held the cash in hand, and waited at the payment counter. The lady there asked me for my phone number. I said that I had no phone. She did not know what to do and called someone for help. She then asked for my address, and I didn’t want to share that. I declined the warranty and again, she didn’t know what to do. A different person was summoned. Next, she could not find the air filter in the store’s computerized system. A third person was summoned and she asked me to wait. At this point, I’d been waiting there for fifteen minutes, cash in hand, ready to pay. All I wanted to do was to buy something, and Bharat’s digital systems had failed it yet again. No rational shop, anywhere in the world, would do this to a paying customer. I walked away.

    I then went to a shop owned by the great Gujarati businessman, the illustrious, well-proportioned, well-heeled, politically connected Mukess. At the entrance, there’s an excellent theatre where you can participate in the great Indian security pantomime. A man will grope and finger you, all in the name of preventing “terrorism”, never mind the fact that muslims are lynched in India on the daily. An actual terrorist would just walk through the back door, which is helpfully wide open and completely unguarded. So unguarded, in fact, that I accidentally wandered out of it, not realizing what the door was. If you need a cellphone, welcome to the world of “Aadhar”, a bureaucratically and legally optional document, but one that the real world deems mandatory. Without an Aadhar number, no cell phone for you. No gas connection, no bank account, no digital payments. Completely optional, if your chosen lifestyle includes foraging in a forest and sleeping outdoors with no electricity. Nandan, I hope your personal afterlife includes eternal Bangalore traffic, no chutney on your idlis, and endless paper cuts from an Aadhaar card.

    Leaving the great nation of Bharat is another shining example of just how many Indians are unemployed or underemployed. At the airport departures level, you first show your passport and ticket to a pair of armed men in military fatigues outside the airport. You then repeat the process at the airline check-in counter. Next, the security people check your passport again and stamp the back of your boarding card. Immigration then repeats the stamping and if, Vishnu forbid it, you lose your boarding card, you must traverse this entire charade yet again. Next, the airline staff at the gate check your boarding pass, another person scans it, and you are then accosted by a random person on the air bridge who demands to see your passport yet again. Six people, six duplicated “checks”, all in the name of “security”. I have personally never witnessed any benefits to this level of bureaucratic nonsense, nor am I aware of the benefits. I’m sure the esteemed Indian bureaucrats will sing the praises of such a well-oiled system, but it really shows you how many people in India do not have gainful employment. In the airport toilets is a person to greet you and generally maintain “cleanliness”. I will concede that hygiene standards at the airport toilets has improved somewhat. The toilets are now useable. Yet another person underemployed. Indian public toilets need regular cleaning and civic education, not gatekeepers.

    Praise be to Vishnu, Jesus and Allah, for the small wins. In the past, your cabin baggage included a tag that was stamped by airport security. Without that stamp, what evidence did you have of not carrying contraband or illegal aliens in your 7 kg of cabin baggage? Thankfully, that stamping has now ceased.

    This is the real experience of Bharat. Inefficient, pointless, duplicative, wasteful, manipulative, tiring. Unemployment is a problem but the solution is more bureaucratic inefficiency, doing everything in triplicate, for no reason other than creating busy work and under-employing the unemployed and unemployable. Just walk into a police station in India or a government office and you will see stacks of papers, floor to ceiling, that no one looks at, just sitting there so someone can tick a box, harass the average citizen and collect bribes.

    Welcome to Bharat. Enjoy your stay.

  • The Second weekend train to Toronto

    This past Sunday, I rode the GO train from Guelph to Toronto and back. That’s right, we finally have weekend train service between Guelph and Toronto. This means that I can arrive in Toronto for breakfast, watch a movie at TIFF, visit the Spacing store, buy a model tram, amble around, and then ride the train home. Oh, and the return journey costs ten dollary-doos. Ten dollars, for a weekend round trip on the train. I now don’t need a designated driver, other people can smoke marriage-iguana, and no one risks killing themselves or a pedestrian. You simply sleep on the train, stare out the window or read a book. I read book five of The Expanse.

    Will the joys ever end?

    I noticed about eighty people at 8 AM at Guelph station, all similarly excited to ride the train. The alternative is the bus, and the bus is uncomfortable, gets stuck in traffic and is generally slow. I saw parents from Kitchener take their kids to the Santa Claus parade in Toronto, because why not? No driving, no parking hassle, and despite the diesel engine at the front of the train, our carbon emissions were tiny.

    On the way back, we walked to Union Station in Toronto and happened to be behind a couple of teenagers. You know, the youngs, of which I am not. They loudly shouted about walkable cities and better transit. One was dressed like Che Guevara and rode a skateboard. Ok, that’s one choice. They also yelled about THC, vapes, and Minecraft. As we passed a school, they yelled about how the building looked like a prison and the sort of place where people get shot. Ok, it is a mixed bag with the youngs these days. I wonder if these folks vote. I sincerely hope they do.

