I climbed into his car late Sunday night, exhausted and spent as one can be, and slumped gently into the soft, plush backseat. The window was cracked open and the cool night air swooshed in as he drove off. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan slid quietly by.

"Where you from, sir?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Where you from, sir?" His voice was gentle and excitable and pitched a couple octaves higher than it should have been, demure and respectful and altogether polite. I watched in the rear view mirror his eyes searching my face.

"I'm from Trinidad."

"Yes, sir, where sir? Where from, sir?"

"I'm from Trinidad."

"Yes, sir, from where, sir? China?"

"No, I'm from Trinidad."

"Yes, sir." He looked confused and unsure, taking in what I had said and trying to process the details of where in China that might be while figuring out the address I had given him.

"Trinidad," I repeated. "Near Jamaica? In the Caribbean."

"Yes, sir. And sorry sir, you have to tell me where to go, sir? This is my first time driving car service, sir."

Ang Dendi Lama headed towards the Midtown Tunnel as I chatted with a colleague on the phone.

"This is my first time driving car service, sir," he repeated, when I had finished talking. "My first time. I like driving, sir."

Ang Dendi Lama was from Nepal. He spelled his name carefully for me as he drove: A-N-G D-E-N-D-I L-A-M-A. "Like the Dalai Lama, sir. We are the same people." Ang Dendi Lama was from Kathmandu. Or rather, he clarified, a small village near Kathmandu called Gunbeshi where everyone had escaped because of the violence. "They would beat you and take your money, sir. So my family ran away to the city. There is no one left in my village now."

Ang Dendi Lama talked of Nepal. He had missed Nepal, he said, when he first arrived in America some eight years ago, and he would dream of it and of Everest where his friend would climb every year. "Too dangerous for me," he said, waving his hand. "Everest is too dangerous, sir." Ang Dendi Lama was 42. He missed Nepal and the Everest he never climbed, but now he thought of America as his home. "I just got my papers, sir, and this is now my home. Now I am driving. I like driving, sir."

Ang Dendi Lama got his green card last December and immediately flew back to Kathmandu with his wife to visit the two daughters he hadn't seen in eight years. "My wife," he said, "she is two years younger than me. And my daughters..." His voice danced as he talked of his two daughters, now twelve and fourteen, who were at school in India. "The schools in Nepal, they are not very good, sir. India, very good. They are bright girls." His third daughter, just four years old, had stayed back in New York because it was so expensive to fly home. "Fifteen hundred dollars," he said, "twenty-four hours to Nepal." His hand traced a gentle arc towards the windshield as through flying an imaginary plane home. "A long time to fly there, sir."

"Fifteen hundred dollars is a lot," I said.

"Yes, it is a lot of money." His voice was suddenly clearer and brighter and stronger than it had been before, and he sat up straight in his seat and cleared his throat. "But I can afford it."

Ang Dendi Lama was full of pride that he had been able to save through the years to be able to fly home as soon as he could. Without his papers, he had been America-bound the past eight years, working hard as a gardener for Didi. "Sorry?" I said.

"Didi," he repeated. "Didi Conn. You know Didi Conn?" I didn't. "She is very famous actress, sir. Didi Conn is very famous actress." I racked my brains but couldn't come up with who this could be. "Didi Conn," he repeated. "D-I-D-I C-O-N-N. Very famous actress. I worked in her garden, sir."

It was only when I got home and searched for the name that I realised Didi Conn played Frenchy in Grease. But last night when I was driving home with Ang Dendi Lama, I didn't know who Didi Conn was.

"My wife, she is still working in the garden for Didi Conn." He looked at me as though disappointed I didn't recognize the name. "Didi Conn. Very famous actress."

We drove east on the Long Island Expressway, chatting about Nepal and Didi Conn and about the food he loved and missed. ("You can get very good food in Jackson Heights, sir.") We talked about his hopes for his daughters when they came to America next month, and we talked about his dreams for his youngest daughter, the one who had never met her sisters, the one born in America and who never knew his Nepal. We talked about his wife, part-time babysitter and part-time gardener. We talked about him, Ang Dendi Lama.

Ang Dendi Lama was an engineer in Nepal before he came to America. He had tried to go back to school when he arrived here, but it was too expensive. It was too expensive and he had to send money back to his family in Nepal. To his brother who now lives in Sweden, he explained, married to a Swedish girl. "He is a veterinarian," he said, "the one who deals with animals." To his youngest brother in Kathmandu, taking care of his elderly mother. He has a good job there, he said, in forestry. Forestry is a good job in Kathmandu. But he himself, he was an engineer.

"Four years of college just like here," he said. "I was Assistant Civil Engineer. With the government, sir. I did estimator jobs, construction, everything, sir."

Then I asked him: "Why did you come to America?"

His eyes widened and he looked at me in disbelief. "Why come to America? Why come here?" He paused. "America is land of opportunity, sir," he said, "land where everything is possible." He smiled and waved at me. "My friend say to me, 'Dendi, come to America. It is good.' And I look, and yes, it is good. And I am here now."

We continued talking and as the car curled a right onto Queens Boulevard we were momentarily bathed in the saffron light of the street lamps under the overpass. "Are you happy here?" I asked. The night air blew cool against my skin.

Dendi's reminded me so much of my own family. He reminded me of the life my father must have had years before I was born, a new immigrant in an alien land with barely an inkling of the language, being absorbed by a family foreign to him but who was his. He reminded me of my mother, who had been separated from my father when he was called back to Trinidad, who raised a daughter on her own for years until she was allowed to immigrate, and who knew nothing of the language or culture until she arrived there. He reminded me of my sister, who met her father for the first time as a teenager, and who heard of him only from the letters he would send my mother. He reminded me of myself, now living here as an immigrant in America.

We continued along and soon enough we arrived at my street. I pointed to my apartment and motioned for him to pull over, my head playing games with thoughts of what might have been and what if. "Your question," he said. "Am I happy?" He looked at me in the mirror and smiled mid-thought. "Of course," he said. "Of course I am happy." He turned around to look at me as he rolled to a gentle stop under the building's soft yellow lights. "Yes I am happy," he repeated. "I am home." He grinned. "And you, you are home too."

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The view from twenty-three is lovely. I never really noticed it until just now, the past week having gone by in such a whirlwind blur of sleep-deprivation and maniacal rushing about. From twenty-three you can see dozens of red and white cranes, their necks tilted at impossible angles over new construction, over the building facades with kanji, with hiragana, with katakana all dull and faded now in morning light and ready to put on a spectacular neon show the moment darkness falls over the city. Tokyo is special that way.

I've been here the past week or so on a business trip, every day rushing from meeting to meeting, computer to computer, person to person, training here, explaining there, taking notes and waking before five every morning just in time to see the sun rise over the first trains on the JR line as they pull into the Yurakucho stop.

Jetlag can be a cruel mistress.

It's almost 9am on Saturday here, and I've been up all night working on e-mails and spreadsheets. I'm stuffed beyond human decency, having gone out to grab a monstrously portioned sushi breakfast from one of the 24-hour places under the rail tracks. Get my final sushi fix and then back again before I pass out. See if I can count the young salarymen passed out drunk on the streets of Ginza, their heads resting precariously on their designer satchels, their business cards scattered about their shoeless feet. (I saw only one this morning.) It's hard to believe I was just here a couple months ago, and it's hard to believe it's time to leave again. It's getting late now and I have to run to Narita in a bit; it's time to get going again. Time to fly. Time to head on to the second leg of the trip, just in case this round of jetlag wasn't enough punishment for me. London, here I come.

Sayonara, Tokyo.

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