#15.1 Dubai

• Yesterday I talked my way into a private tour of the The Burj Al Arab, supposedly the world’s best hotel. Normally you have to pay $100 just to get through the front door. Silliest detail? They have a "pillow menu" allowing you, to choose from 13 different kinds of "deluxe bedroom head rests." My favourite is the "vitamin E pillow", that allows you to improve your skin as you sleep. Most expensive room? A cool $13,616 a night.
• Dubai has a diving industry, of sorts. Unfortunately, the sandy underwater terrain is not tremendously interesting. Such that there is being made worse by the environmental damage caused by constructions of the various Palms, the World, and the rest. Not to be deterred, the diving school at the Palm Jumeirah – the smaller of the three palm islands - are planning to create an artificial “dive park” by sinking a few trains and a plane into the sea. Just in case that isn’t enough they plan frequently to drop a 1KG bar of gold onto the seabed, as an incentive.
• Justice in the UAE works in strange ways. It’s a fairly liberal place, but some odd laws remain. Ex-Pats like to tell stories of deportations for holding hands, jailing for kissing in public, lashings for drunkenness and so forth, most of which probably are not true. But this story, involving the punishments meted out to a husband, his wife and her lover in the neighbouring state of Sharjah, is truly unbelievable:
  "1. The 24-year-old Moroccan wife . Crime: "private time with a man", alcohol consumption. Punishment: 3 months in jail, 80 lashes, deportation
  2. The 43-year-old Emirati lawyer lover. Crime: "private time with a woman", alcohol consumption. Punishment: 3 months in jail, 70 lashes
  3. The 33-year-old Jordanian man. Crime: stabbing the lawyer at least thirty times with a kitchen knife. Punishment: 3 months in jail"
• [Quote taken from this blog, which links to the full story.]
• Other odd laws. Skype, Flickr and MySpace are all reported to be banned. Happily, all seem to be working fine. Cohabitation is illegal. All cars bought in the emirate produce a loud electronic beeping noise when the driver goes over 120kph, the legal limit.
  

#15 Dubai

• Dubai is often described as the fastest growing city in the world. To get a sense of this, compare the the same pictures of Sheikh Zaheed road - the main drag, now in places a 14 lane highway - in 1991 and 2005. Note the 4 buildings in both pictures.
  

• The city must surely also be the largest construction project in the history of man, with daunting levels of building work ongoing. A commonly quoted statistic: "about 30000, or 24 per cent of the world's 125000 construction cranes, are currently operating in Dubai."
• More than 90% of the UAE are ex-pats. Of these, by far the largest group are British. There are roughly 100,000 Brits in Dubai, in a population of around 1.5m.
• By 2010 the population will have grown to 2m.
  
• Oil and oil services made up 7% of Dubai’s GDP in 2003. By 2010 this will make up around 1%.

• Dubai is currently building 4 giant reclaimed island archipelagos: 3 "palms", and 1 “world”. The first and smallest palm is close to completion. The picture above shows it, from the top of the Burj Hotel (click on it for more detail.) The second, the Palm Jebel Ali, will begin construction next year. This palm, unlike the first, will include a series of man made islands in the shape of Arabic letters. When completed they will form a giant poem, written by Shaikh Mohammad. The poem reads

Take wisdom from the wise
It takes a man of vision to write on water
Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey
Great men rise to greater challenges.”

[cf - a hi res pic of the second palm, poem and all]

Lahore

• Sheep in Pakistan have splendid ears. [Spotted in old Lahore. More pics here. ]
• 80% of car’s in Lahore run on compressed natural gas.
  
• Six indigenous films were made in Pakistan last year. Bollywood films are banned to protect the native industry, yet are commonly available (along with Hollywood blockbusters) pirated on cable and satellite channels. Pakistani cinema owners are about to go on a nationwide strike, claiming that unless the government cracks down on piracy and allows people in Pakistan watch Indian films such cinemas as have not yet been turned into malls will soon go under.
  
• The Supreme Court Chief Justice of Pakistan was sacked during my visit, with riots a street away from my hotel. Banning kite flying ranked among his least popular recent decisions. Improvements in kite technology now make fallen strings lethal, killing scores of drivers and pedestrians during major festivals. The ban was lifted during this year's major kite flying festival in Lahore, at which ten people died and a hundred or so were injured due to "kite related injuries". [Conversation with Hotel owner. More details here.]
  