    On the train back, we were seated across from a dad and his ten year old daughter. In between reading my book, I was busy eavesdropping on their conversation. The dad worked in construction and was engaged in an adult conversation with his daughter. She appeared fairly articulate. I have full faith that this girl will grow up into an educated, intelligent, intellectually rich adult because her parents treat her like an adult, with agency and her own opinions. On separate occasions, I also witnessed parents whose kids would likely grow up to be intellectually poor because their parents infantilise them, or worse, ignore their kids entirely. I worry about these kids because the supports needed are dwindling. Teachers don’t have the resources and means to help them. Well, at least one child will be fine.

  • Vancouver – pleasant but needlessly expensive

    Vancouver – pleasant but needlessly expensive

    Vancouver was the first city I visited in Canada. According to the Economist, Vancouver is among the world’s most liveable cities. It is easy to see why. At the time, I lived in the Netherlands and visited Vancouver for a reason that would later become very important (my wife). I had never seen North America before and immediately after I stepped off the plane, I saw a woman with her child on a leash. A Canadian woman, travelling back from Amsterdam, had her toddler on a leash.

    I associate leashes with animals and human sex acts, not human children. This was already jarring but the visit improved from there. I have since visited Vancouver numerous times and I tremendously enjoy the city. For one, I love the ocean. Yes, Vancouver is not exactly on the open Pacific Ocean but it is close enough. I also love the air. Most cities by open water tend to have clean air. Lately, climate change and wildfires mean that Vancouver’s air is regularly among the most polluted in the world but the rest of the year, it is quite nice.

    One aspect that I especially like is the public transit. By North American standards, Vancouver’s public transit is amazing. If you live in the city proper, the bus and metro network are excellent. So excellent that you barely need a car. Contrast that with southern Ontario where the entire region is designed around cars and too many people drive vehicles the size of tanks. I feel safer on the Sky Train in Vancouver, with a homeless person nearby than driving along Ontario’s highway 401. Yes, I am inside a climate controlled pod hurtling down the asphalt at 100 km/h, but one wrong move by a danger-loving moron and I could be dead. The worst that is likely on public transit is some homeless person yelling a slur at me. Yes, the homeless problem in Vancouver is significant, innocent people have died and there is a section of the city centre that is largely unsafe, but more than one person dies on Ontario’s highway 401 and you scarcely hear about how monumentally unsafe it is.

    I made this point in the past – transit is liberating. Heck, Vancouver’s Sky Trains don’t have drivers and this is technology from the 1980s. That is real freedom. Sitting in the front of a metro train, staring out into the tracks. Some metro stations are extremely well designed. Several Sky Train stations in Burnaby integrate shopping areas, transit and walking paths. That’s how I imagine my ideal life – exit the train, buy groceries and walk home.

    People seem to be more active in Vancouver. That could be because the weather is milder or because physical activity offsets some of the crushing problems in the city. One of the most significant is the affordability crisis. Housing in unaffordable. My household is among the top 12% by income but even we would struggle to afford a one million dollar home. And mind, you, a million Canadian dollarydoos gets you into the real estate market in Vancouver, or in less polite terms, you will likely find a house that needs lots of work.

    Vancouver’s weather is terrible. Much like western Europe, ocean currents drive warm, moist air towards the poles and this tends to fall as a never ending drizzle. This drains the body and the soul but the humidity is great for plants and wildlife.

    On the upside, you can spot lots of wildlife. Blue herons and even dangerous grizzly bears. I do not recommend trying to pet a bear If you see a bear, you avoid it.

    Vancouver island is one ferry ride away. The rocky mountains are close by. If you like skiing, the national parks are a couple of hours away. The US is also nearby but I recommend avoiding their brand of freedom lest you find yourself on a detour to a prison in El Salvador.

    Would I live in Vancouver? Sure, if I could afford it. I cannot and am unlikely to ever be able to afford it on my income. Inheritances are nice, but do not count. I wonder what will happen to the city in the long term. The pressures of housing and general affordability will drive some people away. Family will push others to stay. I really hope that the city is able to get its act together and increase its density, allowing more young people to move there and stay.

  • Look up – The Story of how I Lost and Found my Laptop

    Look up – The Story of how I Lost and Found my Laptop
    Geography of Mumbai, as relevant to this story. Note – map not to scale. Some liberties taken with accuracy.

    This story involves geography. Some fantasy books like The Lord of the Rings include maps at the back of the book. Even some Winnie the Pooh books include maps. For that very same reason, I included a map here.

