Go Railways!

Was just reading some articles published in the last week in various newspapers. Indian Railways, my favourite government department, is moving forward on the promises it made during the budget a few months ago.

A new time table will come into effect from July 1, with over 100 trains speeded up. Further improvements could happen over the next few years. A new call centre chain - India's largest - will be opened by December. Tenders have been floated for a proposed public-private partnership project to build budget hotels in relatively smaller towns. Of course, the 9% growth rate means that passenger and freight volumes are rising at record rates, infusing large revenues into the Railways' kitty.

Two entities I am really, really happy to see do well are Bombay and the Indian Railways. Bombay has been floundering lately, though the privatisation of the airport and inaguaration of the Versova-Ghatkopar Metro link have been noteworthy successes. The Railways have scripted an amazing turnaround in the last 2-3 years, riding on the back of a strong economy and efficiencies created by use of information technology. I hope Bombay can join the Railways soon. And of course, if the Metro project proceeds more effectively than most others in the recent past have done, the city can begin the long journey to reclaim her past glory on a more hopeful note.

Summer journey - Week 1: Flashy Roppongi, Serene Ueno

I don't want to write about work in my blog - did plenty of that in my many emails to friends from Tokyo itself. So, I will restrict myself to my travels in and around Tokyo. But first, a snap of my home in Tokyo - a small WIMWI-like room (but extremely cozy) in an apartment hotel called Tokyu Stay, in the central part of the city (across the Sumida river from the Nihonbashi business district). I liked my room a lot, especially on each Thursday night, which was the weekly cleaning day!


My first weekend in Tokyo began with a quick trip to Ginza after office on Friday. Ginza is the poshest shopping district of Tokyo. In fact, it is reputed to have the costliest real estate in the world. Walking in Ginza on a Friday evening is a delight. The crowds are bustling, but not overwhelming. Ginza-yon-chome is a magnificent sight - flanked by the classy Mitsukoshi and Wako department stores, overlooking a mass of humanity just waiting to cross the road.


A few words about the Metro in Tokyo. The Metro is the lifeline of the city and connects virtually every nook and cranny of this sprawling metropolis of 1.5 crore people. There are some 13 different lines criss-crossing each other at various stations. Each line is distinguished by its colour, which is an easy way to identify a signboard from a distance in a subway station. Every morning I took the blue "Tozai" line from my home to my office - a short 5 minute ride. The crowds in the train during this commute, both to and fro, reminded me of Bombay - which is saying quite a lot! But the metro system is quite efficient with frequent and punctual trains.

On Friday night, I and some others went to Roppongi, the party district of Tokyo. It's a bright and gaudy area, with many strip-bar equivalents of pimps lining up the footpaths to encourage people to try out their joints. After walking for quite a while on all the four paths emerging from Roppongi Crossing, we finally acceded to one of them and I entered a strip joint for the first time in my life. Had to buy a Coke for one of the performers there - the most expensive Coke that I have bought in my life! In doing so, we missed the last train home and had to take a cab. And cabs in Tokyo cost a bomb - with a minimum fare of Rs. 250 equivalent, and a rapid ticks thereafter! The ride home cost over 3000 yen (Rs. 1200). It was the first and last time we used a cab in Tokyo (except for the ride to the bus station on the last day to catch the bus to the airport).

On Saturday, I walked in Ginza some more, and in particular went to the Sony Building to see some cool electronics and also to find a laptop. The electronic products on display in Sony's flagship store, while quite sleek and high-on-performance, were frankly not very different from what is available in Bombay. Globalisation has had this commoditising effect - good or bad, I am not too sure.

In the evening, I went to Akihabara - the electronics district of Tokyo. I looked around for some laptops, but gave up quite quickly. I also entered and strolled around in Shosen bookstore. Tokyo has many large bookstores. Shosen has eight floors of books, on topics ranging from current affairs and computer programming to manga (three floors of manga in fact!). Unfortunately for me, every single one of those thousands of books is in Japanese :( I went to Akiharabara again the next evening (while returning from Ueno Park) with Jolly. Got myself a 1 GB memory stick there - had not been able to take any snaps since leaving HK as my existing card was completely filled up and I had nothing to dump the photos into...hence the sharp-eyed will notice that none of the snaps posted in this entry actually correspond to my first weekend (April 15-16) in Tokyo.

At night, I went to Shibuya - a fashion and youth-culture oriented part of Tokyo. Jolly and C* (another intern whom I'll not name for reasons of propriety) were there too. The visit itself was not very remarkable, but I did have my first experience of eating in Mos Burger that night. Mos Burger is a burger chain in Japan (there are many local competitors to MacDonalds there - though I can't recall the names now). I found a veggie burger in that restaurant - the bun was made from rice and stuffed with seaweed, among other things. I did not like it much on my first try, but I developed a taste for it later. Had that rice burger 3-4 times during my stay in Japan - actually missing it now :) Mos Burger has a very funny tagline - I the clicked the following photo later in Kyoto.