• There is an ongoing conflict between Pakistan and India for control over Siachen, a glacier of little strategic importance but lying around 22,000 Ft above sea level. Maintaining soldiers on the glacier costs India $1m a day, while Pakistan pays about $650,000. A ceasefire has been in force since 2003, creating what you might call a cold war.
• The village of Dara Adam khel, near Pesharawa close to the Afghan Border, is the centre of Pakistan’s illicit arms manufacturing industry. Of its 80,000 residents some 20,000 are employed in making weapons for export, predominantly to Muslim fighters around the world. [See this for more.]
• 1 in 2 Pakistanis are under 15.
  
• Amount given to Pakistan in aid by the US since 2001: $10bn. Amount including likely covert ops through CIA etc: nearer to $20bn. Amount given to education projects? Around $150m.
  
  

#13 Bombay (again)

• Classified ads are different here.
  
• There is only one cash point machine in Afghanistan. [UK Foreign Office travel advisory for Kabul, where i am no longer going.]
• The Indian Government is moving ahead with outsourcing. It has already out-sourced its visa processing services at certain overseas embassies, including London. But now, in a neat reversal of what one might expect, it now plans to out-source “visa collection and delivery services” to an American company, at is embassy in Washington DC. As noted in the Times of India: “Until now Indians were taking away American jobs.….”
• As noted previously, Male, the capital of the Maldives, is the most densely populated city in Asia. Mumbai is the second, with about 30,000 people per square KM. However, there is a part of mid-town Bombay where the population density tops 1m people per square mile, likely the most densely populated place on earth. [see list]
  
• Bombay commuter trains are built for a capacity of 1500 people. At peak hours they carry up to 4500. I went on one the other day, and felt rather brave.
• You are not allowed to take pictures on Indian trains, in case you sell the information to terrorists, or Pakistanis.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density
• Three fun small world moments from my time in Mumbai.

1. Kirsten Bound from the think tank Demos says I should meet Anand Giridharadas, the South Asia writer for the International Herald Tribune in Mumbai. I find myself randomly talking to him in a coffee shop, before she has time to make the introduction.
2. I am sitting in the office with my friend Pablo Jenkins, having just sent an e-mail to Nadaa Tayib, someone I’d been introduced by a friend in Bangkok. She receives my e-mail while she is talking to Pablo on the other line for the first time, having met neither of the two of us before, and having been introduced to Pablo through someone completely different..
3. Later, I meet Nadaa at an art gallery. After an hour we realise she used to come over to my house in Davis Square, Cambridge, to work with my former roommate Ben, two years ago.

• Neat idea: newspaper vending machines. Neater insight: finding out exactly how low labour costs are in India. They employ a man to sit next to the machine, to put your coins in for you, and give you the paper.
• Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

12.2 Cochin, Kerala

• I can't help but think that the tried and tested "the jewish quarter" might have been a better choice, but there you are. The signs above are from the historic quarter of Cochin, Kerala.
• A working elephant in India cost 5-10 lakhs, or roughly $10-20,000. This is about the same price as an entry-level car.
• Gasoline in India costs roughly $4 a gallon. This is about the same price as in the UK, but much more than in the US. Refreshingly, some trucks have painted signs on their rear reading: “Save Gasoline; Save India.”
• The community of Keralans living in America numbers roughly half a million. Three quarters are Christian, compared to only a thirds of Keralans in India.
  
• The more muted the sari, the more likely the women is to have means. The more vibrant, the more likely to be from a lower class background.
• I am going to Dubai in a few weeks. This is what my friend Will Davies had to say about it in an e-mail exchange; a quote too good not to share:
  
  "Dubai is far and away the worst place in the world, so well worth a visit. Vegas without the sin; Milton Keynes with less history; Saudi Arabia with less charm; Barclays Bank with less concern for the poor. The place exists for shopping, golf, property speculation and tax avoidance. An ideal day for a Dubai resident involves playing golf in the shopping mall that they are subletting to their accountant.”
  
• This article by Mike Davis on Dubai is really worth a read. He takes the best quote from someone I’ve never heard, Baruch Knei-Paz, describing a theory of Trotsky’s:
  
  In appending new forms the backward society takes not their beginnings, nor the stages of their evolution, but the finished product itself. In fact it goes even further; it copies not the product as it exists in its countries of origin but its ‘ideal type’, and it is able to do so for the very reason that it is in a position to append instead of going through the process of development. This explains why the new forms, in a backward society, appear more perfected than in an advanced society where they are approximations only to the ‘ideal’ for having been arrived at piecemeal and with the framework of historical possibilities.
  