    (Some details are embellished for dramatic effect)

    Stage One – Boarding the train at Vashi

    In the past, I was an engineering student. I lived in the Bombay suburb of Kandivali and commuted daily to the suburb of Vashi. This involved a ninety minute journey including three trains on three different train lines. Bombay’s local trains generally run north-south and Kandivali-Vashi is an east-west journey. Not ideal.

    In my final year of engineering, we were all forced to participate in an industry project. This involved trying to solve real-world problems without the appropriate tools or training, as is the norm in the great nation of Bharat. The end of this process is the “presentation” where you cosplay as a professional, dress formally and speak about your work and achievements. This is usually a shorter day at college and most people leave at around 13:00. A typical day ends at about 16:00.

    These presentations require presentation software and software requires a laptop. Back in the late 2000s, laptops in India were expensive and difficult to find. Through privilege, I had one. A bulky Toshiba model, but still, I had a laptop. That day, I had two bags with me. My backpack and my laptop bag. This will be important later.

    Vashi is not a terminal station but it does have a few trains that start from there. Vashi is on the VT (Victoria Terminus) – Panvel line and is the first station outside the city of Bombay, just across the creek. I refuse to participate in the Sena’s great renaming project and refuse to acknowledge the sex change operation they performed on train station names. I have no sympathy or love for the British or especially the British Raj but the name of the station was just fine. If it was a real problem, that name would have changed sooner. Anyhow, I digress.

    Victoria (F) Terminus, now C Shivaji (M) Terminus

    If you board a train that starts at Vashi, the train is nearly empty. You have your pick of the seats which was the only motivation my three Gujarati friends and I needed to make a mad dash for the train station. Our presentations ended around 13:00 and we knew that the next train was at 13:14 or such so we hailed a rickshaw and made haste. We boarded the train just one minute before it left. The First Class compartment was empty. This being Bombay, the weather was tropically warm and oppressively humid. The solution was to stand near the doors (Mumbai local trains do not have automated doors) as the train sped across the Mankhurd bridge across the creek. This is what we did and when we arrived at the other side, we returned to our seats. Before we stood up, though, I placed my laptop bag on the overhead luggage rack. This is not something I usually do and always have my bags on me or on a seat.

    View from the train, looking south, crossing the Mankhurd bridge to Vashi.
    View from the first class compartment. I held my camera out of the door. I DO NOT RECOMMEND hanging your body outside a moving train!

    The train crossed the creek and we were seated again. The weather and the swaying of the train lulls one into sleep and sleep soon overcame us. Our first change was as Kurla, about thirty minutes after leaving Vashi. Kurla is a busy station as it is on the Central line as well as the Harbour line. Trains from Vashi to VT use the Harbour line. The din of humanity and train horns signalled the arrival of Kurla and all three of us woke up and hurriedly gathered our belongings. We hopped off the train just as it was leaving and I counted the bags we had. Three.

    We boarded the train with four between the three of us and there were now three bags. Which one was missing? Oh crap, it was the bag with my expensive laptop.

    Stage two – Panic at Kurla

    I panicked. My two Gujarati friends also panicked but they did not have skin in the game so their panic levels were lower. This was handy because they hatched a devious Gujarati plan. The plan was that we would board the next Harbour line train to VT and follow our train with my laptop.

    Here is one more piece of important information. The three of us had train passes from Borivali to Vashi. This route had two possible train changes, one via Wadala and the other – the one we used – via Kurla. Our train passes were valid on only that specific route, nowhere else. The journey we were about to embark on was literally illegal.

    The Gujarati duo did not consider legal issues in their mild panic and so off we went on the next train. On this train, we debated our options and made a plan. The first problem to solve was communication. We were three people with two mobile phones. One Gujju bhai’s phone was broken so we needed a solution.

    That solution was for one Gujju bhai to take my phone. We reached this conclusion before working out the plan.

    But we needed a plan second. That plan was for me to alight at the next stop and to watch the trains returning from VT. But how to communicate? Ah, we did not consider that. I got off at Sewri and the two Gujju bhais sped off with both phones.

    Stage Three – Panic at Sewri

    At Sewri, I hoofed it across the bridge to platform one, where trains arriving from VT stopped. I located the First Class markers and waited fo trains to arrive. I hastily boarded the first and looked up at the luggage rack. Nothing.

    I did this twice more and the resident ticket checker – the enforcer of the law – noticed what I was doing. Here was a curious young man hopping on to trains and then hopping off, almost as if he was confused. The TT asked me for my ticket and I showed him my 100% invalid train pass. He noted that I was technically not allowed to board trains at Sewri and so asked me exactly what was transpiring.

    I explained my predicament to him and he – surprisingly – understood. He took me to his office and asked me which train I was looking for. He consulted his charts and told me the exact time when that same train would arrive. It did and I checked the First Class compartment.

