Who is Farhan Lalji?

My mom and dad were born in Tanzania to parents who had come from India. My mom travelled to India and then to Canada, my dad ended up in the same place but instead of India did a stop off in the UK to study. It was a tough journey. But I think if you ask them or their family and friends who made similar journeys I think they’d all be pretty positive about their experiences and decisions.

I left Canada over eight years ago and headed over to the UK and next week I’ll be heading to Switzerland. Switzerland wasn’t the first choice, but it came at a time when both me and the Bee felt like we needed a break from London.

Having just finished the last edition of Monocle and going through its liveable cities, I’m excited that I’m going to a country that has two cities in the top 25 - Zurich at number 4, and Geneva at 23. And even more excited about the possibilities of where we might go next. I’m glad I live in a time when travel is so accessible (if only we could make it greener), and where we can live at opposite ends of the world and still see people we love regularly.

I was inspired by Monocle and my thoughts on this subject to come up with a geography game and I’d love to get people’s responses. It’s based on the (who would you…) Eff, Marry, Kill game, but instead of FMK it’s VLB, where would you like to visit, live or blow up and build all over… Right now I would like to visit Zanzibar, live in Lausanne and build all over again most cities in North America and give them better public transport infrastructure. What about you?

UPDATE: The bee made a comment that “blow up” wasn’t the right way to think about places people live. Good point. Have changed this post to take this into consideration. Apologies.