• By 2010 7 of the 10 largest malls in the world will be in China. However, both the two largest will be in Dubai. [ibid]
• John Edwards likes to say that China will soon become the largest English speaking country in the world. Can this really be true?
• Hinduism has a refreshingly practical bent. According to its theology cows are the only animals in heaven. This is because the Gods need milk.
• My new favourite Hindu god: Ganesha. He has the head of an elephant. He is very charming, and people like him here very much. Shrines and pictures of him always include a mouse. Said mouse is his trusty steed; to be mounted when when he needs to, er, pack his trunk and travel. [See here for some pics of him.]
  

#12.1 Kerala

• The red flag flies still over the state of Kerala. However, it seems this has little to do with the state’s world-renowned high literacy rate, whose history can be traced long before Independence and the beginning of independent political parties. For instance, the female literacy rate was “31.5% in Kerala in 1951 as against just 7.9 in India as a whole.” Much as in West Bengal – the other Indian state with periodic bouts of quasi-Marxist Government - it seems more likely that a literate population created the conditions for successful communism, rather than the other way round. [see here for some relevant-ish background]
• Instead, the difference seems to be routed in a different aspect of its history: Kerala's Christianity. More than 1/3rd of the state is Christian, most of that catholic. Early literacy programmes were begun by Christian missionaries. Latterly the State - unable properly to fund education - left it relatively open to the private sector (specifically NGOs in the school sector) to fill the gap. Christian groups were better able to raise funds for schools (largely from abroad), especially compared to Hindus groups in other states who lack an organised church, an active buearocracy and, perhaps most importantly, a body of rich people from whom they could solicit donations.
• A practical consequence of Kerala’s high literacy rate: people asking for money on the state’s train system carry printed cards explaining their reduced circumstances. The cards are double sided: English on one side, local language on the other.

• There are lots of good book shops here too. How sad that my bag never grows bigger.
  
• Unusually pointless Indian regulations, a continuing series: the government bans its airlines from using derivatives to hedge against fuel price fluctuation.
• Last year Indians bought 5m PCs, and 1m Laptops. In the US annual PC sales are roughly 60m. I can’t quite decide, given that, if 5m is a lot, or not.
• Sun Microsystems last week held its largest ever software development conference in Hyderabad, India’s second most successful IT hub. The sold-out event was held in the country’s largest conference centre, and more than 10,000 developers paid R1000 to attend. It was described in one paper as “the largest gathering of ‘Indian techies’ ever.”

#12 Kerala

• In India it isn’t rude to stare. More interestingly, people quite happily stare at others using gadgets in public places, in this case a (fairly loud) five minute hindi music video on a commuter train.
• Between 25,000 and 100,000 Indian farmers commit suicide annually. [Report in The Hindu].
  
• Wal-Mart is keen to open stores in India. Yet logistical bottle necks resulting from poor infrastructure are sufficiently severe to lead some to question whether the business model of big-box retail can even function here. For instance, the average western hypermarket carries at least than 35,000 product lines. No shops in India yet carry more than about 10-15,000. [Story in the Business Standard, they of the previously remarked upon unfortunate by-line policy.]
• Likely silly Indian regulations, the first in a series: "The Indian government did somewhat relax its FDI rules earlier this year, allowing "single-brand" retailers such as Nike or Gucci to own 51 percent of their business operations in India. However, this still precludes Wal-Mart, since the retailer sells a variety of brands in its stores." [Article on CNN.]
  
• As previously reported, India has only 35m income tax payers. However, in 1990, they had only 4m. 35m, out of a population of some c1 billion+, is good.
  
• Kerala. Upside: Pleasing beaches, sleepy canals. Downside: tedious westerners in indian garb - patterned tops, flappy orange trousers, head scraves, etc - going on about ashrams, and needing a foundation for their yoga practice. Its enough to make you yearn for palid twenty somethings in sharp glasses talking earnestly about social capital. Hang on. Perhaps I’ve found myself after all?