    Nothing. As far as I knew, my expensive laptop was gone and I would have to explain this to my parents. They would be livid.

    Stage Four – Gujjus at Masjid

    The title of this stage is a pun. Meanwhile, on the train heading south, the two Gujju bhais were in furious conversation. They were also travelling illegally but this time, the first class compartment was not empty. There was a third Gujju, eavesdropping on this conversation. He realised he could help and help he did. The story was that his buddies worked in the suburbs but lived in the city. There knew about the train starting from Vashi and usually boarded it together, in the first class compartments, and played cards. Or ate snakes, which is what Gujaratis are well known for doing. Anyhow, on this fateful day, he missed the train and his buddies and so was on the next train, in the same compartment as my Gujju buddies. The solution was for him to phone his buddies. He phoned, they looked for my laptop bag, they located it and planned the rendezvous.

    This was to be at the station of Masjid Bunder, the penultimate stop before VT. The meet happened and five Gujju bhais went off to drink falooda. At the end of this, after much relief, my two Gujju buddies realised that they had my laptop but had no idea where I was. At this point, the realisation hit that they also had no way to contact me. My phone was with them. Two people, travelling together, had the two phones we had between us. They also realised that neither of them remembered which station I got off at. Oh my, what now?

    Stage Five – Panic at VT

    These two debated their course of action and concluded that my course of action was to head to VT. How they reached this conclusion, I do not know. They headed to VT, again, without legal tickets and proceeded to check the station for me. I was not there, of course, I was panicking at Sewri.

    What next? Head to the station master’s office, skip the fact that you don’t have tickets and ask for help. This is what the Gujjus did and the station master sent out an announcement asking for E Rebello to approach the station master’s office. E Rebello was too far away to hear this message. The Gujjus then repeated this at Masjid Bunder and when they received no response, they concluded that I had killed myself due to social shame. They had no way of contacting me and did not know me well enough to think like me.

    Stage Six – Realisation and Communication

    Back at Sewri, I proceeded to panic. The train with the highest chance of containing my laptop departed, there was no laptop and I had no solutions. My solution was to check every train arriving and at this point, the TT dismissed me as crazy and so left me to my devices. I also realised, mid panic, that I had no way of contacting the Gujju duo. I could not remember either of their phone numbers and so a public phone was useless.

    I considered calling home and reporting the day’s events but soon realised that would be counterproductive. My mom would also panic and besides, she did not have the Gujju duo’s numbers either. So I waited in a panic, for about three hours, my mind racing.

    Somewhere in that panic, I had a brainwave, an obvious solution even. CALL MY OWN NUMBER.

    I knew my own number and I knew the people with my phone. I was surprised that this obvious solution to the communication dilemma had eluded me for almost three hours. I found a phone, dropped in a one rupee coin, dialled my own number and POOF! Communications established.

    I learned of the days happenings and that the Gallivanting Gujju Duo were on a train headed north. I waited for them, boarded the First Class compartment, illegally. We all headed home, laptop on my shoulder, disaster having been averted.

    After this event, I resolved to never store my luggage where I could not see it.

    This served me well up until I took a train from the Netherlands to Belgium, where a skilled thief snatched my bag from the luggage compartment and walked off at Mechelen station. Bad luck for him. All he found was a worthless Indian passport and some used clothes.

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  • I left India to live abroad. Was it worth it?

    Answer upfront – yes, it was worth it. Had I stayed in India, I would have hated my life, the country, my forced marriage, my bank balance and my neighbours. I would hate my life and be frustrated constantly. Instead, I live a comfortable life, love my wife and would trade none of this in a trice.

    I am Indian. When I was fifteen years old, like most Indian students, I was asked to pick a career. How you can do that at fifteen years old is still beyond me. At the time, I did have access to the internet and I had access to some information about how one does this. What I did not have was wisdom and experience. Neither my own nor borrowed. I did not have extended family members who were doctors, engineers, lawyers, artists or among the myriad careers one can choose at fifteen years old. I did not even know that I was good at maths or science. I am still above average at both. I was asked to make this choice, while sitting in Bahrain, and while knowing that my family was about to move to the great nation of India, a place where humanity and humans go to die.

    Once I moved to India, I had to pick between three choices – science, commerce or arts. I was (and remain) quite bad at the arts and I did not like money so science it was. Eventually, I ended up in engineering college. I hated india when I was ten years old and at fifteen, that did not change. I still dislike India to this day although I have softened my opinion of those less fortunate than me. I despise the Indian state, the Indian way of thinking and the general ethos of life there, the idea that things won’t get better so why even bother? I was determined to make a better life for myself and I knew that moving to the West was the path to that better life. I resolved to live a better life and to be a better person. Unfortunately, once again, I had no source of direct information or experience and so turned to my old friend, the internet for answers. I also did not have enough money in the bank so I went to work, at one organisation named Lhussen and Bhutto (unlikely to be Larsen and Toubro).