Jolly and I went to Ueno park in northern Tokyo on Sunday. I suspect it is smaller than NY's Central Park, but still quite huge. We walked around three ponds for a while. The ponds are dirty, but the serenity of the place is quite awesome. The slightly nippy air accentuated the effect. We also went to the zoo in the park. There were many exotic animals there (penguins, polar bears, meer kats, etc.), but the experience was not a very pleasant one for me. I think the zoo is much too cramped and the animals seemed quite distressed :(

Back to WIMWI

Will continue to write about my travels in and around Tokyo intermittently, but feel like writing about my experience of tucchadom as well :)

Coming back to WIMWI two weeks ago felt very good. I suddenly realised how much I have come to love the brick walls, the paved paths and the many lawns and gardens of the Old Campus. The heat in Ahmedabad has been rather bothersome, and I can't wait for the rains to hit town, but everything else evokes a sense of familiarity and belonging. As the new batch of facchas entered campus, memories of last year's first few days on campus came rushing back - the dorm tempo shouts, gyaan sessions, and of course, dorm names. Today we met the new Section D and I began to rewind to memories of the most memorable event of last year - T-Nite :) What a great week that was!

Even better has been meeting with friends again. I pretty much started off where I had left off at the end of term 3 - have gone out for dinner on most nights this fortnight. I shifted from room 13 to 17 to take advantage of the better breeze and the better view. Moti, Chhedi and Khajoor have all shifted to the first floor. Additionally I only managed to buy a 250 ml Frooti bottle on my first day back and have not upgraded since. Hence, a lot of my time in the dorm is spent either walking downstairs to meet with the guys or upstairs to fill my water-bottle.

Too sleepy to write any further...have to wake up early for a class on entrepreneurship tomorrow. Will write more soon, both about Japan and about WIMWI :)

Summer journey - Week 0: Whirlwind through Hong Kong

Back to blogging at last :)

A few hours after exams ended, I was on a flight to Bombay, expecting to spend a couple of hours at the airport with my family before leaving for Hong Kong. I was seated comfortably and expecting a nice meal in the Jet flight (though I had finished dinner under an hour before). The plane was about to take-off, when the pilot abruptly braked and brought it to a rough stop. Burst tyre - what a start to the internship! Thereafter, Jolly and I had to run around to catch the only remaining flight leaving for Bombay that night - a Spicejet service with no food :( Luckily we made it just in time - something that was to get repeated for me over the next 8 1/2 weeks.

I spent less than 72 hours in Hong Kong. Focussed on seeing as much of the city as possible. Within 6 hours of reaching the city, I had tried almost all modes of public transport available in the city - train, bus, tram and taxi. Two days later, I was able to ride on a ferry as well.

I like Hong Kong. It's a slightly chaotic city. The people looked rather odd with their strange hairdoes - but were quite helpful most of the time. The city is quite shiny, to the extent of being gaudy even. We were put up in Island Pacific Hotel near the western end of the island. Two of my walls were basically glass windows, and I had a brilliant view from my room of the strait separating HK island from Kowloon Peninsula, as well as of a network of criss-crossing highways below. Mindblowing view!



On the first day, Thursday, I went with Jolly to the eastern part of HK island to an area called Causeway Bay. Causeway Bay is a nice shopping area with bright lights and impressive malls. We were both interested in shopping for electronics - he wanted a camera, I a laptop. He got his, and I was within minutes of paying for a Sony Vaio that I quite liked, but something stopped working in my head, and I decided to wait for a day - and began a saga that only ended 9 nine weeks later in Bombay with the purchase of the exact same model! But I like the FJ68 on which I am typing this entry, and all's well that ends well.

On Friday night, Jolly, Asit, InCi and I went with office people to HK's famous party district called Lan Kwai Fong. The bar we went to was called Insomnia and they had a live band playing. It was a little too crowded for me, but I nonetheless enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. We also walked around the area and I liked seeing the vibrancy and international composition of the party-goers.

On Saturday evening, we went to Kowloon on a ferry across the strait. Watching HK's skyline from the ferry was amazing. I really like cities and their tall buildings - that's why NY is high on my list of dream places to visit. Kowloon has a very large Indian-origin population apparently - the place did not feel much different from an old-fashioned shopping district in Bombay (like Linking Road). While returning there was meant to be a sky show that would be visible during the ferry ride. That was a disappointment - we could not see anything spectacular at all, only mystifying narrow beams of light. Maybe the projection is better seen from one of the coasts.

My best trip of all was on Sunday morning. Asit and I went to Victoria Peak in the south of the island. It's a wooded area with spectacular views of the city below. The bus ride to the place is awesome, with frightening twists and turns on a narrow road. We could not complete the walk to the peak itself, since I had a flight to Tokyo to catch.


Jolly and I had more adventures on our way to the airport. We were to catch a train to the airport. Tickets cost HK$130 each. Neither of us had too much HK currency on us and we scrambled to come up with the 260 bucks. Unfortunately we were short by some 10 dollars (maybe 15). We struggled for 15-20 minutes, running here and there looking for a money changer who would convert our US dollars into HK money, even offering our US dollars to random people in the vicinity. Meanwhile our flight departure time was getting ever nearer. Finally, I found some coins in my bag which helped us past the 260 mark.

Next problem - the vending machine would only accept 500 dollar notes :( We decided to try our luck at the counter. Jolly went and tried to get the tickets. He came back with a bittersweet smile - one ticket cost 130 bucks, but two cost just 160 in all! We ran to the Cathay check-in hoping to make it in time. The attendant there told us that we were not in time to send our luggage directly to the plane and that carrying it with us on the train to the airport would be impossible. Luckily, there was another flight leaving for Tokyo in an hour and she allocated us to that flight!

At 4:30 pm HK time, we left the beautiful HK airport and began the next stage of our journey - to Tokyo!