#11, Bangalore

• Bangalore has lots of shiny new malls. Most of have a large, noisy power generator outside, to cope with the region’s frequent power cuts.
• Female infanticide in India is now so common that the government is beginning to open pre-emptive orphanages for girls, to persuade parents to orphan rather than kill their daughters. At present it is thought that many thousands of Indian girls may be being killed every day:
  "Recent estimates of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in India reveal that out of 71,000 babies born every day in India, only 31,000 are female, with a ratio of 882 females for every 1000 males. According to the global average of 954/1000, at least 38,000 girls should be born every day. It is believed that this shortfall of 7,000 girls a day is due to the widespread use of female foeticide by parents." [Article in the Times of India, yesterday]
  
• There are 33 million Hindu gods, although a much smaller number are well known. Generally people have a favourite god, or gods.
• 75% of young Indians say they would prefer arranged marriages to “love marriages.”
• Taken together, these two facts mean that most Indians chose their favourite god but not their wife, broadly the reverse of what is true in the west.

• The percentage of Indians below the poverty line has fallen by half in the last 25 years.
• There are about 100m cell phone users in India. Amazingly, Nokia has 92% market share in the handset business.
• Roughly 4.5 million people in India are employed in the business process outsourcing (BPO) Industry.
• There is a mall in Kuala Lumpar which requires patrons to present either a credir card or a mobile phone to allow entry.

10.3 Bombay

• Cows without carts roam freely in Bombay. Cows with cars are sometimes restricted
• Indian women have on average 3 children, while those in developed countries have slightly less than 2. Those rates will converge by around 2030 as Indian fertility rates fall by a third. [XX Factor, a report by Roopa Purushotthaman, of The Future Group, Bombay.]
• 30% of Indian women work, compared to 70% in China. [ibid.]

• Tax collection rates in India are famously low, with roughly 1% of Indians paying Income Tax, and 40% of that number being found in Bombay. However, following tax cuts three years ago and because of strong growth, tax receipts have almost doubled in the last 3 years. Art Laffer should investigate.
• Indian airlines have hired more than 500 foreign pilots this year to satisfy a boom in regional air travel. Around 25 have since been sacked for poor English. [Report in Times of India]

• "Freedom fighters" get a discount on Indian railways.
  
• Roughly 10 people are killed on Bombay’s commuter trains daily, many simply from falling off. With 3500 deaths annually, Bombay is thought to be the most dangerous urban transit system on earth.
• Bombay is the world’s fifth most expensive city for office space, knocking New York out of the top 5. London’s West End, however, remains top with prices roughly twice that of either city.

10.2 Bombay

• What? You mean I really can't take guns into the bank?
  
• Executives at Cap Gemini have strings attached to their bonuses. One of these strings is how many seats in Indian call centres they help open. No more seats, no bonus. [Conversation with Cap Gemini executive at a party.]
• Many Indian child beggars are actually not from destitute families, but from working families in the suburbs. They are sent by their families to beg on the street in order increase the families income, normally to afford more expensive consumer durables. [Expose in this morning's Times of India.]
• 90% of Indian youth do not think it is appropriate for women to smoke. 85% do not think it is appropriate to smoke or drink with their parents. 75% of young indians would prefer to live with their families after marriage, rather than on their own. [Survey in India Today magazine].

• The Business Standard is among India's leading business papers. It is even pink, like that FT. However, unlike the FT, the contraction of their title introduces a credibility problem in their by-lines. They should think about fixing that.
• A 29' flat screen Colour TV costs $300 in India, but only $150 in China.
  
• Indians take cricket very seriously. A case in point, this conversation with Narriyan, our driver:
  

--------------------------
"My friend's mother - she is indian - she lives in Florida; she says many people comit suicide if India lose at the cricket."
"Florida?"
"Yes. It's in America."
"No, this is not true Sir. No. "
"Really? She said it was true. She said many people."
"No. Many people? No."
"Really? "
"Oh yes. Perhaps only two or three per match?"
"Two or three? That is quite a lot? In England, we leave our suicide for the tail end batting." "Well, you see sir, there is choice. Some people, if we lose, they do the suicide. More go to player's house and throw bricks, or burn cars."
--------------------------

10.1 Bombay

• There is a Lord Krishna Bank.
  
