The Amazing Race 20, Episode 11 (Season Finale)

Cochin, Kerala (India) - Hiroshima (Japan) - Osaka (Japan) - Honolulu, HI (USA)

The last visit of The Amazing Race to Japan was broadcast on 6 March 2011, just days before the 11 March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear reactor meltdown that disrupted infrastructure and scared away foreign visitors for many months.

A year later, the race returned to Japan in this week's episode (for another mock TV game show), en route to the finish line on Oahu.

As I said about post-disaster tourism a couple of years ago in relation to the earthquake in Chile that occurred the same week as the broadcast of an episode of The Amazing Race 16 filmed in Chile just a few months earlier:

Tourists are typically scared away from a substantially larger area, for a substantially longer period of time, than conditions warrant and/or than local people -- who are eager to get their jobs serving tourists back, and to start recouping their investment in reconstruction of tourism capacity and infrastructure as soon as possible -- would prefer.

In my experience, the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) is normally one of the best such government entities in trying to provide practical information to help foreign travellers including independent budget travellers rather than merely trying to sell visitors tours or other services they might not want.

For most of the last year, the JNTO maintained a polite and prudent low profile. Trying to overcome the pervasive newsreel images of disaster would probably have been futile anyway. The JNTO obviously didn't want to say anything that would further embarrass the Japanese nation and people for being temporarily unable to provide the level of hospitality and service they believe all visitors to Japan deserve (and usually, in my experience, receive), and for being distracted from playing proper hosts by the need to deal with their domestic problems.

But in in March 2012, one year after the earthquake, the JNTO posted a gracious official welcome message from the JNTO that spring and the return of cherry blossom season signals the recovery of Japan's tourism industry and its readiness once again for foreign guests.

One reason it's hard to sell Japan as a destination for foreign tourists, even in the best of times, is the perception that Japan is an exceptionally expensive place to travel. That's been more true in the last year than ever, with the Japanese yen (JPY) at its all-time high against the U.S. dollar, making yen prices almost 50% higher in dollars than they were five years ago.

As with travel in the Euro zone, travel in Japan can be expensive if you aren't careful. That's true in the USA, too: How much would it cost if you stayed at the first hotel or ate in the first restaurant you saw in New York, without looking at the prices first or seeking out less expensive alternatives? It remains possible to travel in Japan on a budget not much higher than what you would need in the USA or Australia, and possibly a little less than in Western Europe (more than in some parts of the Euro zone, less than others).

For example, the Backpackers Miyajima hostel that Amazing Race 20 winners Dave and Rachel stayed in when they missed the last ferry in Hiroshima charges JPY2500 per person per night for dormitory bunk beds. It's only a little more, JPY3000, for a futon on the floor of a "Japanese style" dorm. You might or might not find the latter more comfortable, but it might be worth the slightly higher price to be sharing your room with travellers from other parts of Japan rather than with other foreigners.

JPY2500 is equivalent to USD33 -- bout the same amount as you'd pay for a bunk in a hostel in Chicago.

Japan won't be as cheap for foreign travellers as China, much less India or Thailand. But cost shouldn't scare you away from Japan any more than from Western Europe.

Lodging is the big bugaboo of travel costs in Japan. Japan differs from many other countries in that the numbers of foreign tourists are small compared to those of domestic Japanese travellers, so that a decline in foreign visitor arrivals has relatively little impact on hotel demand for prices.

Japanese workers actually get more holidays and vacations than the average in the USA, but all at the same time. So travel to, from, and within Japan is incredibly seasonal, much more so than in most countries. The single thing you can do that will most reduce the cost of a trip to Japan is to avoid the peak periods -- Golden Week in the spring, August, Christmas-New Years -- when prices can be three to five times higher than in low season and all beds, especially the most affordable ones, may be booked months in advance so that cheap or spontaneous travel is difficult or (during Golden Week) impossible. This episode of The Amazing Race 20 in Japan was broadcast (at least in the USA) at the end of the Golden Week holiday, but that's the worst possible time to visit Japan if you have any choice.

Dave and Rachel found the hostel at Miyajima because it had a sign in English saying "Backpackers", within sight of the ferry landing where they had been stranded for the night. In Australian usage, and increasingly elsewhere, the terms "backpacker" or "backpackers" refer to hostels, especially private, commercial hostels, as well as the travellers who stay in them.

