#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.