    My escape route was the same one use by approximately 1.3 million Indians in 2023 – education. I went abroad to get an education. This meant picking from two options yet again – follow the herd to the anglophone countries or aim for somewhere else. “Somewhere else” spanned Venezuela (yes, that Venezuela), Turkey, The Caribbean, Austria (not Australia), Kyrgystan and my eventual destination of Finland. Finland was so unheard of that my mom called a priest to bless me before I departed and that man had never heard of Finland. Oh well.

    I will skip the details here as that’s not the point. My aim here is to tell you whether it was worth it. When your savings are in the shitcoin called the Indian Rupee, studying abroad is perilous. Your savings are meagre and do not get you far. Information is also difficult to find. Most Indians make a beeline for the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. English is the reason why, however, all these countries charge international students fees. Astronomical fees, if you are Indian. The fees at a decent US public university were comparable to the total worth of my parent’s real estate portfolio. The solution is to borrow money from an Indian bank and to hope that the stars align for you. In the case of the USA, that means finding a decent university, completing your course, finding a job, and staying legally long enough that you earn enough to pay back your loan. This was too much risk for me so I dropped that option entirely. Canada is a smaller market with similar costs so that was out as well. Same for the UK and Australia.

    At the time (2013), most universities in the Schengen area (continental Europe) did not charge tuition fees. Living expenses were the only cost, but even those were significant when you factored in the exchange rate. Anyhow, I decided what I wanted to study and then trawled various internet forums and university websites. I took notes, estimated expenses and looked at the job market via job sites. Eventually, I found my way into a few universities. TU Eindhoven was one but the Netherlands charged tuition fees. Not astronomical but significant. That was not an option. FH Aachen (not RWTH) also wanted me but I did not want them. Finally, I selected TKK – Teknillinen korkeakoulu – now christened Aalto University, in Espoo, Finland.

    No tuition fees but it was in a corner of Europe, closer to St Petersburg than to Berlin and separated from the mainland by the Baltic Sea. Living expenses in the Nordic countries are also high relative to the rest of Europe. The job prospects were also bleak, especially since the Finnish language is difficult to learn. No matter, I decided to take the risk and to book my tickets on Turkish Airlines. Away we went!

    Two years later, I was pantti hunting (yes, pantti, Finland’s bottle deposit system) and applying for jobs, desperate to extend my study permit by another year. Persistence paid off and I found a job in the Netherlands and started making a life for myself. Things were looking up. At this point, I could have stayed in the Netherlands. I was on the path to learning Dutch, integrating into Dutch society and eating cheese. As life would have it, I found love in a Canadian woman and this compelled me to move to Canada. Once again, I faced the struggle of finding a job, building a network and starting over, in yet another country. It all worked out in the end.

    Was this worth it? Absolutely. I would not have it any other way. Yes, there was tremendous risk here. Moving to a fragmented continent where I did not know the local language, and where I had neither contacts nor familiarity with the region are all risks, huge risks even. Living in the cold for a man who grew up in the desert, another risk and challenge. The worst case was returning to Bharat (the transition started in 2014) with a degree from a university that no one recognised and convincing employers that I was employable. I was not in financial ruin so that was a plus. I have friends who could not find jobs in the US after spending lavishly on degrees. That is arguably worse – paying off US fees in rupees.

    There was the risk of not finding a job after my master’s degree. I could have continued on to a PhD but i viewed the opportunity cost as too great. In fact, today, I earn as much as my colleagues with PhDs but I have the advantage of more work experience and more money in the bank. I did have a few offers to start a PhD but I declined them all. That was my option of last resort, the one I would take if I chose to stay in Europe and wanted to earn a small amount of money. Then was the frugal Indian mentality and living with the knowledge that my bank balance was only going down. This led to some questionable decisions like skipping meals and buying almost stale vegetables. I vividly remember calling the HR person at the Netherlands-based company where I eventually worked and noticing that it was an international call, hence it was expensive. In hindsight, that was the best two Euros I spent because it got me a job. None of the other candidates called, only I did.

    On top of all this was the racism, the risk that my ethnicity carried a level of stigma and assumptions, many justified, some not. The pressure to apply for jobs across Europe, not wanting to limit myself to one country or region. The political uncertainty that came with Brexit and the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015.  The hate against immigrants (I was never an expat, that’s a white people thing), the costs and challenges of true integration.

    I could go on.

    Was it a lot? Yes. Was it all risky? Yes. Was it scary? Yes.