You can't hope to do that well, but you can expect that most facilities for foreigners in Japan, from hostels to train-ticket kiosks, will have a sign or section of their Web site in English. The trick is to pick out the small English telltale (usually the word "English" or a US or UK flag) from the distracting wall of flashing Japanese signage.

Vending machines may be intimidating, but have their advantages for foreigners who don't know the local language: It's much easier and cheaper to translate the user interface into English, once, than to hire English-speaking clerks at every point of sale. A clerk who, as was shown in the race, speaks no English but points to the touch-screen kiosk, may not be as unhelpful as they might seem, but rather may be trying to steer you to the available English instructions.

People will help you if they can. As in any place with a different writing system (Chinese, Arabic, etc.) you can make it easier for people to point you in the right direction by getting your destination written down in the local language whenever you find someone who knows enough English to do so. A pen and pocket notebook always readily at hand, and "Can you write that for me in Japanese?" should become second nature. Even if you think you've gotten good directions, get the person giving you directions to write them down in Japanese in case you need to ask again at a point along the way where you don't happen to find an English speaker.

Having your destination written down in Japanese also makes it less likely that local people will feel obligated to go too far out of their own way to lead you where you want to go. The danger is greater that you will impose on local people unfairly, without realizing it, than that they won't be willing to help you. Before you ask for assistance in a place with a culture like this, pause to think about whether it's a fair request. Once you've asked, "Can you do ____?", it's too late to take it back or say "don't bother" without both you and the person you've asked losing face.

You can't, of course, expect to be so lucky as to spot a hostel/backpacker down the block when you're ready for bed. In Japan, how do you find an affordable place to sleep?

Because Japan is a fairly self-contained travel market, dominated by domestic travel, and because most foreign visitors are business travellers, US -based or other general international travel services tend not to include many of the best options in Japan for foreign budget tourists.

Unfortunately, the excellent WIRC/ITCJ budget accommodations booking service I've used (both online and at their counter at Narita Airport) and recommended in the past was discontinued at the end of March 2012. My guess is that the government got complaints that this longstanding government-sponsored service was competing unfairly with more recent but increasingly large Japanese online hotel booking agencies.

In its place, the JNTO offers a variety of English-language information on more affordable accommodations including a directory of links to Japanese online accommodations booking services, including both online travel agencies and chains and associations of budget-oriented hotels, ryokans (Japanese-style bed and breakfasts), and hostels. As in the USA and Canada, some B&Bs in Japan offer an expensive boutique lodging experience, while others emphasize affordable home-style lodging.

Hostelling International's Japanese affiliate has an excellent network of hostels throughout the country, and there are a growing number of private hostels of more variable quality and atmosphere. You are more likely to meet local Japanese backpackers at the HI/Japan Youth Hostels facilities than at private hotels more oriented towards foreigners, although some of the private hostels offer more extensive services.

Most usefully for anything other than hostels, the JNTO Web site includes an English-language hotel and B&B meta-search service. It doesn't list prices explicitly, so at first it looks useless, but you can filter listings by price range to find links to the sites where individual hotels can be reserved. There are a significant number of listings in the least expensive category, JPY5000 (USD65) per room per night, many of which aren't included on typical US or other non-Japanese hotel-booking sites. The consistent format and English-language user interface make it easier to use, I think, than trying to search multiple Japanese sites with erratic or incomplete English translation of menus, descriptions, and user interface elements.

I haven't travelled around Japan enough to say much about specific destinations. I was pleased, though, to see that the race finally went to one of the memorials to the atomic bombing of Japan by the US military. People in the USA have, in general, spent much less time in national and individual reflection on our country's and our or our ancestors' role in the atomic holocaust (and the firebombing of Tokyo which killed even more people) than people in Germany and Japan have been required to spend in school -- starting during the post-war US occupation of their countries and continuing, to a degree, even today -- learning about the holocausts and atrocities perpetrated by their countries' governments, and individual citizens' roles in and responsibilities for those actions.