• A city block of buildings was today sold in Bombay. The Times of India reports: "In a price unheard of so far in the city, each shop owner in the society is expected to be paid at the rate of Rs 95,000 per square foot, while those owning flats will get Rs 38,000 a square foot to move out permanently.” Rs 95,000 is about $2150 By way of contrast, New York’s Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estates Manhatten Market Report for 2005 notes a bumper year in the Big Apple with “average price per square foot set a record at $965.”
• India’s GDP per capita is $705. The same figure for the US is $42,000.

• Bombay’s rush hour is 8 hours long. It goes from 7am to 11am, and 5.30pm until 9.30pm. [Conversation with a friend’s driver.]
• The commute between Bandra (North Bombay) and Colaba (South Bombay) normally takes 2 hours. Estimates now suggest that has increased by 15 minutes in around the last 8 months. This implies congestion growth of 25% roughly every year and half.
• India is 134th on the World Bank’s list of countries by “ease of doing business.”
• Sometimes translations in Indian papers don't quite hit the mark. An amusing case in point:
  
  "The “mysterious” girl who was molested and harassed by a group of hooligans at Gateway of India on the New Year’s eve has finally been identified. She is an American national, who has returned home since then….. “So far, we were groping in dark. Now at least our investigation has got definite direction,” said an official of the Colaba police station where the matter is being probed." [From the Mumbai Mirror, apparently in all seriousness.]

#10 Bombay

• Housing in Bombay is more expensive than New York. Legislation is so biased in favour of tenants, rather than landlords, that those seeking apartments are often asked to pay an 11-month deposit, on a 12-month lease to try and persuade people not to squat.
• Total energy demand in Mahrastra, the large state around Bombay: 15,200MW. Total supply: 9,5000MW. Result? Up to 18 hour a day blackouts in some rural areas. And riots. Who is to blame? Enron, claim the credulous authorities. They so looked forward to being able to benefit from Enron’s efficiency gains they forgot to build any new power stations in the late 1990s.
• Every Indian national election ever held has, at the time of its happening, been the biggest election ever. [from Edward Luce's book, Against the Gods.]
• Sachin Tandulkar has a restaurant in Bombay. It is called Tandulkars, and does lovely curried baby corn.

• Hotels I have stayed in whose names appear to herald great promise, but ultimately disappoint: the ocean view hotel; the lake-side inn; the rose garden house; the inn-crowd. [View above from the window of the "ocean view", Negumbo, Sri Lanka.]
  
• Thought: I am now in India. My USB Ports on my laptop are broken. If i call an IBM helpdesk, will it be a local call? Or, will i be put through to someone in Dublin, or Austen, pretending to put on an Indian accent? And if not the latter, how long until that actually does happen?
• People in India talk about the nuclearisation of the family, a rapid process ongoing process occurring simultaneously with the entry of women into the Labour force [conversation with Amand, the Herald Tribune’s South Asia correspondent.]
• The Indian national cricket team has a think tank.
  

#9.1, Colombo, Sri Lanka

• Sri Lanka’s President Ratapakse (ab0ve) is a strong man. It is said he can wrestle six men, possibly even eight. [Conversations with various taxi drivers.]
• Until very recently Sri Lanka had no restrictions to stop its female population working abroad. As a consequence large numbers move to work as domestic servants in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. Remittances make up around 10% of Sri Lanka’s GDP.
• At the time of the recent Lebaonon conflict, an estimated 40,000 Sri Lankan women working as servants were stranded in the country.
  
• As of last week, Sri Lanka has the world’s largest Cabinet. This followed a series of defections to the ruling party, partly encouraged by the creation of a dozen new cabinet positions for the defectors to fill. [Reports in Sri Lankan press]
• Different numbers divide Colombo, like Paris, into districts. Colombo 7, otherwise known as Cinnamon Gardens, is an upscale neighbourhood near the centre of town. Its residents are publicly derided as “Colombo 7 liberals”, giving it the same reputation as Hampstead, or San Francisco.

• Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage houses 85 parent-less elephants. One of them has only three legs. It stepped on one of the many mines that litter the north of the Island.
  
• The average tourist in the Maldive Islands spends $300 a day. [Economist Christmas edition article.]
• Updated. Dove adverts in Thailand use beautiful but naturally Thai models, because such modesl are the cultural equivalent of a “normal” looking female face. Almost all Thai adverts feature female models who are ethnically only half Thai: either Thai / Caucasian or Thai / Chinese. [Update to this post]
  

#9, Colombo, Sri Lanka

• Until the Friday before last, Bangkok was officially under martial law. This wasn't at all obvious if you happened to be there at the time.