    Was it worth it? Absolutely.

  • Past Lives – Layers of complexity

    Past Lives is a 2023 romantic drama film focused on the literal past life of a Korean immigrant child in North America. The central plot line is how this child’s parents decide to leave South Korea for Canada, how the protagonist then moves to the USA for professional success, finds it, finds love and in between, reconnects with her childhood sheetheart, disconnects and then is forced to reconnect and examine their relationship.

    I will not review the film nor post spoilers. I will take another angle – the angle visible to someone who is themself an immigrant, or a double or triple immigrant depending on how you define it. The movie’s protagonist claims to have immigrated twice, first to Canada and then to the USA. I immigrated from India to Bahrain, then to India, then Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and finally Canada.

    These moves taught me some simple truths – home is a state of mind but for some, that is intertwined with a location. Any relationship takes effort – love, friendship, siblings, parents, children. Those are thoughts for another time.

    Your name is an integral part of who you are. Not just your name, but the names your friends use. I have one legal name but several nicknames. Some friends know me as Fish. Others as Elda. Others as simply Eldrich. Each has a different connotation in my mind, a different emotion. It is much the same in the film – Na Young becomes Nora. A new name for a new life. One can pretend that your old name ceased to exist, but it doesn’t.

    Another is language. Yes, I am fluent in English but I do not speak the same English with everyone. In Canada, I stick to standard English with metaphors borrowed from cricket and football. With my friends from Bombay, I still use English but with a sauce of Hindi and a seasoning of Marathi words. With yet others in Bombay I speak English but end every sentence with “men”, similar to the Caribbean “mahn”. The inflection is also entirely different. What I say, what I mean, the phrasing, the cadence, they all change with language. Even more different is my speech in Hindi where I use English vocabulary as a crutch until I figure out what the Hindi word for encyclopedia is. (it is ज्ञानकोश or gyan-kosh; विश्वकोश or vishwa-kosh according to Collins).

    At one point, the character of Nora remarks how marriage is like two trees in the same pot. Their roots intertwine and this leads to conflict. How you deal with that conflict is important.

    Another theme in the film is the desire to outgrow your past, to not be bound by it. I too feel this sometimes. You cannot deny your past, it is forever there but it was a moment in time. A moment that has passed, with people who likely changed. You, too, changed.

    Then there is ethnicity and how it means different things in the new world versus in the old world. I am Indian. I cannot change that. Lots of people in Canada are ethnically Indian however, they are distinct from me in an important way – they are Indian AND Canadian. Both at the same time. I am not and never will be despite official documents saying otherwise. I am Indian Indian. From India, fresh off the plane, with an Indian accent and many Indian sensibilities. In the new world, cultures are often reduced to the occasional festivity, the odd piece of cultural baggage, the archaic if baseless custom, aromas in a kitchen or restaurant. In the old world, an ethnicity is who you are, your identity, your role in the world. It is how you behave, how you are expected to behave. Your ethnicity is your culture, how you carry yourself, the food you eat, the ingredients you buy, where you live. It is a curiously new-world phenomenon that your ethnicity and nationality can be distinct and different. Separate, compartmentalised, changing with the date. On diwali, you are Punjabi. Canadian on Christmas.

    Finally, your past home, your homeland, the motherland. As a first-generation migrant, you never really leave it and it never leaves you. Your relationship to it is different depending on circumstance. Some – like Syrians or Sri Lankans – have a tortured, fractious relationship with the mother country. A civil war, ethnic tensions, decades of dysfunction mean that not much of their lives are left there. A clean break for some, a swift detachment for others. In the other case – such as mine – life in the mother country goes on without you. Those you left behind carry on in peace, living their lives without you and you without them. India is not at war, there is no conflict and a large section of my extended family continue to live there. I visit them occasionally but it is a strained visit. They have changed. India has changed. My recollection of the country, of the city, of my neighbourhood is no longer reality. It was but a moment in time. A past life, maybe?

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  • nanoblock – The Japanese micro-sized building blocks

    L – A Gacha-gacha rocket from the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo.

    R – The assembled E233 Tokyo metro car

    At the Toronto Anime North convention in 2022, I discovered nanoblock, the micro-sized building blocks made by a Japanese company called Kawada. They are small enough to be fiddly and unstable but give you tremendous satisfaction when you assemble them into a more concrete whole.

    I was slightly taken aback by the prices – most sets are around fifteen Canadian dollary-doos. Remember that I am taken aback by any price that is not zero – after all, I am Indian. I bought two at the nanoblock store in Tokyo Skytree – admittedly, not the cheapest location.

    One set was a model of the E233 trainset developed by Japanese train company JR East. The model I have is blue, to match the colours of the Keihin–Tōhoku line in Tokyo.