I haven't been to Hiroshima yet, but I'm glad I went to Nagasaki during my first visit to Japan. Nagasaki gets far fewer "atomic tourists" than Hiroshima, and the bombing of Nagasaki presents different and perhaps more difficult questions for people from the USA than the bombing of Hiroshima. Of course the atomic bombing is and always will be an important part of Nagasaki's history. But within Japan, Nagasaki is known for other attractions and other aspects of its history, and unlike Hiroshima most visitors come to Nagasaki for other reasons.

Have you been in Japan this year? When did you visit, in what part(s) of the country, and what was it like? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Perceptive Travel reviews the 5th edition of "The Practical Nomad"

Many thanks to William Caverlee for his review of the 5th edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World in this month's edition of Perceptive Travel (part of the USA Today Travel Alliance).

"The most detailed round-the-world travel book... The Practical Nomad is a stunning achievement of data gathering and travel lore."

Read the full review.

Marin County cites my protest as basis for motion to halt PG&E "SmartMeter" deployment

Citing the legal and public uncertainty created by the mishandling of my protest of PG&E's proposal for "SmartMeter" opt-out fees, and the consequent withdrawal of CPUC approval and suspension of the proposed PG&E opt-out tariff, the government of Marin County today filed a motion for the CPUC to order a halt to "SmartMeter" deployment until my protest (and, presumably, my request for review by the full CPUC) is resolved.

In its motion filed today, Marin County says, in part:

On February 16, 2012, citing OP-2 of the Decision, PG&E filed its Advice Letter 3278-G/4006-E as a Tier 1 advice letter, meaning that it was intended to be effective on the date filed. However, this advice letter was protested. [Footnote 8: See, Protest by Pacific Gas and Electric Company customer Edward Hasbrouck and request for evidentiary hearing regarding Advice Letter 3278-G/4006-E (Pacific Gas and Electric Company ID U 39 M), "Approval of Electric Rate Schedule E-SOP, Residential Electric SmartMeterTM Opt-Out Program, and Gas Rate Schedule G-SOP, Residential Gas SmartMeterTM Opt-Out Program, in Compliance with D.12-02-014 " filed March 7, 2012.] Active parties to the A.11-03-014 proceeding were served with the Protest, but have not been served with any disposition of that Protest by the Commission. Based on available information, due to one or more procedural errors or other substantive issues, this Advice Letter was apparently suspended at some point on or before April 20, 2012. [Footnote 9: See, email from Commission counsel Elizabeth Dorman to Edward Hasbrouck et al dated April 20, 2012, stating in part: "Legal Division has instructed Energy Division that the Advice Letter filing is suspended, and requested that they include such label on our website. Energy Division is now at liberty to issue a disposition regarding the above-referenced Advice Letter." In an earlier letter to Mr. Hasbr[o]uck dated April 5, 2012, Ms. Dorman indicated that because the Commission was withdrawing the March 19, 2012 Staff disposition in this matter, there is no longer an effective disposition.]

Until further disposition of this suspension by the Commission and appropriate notice to the parties in this proceeding and the public generally, and subject to any subsequent requests for review thereof, the rates, terms and conditions contained in this Advice Letter are not in effect. These terms and conditions of service include not only the interim rates set forth in the Decision, but also PG&E’s proposed tariff provisions defining the procedures set forth in OP 2 (a) and (b) of the Decision. If, for example, a Smart Meter is installed while there is no effective tariff provision governing the service provided, legal uncertainty -- at a minimum -- results regarding what, if any, rates would apply and what right, if any, PG&E had to install the meter if the customer did not affirmatively agree.

I still have no idea when or if the CPUC will hear my request for review of the CPUC Energy Division's improper actions and inactions. (If you talk to the CPUC, ask them.) I haven't heard anything yet about my protest from the City and County of San Francisco, which is also a party to the CPUC proceeding opposing PG&E's "SmartMeter" proposals, and where there are additional issues related to the incompatibility of PG&E's proposed wireless mesh data network with the principles for such wireless data networks established by San Francisco voters through the enactment of Proposition J in October 2007.

The Amazing Race 20, Episode 10

Cochin, Kerala (India)

The two most recent episodes of The Amazing Race 20 in India have highlighted some of fairly typical medical hazards of travel in tropical Third and Fourth World countries.

Mark nearly collapsed from heat exhaustion after several hours of physical activity standing outdoors under full sun in the heat and humidity, barely finished the last leg of the race, and needed intravenous rehydration at the "pit stop" before he could go on.