• Thailand’s new Bangkok airport, Suvarnabhumi, is glorious to look at, but cracks have been found in some runways. This caused an understandable controversy, with delayed flights and embarrassment for officials. The ruling military Junta, however, actually seem to be playing up the problems in order to discredit, by association, former President Thaksin, a major advocate for the project. As a consequence, what should be a major source of pride for the Thai people is being deliberately turned into a national embarrassment – by their own government.
• Dhubai is building the world’s largest airport, Dhubai World Central. When completed the airport complex will have a permanent population of three quarters of a million people.
• Shanghai airport has a mono rail that travels at 450 kph. The journey, which used to take over an hour by road, takes roughly 10 minutes. [Conversation in Singapore Airport]

• Items for sale on a street market outside Bangkok's royal palace: post-cards, trinkets, bad food, and second-hand dentures.
• There were some bombs in Thailand recently. No one is sure who did them, but suspects include the Government. The Government is now ask Thai people to send their dogs to bomb training school.

#8, Singapore

• The “Prosperity Burger” is currently McDonald’s signature sandwich in Malaysia and Singapore. Its slogan is: “usher in an abundance of prosperity.” The burger comes in beef, or chicken.
• 19m people emigrated from Britain between 1850 and today – “no other country in the world ever came close to exporting so many of its inhabitants.” [Niall Ferguson, Empire]
• There were some bombings in Thailand on New Year's eve. No one is sure who carried them out, but suspects certainly include the current Government. The same Government is short of bomb sniffer dogs, needed to prevent the planting of more bombs, possibly by itself. As a result it is asking its citizens to send their pet dogs to bomb training school. More than 150 patriotic thai pet owners have come forward, so far. [Story in the Bangkok Post, also in the IHT.]

• That old favourite, the juxtaposition of modernity and tradition, Malaysian style. [Picture of prayer times and popular news stories, in the Malay Mail.]
• “Rai has starred in 24 films over the last seven years. That may seem like a lot of movies, but Bollywood, India's film capital, is famous for churning out more movies a year than Hollywood. Three new films are produced and distributed worldwide every day, attracting a global audience of 5 billion people. That's twice the reach of Hollywood.” [CBS News]
  

#7.2 Bangkok

• Verbs over-used in travel guidebooks: stroll, enjoy, relax, delight, wander.

• Two options: either Dove soap’s Campaign for Real Beauty does not use the same “normal” models in Thailand, or Thais and Europeans have a different concept of what counts as a normal looking / shaped woman. [Advert seen on SkyTrain station]
  
• 15,000 feature-length pornographic movies are made in Los Angeles annually. [LA Times supplement on What LA Gave The World]
• “MELBOURNE councils are paying private detectives to have sex with prostitutes, to gather evidence against illegal brothels. Melbourne City Council and Yarra Council yesterday confirmed they had paid private investigators to approach prostitutes, and in at least 17 cases, investigators had sex with them.” [Australian Newspaper article]
  
• The Australian National anthem, “Advance Australia Fair” was written in 1984. Prior to that, the nation sang “God Save The Queen.”

#7.1 Bangkok

• Some unknown proportion of the world’s population has not yet used a sit-down toilet. Some subsection of that group appears to travel on Malaysian railways. [Sign inside toilet on the KL to Butterworth (Penang) sleeper train.]
• This year more people will watch Bollywood films than Hollywood films. [Maximum City.]
• Singapore was the inspiration for China’s current economic renaissance. In 1978 Deng Xioping visited the formerly backwards island. Seeing the level of development Deng concluded capitalism to be a superior system to communism. He returned home, and shortly afterwards unveiled the beginnings of China’s system of Special Economic Zones. [Article in the Bangkok Post]
• OK Computer will be 10 years old this summer.
  
  

• I once heard it said that Britain was the only country in which you could find an orderly queue of one. Yet, unlike the scrimmage of getting on a London tube, passengers on Bangkok’s SkyTrain monorail system queue single file when waiting to board a carriage. They then file on to the train in line, one by one. There are also large flat screen televisions, with sound, on all platforms to entertain you, while you queue.
• South Korean singer Rain is Asia’s biggest pop star.