    I decided to capture the building process in a time-lapse video. My YouTube game is weak, hence why there are few edits and the thumbnail is vertical. Both unforgivable errors. Straight to jail.

    A second model that W purchased for me was of the N700 Shinkansen. Another timelapse video is below. The interesting aspect of these designs is that you can combine individual models into a train set. I love that!

  • Japan #4 – Trains – Tokyo, Kansai, Bento and the Shinkansen

    Eldrich Rebello

    Japan loves trains. Many stations have a jingle or a melody that plays as trains arrive and depart. There is a culture of tetsudou (train) otaku – people so obsessed with a hobby that it defines their personality – in this case, trains. There are shops where you can exchange your yen, dollars and rupees for model trains, model tracks, even model people for your model train stations. Trains are everywhere, train stations are destinations and trains are indeed a major part of Japanese life.

    A selection of Japanese trains at the Kyoto Railway Museum https://www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/

    No surprise then that the first high-speed rail line ws built in Japan in the 1960s. The technology behind most trains is ancient, as is the Shinkansen – the bullet trains. Riding them is quite the experience, especially for the North American tourist, where the populace famously traded public transit for “freedom” in the form of manly, testosterone-fuelled, pickup trucks the size and weight of Sherman tanks. Japanese people travel more kilometres annualy by train than even a country like India with some ten times the population. Surprisingly, Japan transports relatively little freight by train – something obvious in hindsight. Less than 1% of Japanese domestic freight travels via rail. I recall seeing one freight train in Hiroshima and people were out in force taking pictures. In contrast, the USA and Canada move enormous quantities of train freight – almost a quarter of the world’s total between them. The North American train isn’t a symbol of freedom, it is a necessary evil, an unwelcome rumble ruining the rustic, rural peace of the countryside. Japanese trains, meanwhile, are literally routed through buildings – see the photo below from Akihabara station in Tokyo.

    A Tokyo Metro train literally on top of a building. Uncertain location although it is definitely the Chūō-Sōbu line, evident from the yellow branding on the train. I believe this is Akihabara.

    The Japanese train is planned around the human experience and every step is made as easy as possible. Exits from train stations are numbered and all signage indicates these numbers. This makes finding the correct exit for your destination a breeze. On the subway, cars are numbered on the platform floor and most stations have a map showing you which car to board in order to be close to an escalator or lift at your destination station. The cherry on top is that all this info is in your favourite mobile navigation application!

    Kuramae station in Kyoto.
    Front (Green Car) of a Shinkansen at Tokyo.
    25 kv catenary system of the Sanyo Shinkansen.
    A collection of images featuring various Japanese trains.

    The Shinkansen experience is similar – whizzing along the Japanese islands at nearly 300 km/hr makes the country so much smaller but also more accessible. Tokyo to Kyoto is around 450 km and takes around five hours by car. In contrast, it is about three hours by the Shinkansen and transit. At the end of your train journey, you arrive in the city centre and connect to a robust local transit network and can reach pretty much anywhere in either region. Why bother with the hassle of a car, insurance, driving and traffic when you can catch Pokemon on your cellphone as someone else pilots the train? This is a strong incentive that drives up transit usage, creates demand for better transit and allows transit operators to maintain and invest in the system. In stark contrast, Guelph to Toronto (both in South West Ontario, the most populous region of Canada) is about 95 km by road and takes around 80 minutes by GO Train running with old, diesel locomotives. Depending on traffic, the same journey is anywhere between one and two hours by road. The GO Kitchener line running through Guelph is yet to be electrified. Once you are in Toronto, the transit system is decent by North American standards. The Shinkansen trains are clean, modern and many have on-board catering. It’s just a nicer experience and having the option is freeing – a notion that many North Americans profess to desire. On a more positive note, GO train service in SW Ontario is expanding and is expected to be two-way, all say service by 2025. Hopefully.

    A Shinkansen train tearing through Himeji station.

    And then there is the Japanese train meal – the ekiben or the “station bento” boxes containing carefully selected foods designed to be enjoyed on board your train. I sampled several varieties and grew to love them. The selection is wide, the quality high and the cost relatively low. Of course, Japan is not a developing country so “low cost” is a relative term but compared to a restaurant meal, an ekiben is affordable. These are not designed for consumption on local trains but rather on longer distance trains – the Shinkansen for example. Most long-distance trains come with a tray at your seat – surprisingly large, I must add – where you can enjoy your ekiben meal. I often chose the varieties without fish although seafood is hard to avoid completely. I sampled Kobe beef, stewed beef, grilled pork, sticky rice, eel (reluctantly), fish roe, lotus root, assorted veggies, different eggs, and many other items. Ekiben are self-contained, complete meals – chopsticks are included and your meal is neatly partitioned. Of course, you provide your own serviettes and trash can. Japan is notorious for having few public bins but not to worry – your long-distance train has several.