Vanessa tripped and fell on the uneven surface of a roughly-paved lane, leaving her with "road rash" on her shoulder and worried that she might have aggravated an old ankle injury.

JJ cut his hand on the sharp-edged metal frame of a packing crate he was filling with dried ginger as one of the racers' local tasks, and several of the racers cut their hands on the rope-making machinery they had to use for one of their tasks.

I'm not a doctor, and I won't try to give you medical advice or try to second-guess the doctors who accompany the race as part of the TV production team. But I think there are still some health and safety lessons that can anyone can learn from watching the race.

Some of the tasks and challenges that are shown on The Amazing Race are things that you probably shouldn't try on your own. When you think about doing something you've seen on a "reality" TV show, keep in mind that part of the "reality" is the presence, off-camera but always nearby, of a camera and sound crew accompanying each pair of racers, and an extensive on-call location support staff.

In the real world of your own independent travels, you won't usually have an escort watching over you, or professional assistance (including a doctor) so close at hand.

You can call on any local people and/or fellow travellers who happen to be nearby for help if you get sick or hurt, and they will generally do whatever they can. But if you got to a village by foot, bicycle, or motorcycle taxi along a track that isn't passable for cars, an ambulance to take you to a hospital may not be available for any amount of money.

Much of the population of the Fourth World (and of mountainous parts of the Third World) lives a considerable walk from any motorable road. The only way to get to a doctor may be to go back the way you came: on foot, on the pillion of a motorbike, or on some sort of beast of burden. That's probably how those villagers who can afford medical care get to a doctor (unless they wait for a doctor or other medical practitioner who comes to the village, or to one a shorter walk or ride away, on weekly or monthly rounds).

In the Third World, at least in more accessible lowlands, there's a good chance that even a village is reachable by some sort of road. But the road may be rough, rutted, muddy, and passable only by high-clearance vehicles. It may take time for any motor vehicle to arrive. And the only vehicles available may be trucks or rudimentary buses that provide a painfully jolting ride for someone injured or ill.

Before I do something that seems potentially risky while travelling, I try to evaluate not just, "How likely am I to get hurt?" but also, "What would I do in this place, in these conditions, if I did get hurt?" The consequences of a misstep may be much more serious than they would be at home, where you could take for granted that an ambulance, if needed, would be only a few minutes away.

You may be no more likely to twist your ankle on the road than at home. In practice, however, the same activities are often more likely to result in injuries while you are travelling, because:

• You are in unfamiliar conditions where you don't know which unfamiliar hazards to watch out for, and are distracted by sightseing and cultural disorientation. When everything around you seems strange, normal mental "alarms" -- which are triggered by stimuli that don't match familiar patterms, and normally serve to warn of hazards -- sound constantly. This leads travellers either to panic ("culture shock") or to tune out their mental alarms entirely, making them less likely to notice when something turns out to be not merely "strange" but also genuinely risky.
  
  
• Safety is a luxury of the rich. It's easy to misinterpret, "Local people are doing this without any safety equipment," for "This must be perfectly safe." It could be that everyone in a poor community does things a particular way because they can't afford to do it any other way. It also could be that they've been practicing a particular skill all their lives, so that it really is safer for them to do it than it would be for you with no experience. Tasks that look simple -- as the racers learned when they tried to spin "coir" (coconut fiber) rope -- may require years of practice to do quickly, or to do without hurting oneself. Don't underestimate the complexity and subtlety of "unskilled" labor just because it's poorly paid or typically performed by people dressed in rags.
  
  
• Travellers trying to see and do as much as possible in a limited time almost inevitably put themselves at elevated risk. Sleep deprivation, tiredness, overexertion, and hurrying are key safety factors on any job site. The same goes for travellers. One of many good reasons to travel more slowly, and get enough rest, is that it's safer that way.

What's noteworthy is that none of the racers' ailments or injuries were "exotic" or peculiar to travel. That's' realistic: Most of the bad things that happen to travellers are things that could have happened at home. The difference is how likely they are while travelling (some bad things, such as violent crime, are significantly less likely in most of the rest of the world than in the USA) and how serious the consequences are likely to be.