#7 Bangkok

• Some instructions can be a touch confusing. This sign in an Internet café in KL appeared to rule levitation as the only acceptable posture for gaining access to their computer suite.
• In 1700 India accounted for 24% of world output. Britain made up 3%. [Niall Ferguson, Empire.]
  
• Malaysia has an unusual system of rotating, elected monarchs. A merger of nine states originally formed the country, each with a royal family. Instead of picking one "supreme leader", it was decided that each Sultan would be get to be king for a period of 5 years on a rotating basis. The system continues today. Each monarch has a roman numeral following their name, signifying not the lineage of their Christian name in a line of monarchs (e.g. Henry V, or Henry VIII) but their place in the rotation system.

• Iraqi Banknotes featuring pictures of President Hussein are available for sale in Melaka, Malaysia. The seller of these notes reported a brisk trade at the turn of this year, in the days following his execution. Most customers were reported to be buying out of sympathy, and dislike of his American executors.
• Correction. New Zealand has 4m people, and 60m sheep, not 39m as posted earlier. Such is the country’s enthusiasm for sheep that, from this year forward, February 14th has become “National Sheep Day.” Minister John Anderson said that the day would be a “meat industry milestone.” Anderson did not mention if the choice of that particular date should be construed as having any greater significance.

#6 - Kuala Lumpur

• A Megacity is defined as a city with more than 10 million people. At present there are around 25 such cities in the world, 13 of which are in Asia. Projections suggest there will be around 35 by 2015. Almost all of the new additions will be in Asia.
• Megacities make up a tiny fraction of the world's landmass, but consume roughly 60% of world water and produce 80% of carbon emissions. [Demographics of Megacities]
• Kuala Lumpur has a population of 4.4m, making it the 71st most populace city on earth. [City Population]

• The Petronas Towers in KL, the world's second tallest buildings, were built unusually quickly. The designers decided to hire two consortia - one from Japan, the other from South Korea - to construct the two seperate towers. The result was an unofficial competition to be finished first, and a 24 hour construction schedule involving up to 2000 builders working through each night, on 12 hour shifts. Eventually, and despite starting weeks behind their rivals, the South Koreans won. [Tour of the towers.]
  
  

# 5 Melaka, Malaysia

• Male Cats in Singapore often have one ear clipped to show that they have been spayed, and are owned. Stray cats in possession of both ears are periodically rounded up and destroyed by authorities. [Conservation with owner of "Pete", seen above.]
  
• 35 million Indians pay income tax. The country has a population of around 1.1 billion. [Against the Gods, by Edward Luce]
• 1/10th of humans rely on the gangees river for water. [Report on BBC World]

• Singapore has begun to build a spaceport. The $115m facility will be the world’s first commercial port for space travel, and will feature sub-orbital flights at a cost of roughly $100,000. It will be completed in 2009. [Short article in a magazine in the back of a Singapore taxi.]
• The 621 mile Straits of Melaka, the stretch of water between eastern Malaysia and Indonesia, suffers from the world's highest rates of sea piracy, with estimates up to 40% of the world's pirate attacks occuring here. The International Maritime Bureau rank the stretch of water as the most dangerous on earth. [Conversation on a boat, confirmed in various reports including here.]
  

#4 - Singapore

• In the near future it will be possible to embed solar cells in flexible materials. Coca Cola is among the companies most interested in this innovation. They want to make a can that will power itself. The can will then use this electricity either to cool itself or to power a moving digital image on the can’s front, similar to those on large billboards.
• Enemy combatants in Kashmir killed 72 Indian soldiers during the last year. More than 100 more died by taking their own life, while fellow soldiers killed 30. [New Straight Times, 18th January.]
• The total casualty figures for nations fighting in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign were Turkey (86,692), Britain (21,255), France (9,798), Australia (8,709), New Zealand, (2,701), and India (1,358). [Auckland Museum.]
• A proportion of population, more New Zealanders fought in the Great War than any other allied nation. 1 in 5 New Zealand males signed up to fight. [Auckland Museum.]
• There are 39 million sheep, and only 4 million people, in New Zealand.
• Known for its authoritarian system of justice, Singapore jails 350 people per 100,000 of its population, the 21st highest in the world. This is less than half the rate of the USA, which comfortably leads the world in incarceration rates per capita, with 737 jails per 100,000. India jails just 30, among the world’s lowest. [ICPS Global Prison Population Rates Survey.]