    One of the four ekiben i ate.

    Then there is the branding. There is a Hello Kitty Shinkansen featuring bold branding using the famous mouthless feline. Also in existence is a Pikachu train where parents and kids alike can catch Pikachu. Oh and did i mention the novelty trains? There is the FruiTea Fukushima Train with local Fukushima (yes, that Fukushima) produce, the art gallery Genbi Shinkansen, the rural house-themed Oykot train in Nagano… I could go on but you get the idea. Even Finland’s Moomin have a special train in Japan. There is no equivalent train in Finland, the land where the Moomin were created by Tove Jansson.

    In all, the train experience in Japan is enjoyable and most importantly, convenient. It beats road traffic, is quite, reliable and calming. Totally would recommend and I hope more train systems around the world learn the best from this island nation.

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  • Japan #3 – Tokyo, the world’s most populated city and the world’s largest metropolitan economy

    Eldrich Rebello
    The Tokyo Skytree
    Kaminarimon gate, one of two gates to the Sensō-ji shrine in Asakusa
    Tokyo is full of oases of calm, such as this.
    Invisible from the air is the greenery seen here. Yes, the built environment dominates but plants abound.

    Tokyo is a massive city. Its scale, even when seen, is difficult to comprehend. The other similarly-sized city with which I am familiar is Bombay and Bombay is quite a bit smaller than Tokyo. The Tokyo region population is around 32% higher, the GDP is over three times higher as is Tokyo’s land area. Tokyo is also infinitely cleaner and more hygienic than Bombay can ever hope to be and this is cultural, something that takes centuries to shift.

    I arrived in Tokyo and stayed in Asakusa, one of the fifty four subdivisions of the city. Asakusa was historically the entertainment district and my hotel was just across the street from the Bandai Namco offices. Asakusa is easy to reach from Haneda airport. The journey is technically on two metro lines but the same train continues on meaning you don’t even have to get off to change lines. The hotel was small – my room was around fourteen square meters in total, including the toilet. The floor is a tatami mat meaning that the unsuspecting gaijin must remove their outdoor footwear and don the indoor equivalent. Nearby is the Senso-ji jinja (temple) – Tokyo’s oldest and also the golden poo, apparently depicting the head on a mug of beer. Legend has it that the poo was supposed to be installed vertically but locals were not too thrilled and NIMBY-ism led to the structure’s eventual sideways installation. Also visible from my hotel were the Sumida river and the Tokyo Skytree, a 634 meter broadcast and observation tower that’s hard to miss. This is all Asakusa and the surrounding area. I’m telling you this to emphasis a simple point – Asakusa isn’t a particularly central area or distinctive in any way – all of Tokyo is like this.

    From a North American perspective, it is like downtown. If you visit downtown Toronto (I prefer the term ‘center’), you will see that things are close together – businesses, offices, restaurants, apartment towers and so on. There are things not visible from street level including rooftop bars, patios and so on. Once you leave downtown – and this transition is very obvious – things change. Roads are wider, there’s more wasteful single family houses and noise levels drop. Everywhere in Tokyo is downtown. In fact, a lot of old world cities are like this. The city center of Bombay is large, bustling and busy. I lived in the suburbs and right outside every suburban train station in Bombay is another downtown. Think about that – in one city, there are multiple centers. This is the bit that confuses many North Americans. I must confess that in Tokyo, even I was taken aback by the sheer scale of the city, by the diversity of experiences, flavours and choices. There are fewer, large supermarkets and more convenience stores for the things you need frequently. Bombay is exactly like this.

    Tokyo is a megacity but one unlike most others. For one, not a lot of old neighbourhood structures exist as they were flattened during the world wars. There are lots of old buildings and shrines but they are spread out. Most buildings you see from street level were built in the recent decades.

    To give you some sense of scale, there is an aerial image of Tokyo and Mount Fuji that is frequently reposted on Reddit – I copied it below. Visible at the bottom right is the Tokyo Skytree. Notable also is the apparent lack of greenery. This is misleading because Tokyo is full of greenery, just not large trees visible from above like other places. Also missing are the numerous oases of quiet and solitude – the temples, shrines and parks, miraculously insulated from the din of city life.

    Tokyo from the air, looking south. Mount Fuji is in the background. This image circulates on Reddit regularly and I am yet to find a source. I will credit the author once I identify them.

    I spent almost six days in Tokyo and I saw very little. I visited Akihabara, several shops, supermarkets and convenience stores. But Tokyo is so large you can spend a lifetime there and never really see all of it.

    Someday, I will return. Until then, memories and photos will suffice.

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