You could get heat exhaustion if you exercised outside all afternoon on a humid summer day at home (perhaps without drinking enough if the local water isn't safe to drink). But if you didn't have travel plans you had to keep, you'd probably slow down, or take a day or two to rest and recover, rather than trying to continue your trip right away like the racers or many travellers on fixed itineraries. One reason not to commit yourself to a hard-to-change schedule in a place like India is that you can't predict on which days of your visit to India you'll have traveller's diarrhea and not want to get on a bus, train, or plane.

You could trip and fall, and scrape or sprain yourself, anywhere. What's different while travelling, especially outside the First World, is how easy or hard it will be to get treatment, and how much damage it may do if you don't see a doctor soon enough.

My travelling companion had emergency surgery on a badly broken ankle in Ecuador after a fall, probably with no worse long-term consequences than if she had been in the USA. Four days in the best hospital in the country, including surgery by the chief of the trauma department, cost about US$2500. But there was no rapid-response ambulance to take her to the hospital (a friend took her in a car, which was adequately fast but more painful), and the outcome could have been very different if we had been hiking or in more remote towns and villages, as we had planned, rather than still in the capital.

In general, my impression from years of experience as a travel agent, and the stories told by clients who have had to cut short their trips, is that travellers tend to:

1. Overestimate the exotic risks (tropical disases, terrorism, airplane crashes, etc.);
2. Underestimate the routine risks (road accidents, slips and falls, infected cuts and scrapes, sexually transmitted disases); and
3. Wait longer than they should before they seek professional medical attention, letting fear of foreign doctors and the logistical diffculty of finding a competent doctor trump the possibility of adverse long-term health consequences.

Far more often than necessary, people who have let an injury or serious illness fester for too long before seeking medical attention come home needing long-term follow-up treatment and/or having done permanent damage to their bodies by postponing treatment.

Ignoring any significant orthopedic injury, or relying on painkillers and/or anti-inflammatories to get through your trip, can result in lifelong joint pain or loss of range of movement.

The smallest infected, untreated wound can suddenly become life-threatening. The combination of heat, humidity, and poor sanitation, which creates favorable conditions for infections, means that in the tropics of the Third and Fourth Worlds, minor cuts and scrapes are much more likely to require at least careful first aid for several days if they are to heal, and prompt professional medical attention if they show any signs of spreading or persistent infection.

Good, often excellent, medical care is available in almost any country, although often only in big cities. In places where it's available at all, it's typically easier to find than most travellers from the USA expect -- we have an exceptionally complicated medical "system" -- and almost always cheaper than similar medical services would cost a foreigner paying out of pocket for walk-in medical care in the USA. (Insurance for catastrophic medical costs is essential for foreign visitors to the USA, who may find treatment in the USA for even minor injuries, much less a "routine" car crash or other emergency, shockingly expensive.) Most hospitals anywhere have at least some doctors who can communicate on medical subjects in basic English.

Medical care in remote and/or poor communities may be poor or nonexistent, but there's no reason to be afraid to consult a big-city doctor recommended by local expatriates, local people who can afford good medical care for themselves, or in a pinch (and probably more expensively) one recommended by your country's local embassy or consulate.

Far from home, fear of strange doctors and the inertia of a planned itinerary are often reinforced by the sense that, "This is a once-and-lifetime trip, and if I don't do this now I'll never get another chance." Seeing a doctor might mean paying to change your plans, and/or taking a long bus ride to a big city where there are enough people wealthy enough to support adequate medical facilities and competent doctors. I've heard from many travellers, though, who would rather have cancelled or cut short a planned trek or tour, even at some expense, than have had to cope with long-term medical consequences from trying to stick to their itinerary. Travel isn't war, and there are no "Purple Hearts" for travellers who "soldier on" despite injury or illness.

What do authors fear from "Orphan Works" licensing proposals?

Earlier this month I represented the National Writers Union at a fascinating high-level symposium at Berkeley on so-called "orphan works" -- written and other publications, the holders of certain reproduction rights to which cannot be identified and/or found by some or all of those who want to reproduce those works.

Slides of presentations and papers from the conference, including the white paper on Facts and Fallacies of Orphan Works (PDF) that I submitted with the endorsement of the NWU, have been posted online. Audio archives of some sessions have also been posted, and more will hopefully be made available eventually.

Many well-meaning librarians and other advocates for public access to information at the conference found it difficult to understand why writers would object to proposed schemes that would allow works deemed "orphaned" to be copied for certain purposes, by certain users, without those users having to get permission from the authors or other holders of rights to those works.