#3 - In Queenstown, New Zealand

• "The notion of what is a luxury and what is basic need has been upended in Bombay. Every slum i see in Jogeshwari has a television.... the real luxuries are running water, clean bathrooms and transport... The greatest luxury of all is solitude. A city this densley packed affords no privacy.... A good city ought to have that; it ought to have parks or beaches where young people can kiss without being overwhelmed by the crowd" [Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta, p156.]
• Half of the population of Bombay has no access to a toilet. That translates to 5 million people producing two and a half million kilos of human waste, every day. [ibid.]
  
• Writers banned under the regime of Saddamn Hussein included Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Herge, the author of Tin Tin. [An article in the Press, a New Zealand paper, which might have also been in the UK Sunday Times.]
  
• Nineteenth Century immigrants to the New Zealand colony of Christchurch were left on a nearby beach, with a tent, for 40 days and 40 nights. If they proved to be disease free after that time, they were granted entry.
• Neuroscientists think there are six basic human emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, surprise, and disgust. [An article in the Christmas edition of the Economist, which i'm still getting through.]
• Most Indians are under 25. Given the size of the country, this also means that India is home to 20 percent of the world's population under 24. [McKinsey Quarterly]

#2 - In Christchurch, New Zealand

• Australia’s resource boom is strong enough that employers complain in the press about their inability to stop the drain of service sector workers leaving to become miners. Feeding these workers is now a significant problem, with reports suggesting managers at KFC in certain towns in Western Australia are now paid in the region of $100,000 to ensure they too do not move sectors. [Report in Australia’s equivalent of the FT.]

• Melbourne is the third largest Greek city in the world. Athens and Thesoloniki are numbers 1 and 2.

• The Largest polling station in the last Australian federal election was Australia House, in London. 40,000 Australians voted there.

• The 4^th richest woman in China is a muslim, who made her money from nothing in paper recycling.

• The world’s most expensive real estate is next to Heathrow airport. [New York Times Sunday magazine, short article on Aerotropolisis, or airports that look like cities.]

• There is a reputed to be an unwinnable Australian drinking game, in which participants must drink every time the group can identify an occasion on which cricketer Shane Warner was a disgrace to the nation. Aficionados of Warnie’s misdeeds can apparently name up to 30-odd occasions upon which he has tarnished Australia’s good name. Only one of these involved parading in his smalls with two blonde prostitutes, and a giant inflatable penis, and being photographed by a British tabloid newspaper.
  

#1 - In Sydney, Australia

• The Australian press, when reporting a violent crime case in which aboriginals are the suspects, will refuse to identify the protagonists by their ethnicity. Instead they will make vague references to suspects having “ties with the aboriginal community”, but do so (if at all) only at the very end of an article. [A white youth was recently killed randomly by two young aboriginal men in New South Wales, a crime much reported in the Australian press.]

• Kangaroos are considered such a nuisance in Queensland that farmers will hire hunters for to cull them. Hundreds can be killed in one night. [My friend Alice, with whom I stayed in Sydney, grew up on a farm in Queensland.]

• Kangaroos are best seen at dusk. They don't like being out in the hot sun.
  

• China receive 1000% more foreign investment than India, but its return on investment capital is roughly a third lower. China’s development path of relying on external investment from abroad is has more in common with Latin American countries than either Japan, or South Korea. [Conversation with Mark Thirwell, The Lowy Institute for International Studies, Sydney.]

• In Queenstown New Zealand you can take a Lord of The Rings Tour in which you are taken to 20 locations from the film, are given a full lunch, and are “allowed to handle items used in the film.” What the items actually are – Gandalf’s socks? – is not clear. [Lord of the Rings Tour company website.]

• The new Oasis album, Don’t Believe the Truth, isn’t actually half bad.

• The New York Times, the Wall St Journal and the Washington Post have no Australian Correspondent. [From the early page’s of Bill Bryson’s cliché packed book on Australia]

• Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard is a power walker. He walked 4-5kms a day. Last week he chalked up 20,000 career power walking kilometres. [Report in the Daily Telegraph, an Australian tabloid.]

• In India, electoral participation is positively correlated with poverty. In most advanced democracies, the opposite is true. [From Maximum City, a book I’m reading.]

• Richie Benaud owns a French vineyard. [Joked about in “Boned”, the new CD from the 12^th Man, confirmed by wikipedia]