I have just returned from an extended weekend trip to Shanghai to visit Cissy and Kai.

On the flight there, for the first time ever, I exchanged words with my fellow passengers: I was sitting between a Finnish former Ryanair flight attendant (then based in the euphemistically named Frankfurt-Hahn airport) , and an Israeli manufacturing equipment salesman (who travelled with a box of cutting instruments). Both of them knew a quite a bit about airplanes, and about operating the emergency exit, which is what we were seated directly in front of. The Israeli, a frequent flyer, even had had to go out through it and across the wing once. Fortunately nothing of the sort happened, even though it was a bumpy ride, to the extent that food service was delayed, but not to the extent of it actually having to be cancelled.

On the flight back, I finally got a chance to ride the Shanghai Transrapid, pride of German engineering and too expensive for Germany itself to build, from Shanghai to Pudong International Airport. This magnetic levitation train takes just ten minutes for the thirty kilometres. Wikipedia claims the operating speed to be 430 kmh, but it was only going 300 today.

Northwest Airlines, which had over the weekend agreed to merge with Delta and changed their on-board entertainment program accordingly, decided to place me at the emergency exits again, which is fine as it provides for extra leg room and you can look at the flight attendants also sitting there. No conversations this time, except to apologise for the back of my seat refusing to stay upright and instead gradually reclining at the expense of the people in the next row , but I got a good book from the airport bookstore (Neil Gaiman: American Gods, more on that later).

About a year ago, Japan started fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners on entrance, and today was their first chance to get at my biometrics. I, of course, oppose the procedure on principal grounds, but there was nothing to be done about it (short of subjecting to deportation). Maybe a Christmas donation to Amnesty International. Interestingly enough, foreign residents in Japan used to be fingerprinted as part of their alien registration until 2000, when the practice was dropped because of a public outcry over invasion of privacy. This time around, all visitors (not only residents) are affected, the data is stored for 70 years and will be shared upon request with other agencies in Japan and abroad. I suppose this is only a stop-gap that was easy to implement because foreigners do not have much of a lobby, and the idea is to extend to program to eventually include Japanese citizens as well. Did I mention that German passports now include finger-prints?