"What's the problem? What are you afraid of?"

It annoys me that so many librarians and others whose livelihoods depend on the work of writers in creating the books they use have so little understanding of our working lives that they need to ask this question. Nevertheless, the question reflects what is often sincere puzzlement, and deserves a serious answer. Here's a first attempt to provide one.

(While I have discussed these ideas with other writers, including fellow members of the NWU, I should make it even more clear than usual that I am speaking here solely as an individual author, in an effort to inform the discussion and answer some of the questions posed to me at the symposium. Unlike the white paper distributed at the Berkeley symposium, my comments here have not been endorsed by the NWU or any organization.)

Fundamentally, as discussed in more detail below, I think authors are afraid of two possible unfair outcomes of any scheme for identifying books as "orphaned" and/or "out of commerce" (many of the proposals, including those under consideration in the European Union, deal with both of these categories of works) and granting default licenses for their use.

First, authors fear that even facially neutral "orphan works" and/or "out of commerce" schemes are likely to incorporate defaults and procedures that are implicitly biased towards publishers and against authors, and which result in a de facto reallocation of rights and/or revenue share in works deemed "orphaned" and/or "out of commerce" from authors to publishers.

Second, authors fear that some of our own works from which we are, in fact, generating revenues, especially through online self-publication, are nevertheless likely to be classified as "orphaned" and/or "out of commerce" under the procedures being proposed, and that the uses by libraries and others which are proposed for such "orphaned" and/or "out of commerce" works would reduce or destroy authors' ability to continue to generate revenues from those works.

Are these fears well-founded? Would working authors' livelihoods be "collateral damage" -- perhaps unintentionally on the part of librarians and academics -- of schemes to create a "digital library" in which the librarians, the software architects, the builders, and everyone else would be paid -- except the authors whose work would comprise its contents? How would this happen?

European Parliament approves PNR agreement with the US. What's next?

It took some time, but I've posted a detailed analysis at PapersPlease.org of the issues and avenues for activism that remain after last week's vote in the European Parliament approving an agreement on US government access to PNR data for flights between the EU and the US.

The Amazing Race 20, Episode 9

Lake Manyara (Tanzania) - Kilimanjaro Airport (Tanzania) - Cochin, Kerala (India)

I've often said that one of the benefits of taking a trip around the world is obtaining a less distorted mental map of the world. One of the things I've liked best about The Amazing Race is that the reality-TV show has consistently given both India and China appropriate prominence. India and China are too important to ignore, and you can't really say you've "seen the world" if you haven't been to both. The Amazing Race visited both India and China in its first season, and has visited at least one of the two, sometimes both, in almost every season since.

This week in Kerala, the racers got to participate in the two preeminent phenomena of Indian popular culture, as extras in a dance scene in a Bollywood movie and as cricket batsmen.

The state of Kerala is perhaps better known in cultural geography as one of the centers of Christianity and Communism in India. But Bollywood and cricket dominate popular culture -- to the point where both could for many devotees be considered "religions" -- throughout India, including Kerala, as well the other countries of South Asia. Bollywood movies, in fact, may constitute India's highest value, although largely bootlegged, export across the generally closed border with Pakistan.

Turn on the TV in hotel rooms around the world, and you'll see Hollywood movies and television dramas but also Bollywood movies and Mexican and other Latin American "telenovelas" (soap operas). Bollywood has its own conventions -- which its audience expects as part of what they pay for -- but they aren't, on the whole, any more or less realistic than those of Hollywood. In Hollywood, ordinary people may start shooting at each other at any moment, for any reason. In Bollywood, they might do that too, but they are even more likely to break into song and elaborately choreographed chorus-line dance at the most improbable (to American eyes) and serious-seeming moments. Does it really make any sense to say that either is better or worse than the other?

While many people outside South Asia are aware, at least peripherally, that far more movies are made in Bollywood than Hollywood, the significance of cricket to South Asian culture and international sports is less widely recognized. Outside the world of cricket, the sport tends to be thought of in relation to England, where it's considered an old-fashioned, elitist sport and its popularity lags far behind soccer. Even in some of the other major cricket-playing countries -- South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand -- cricket shares the sporting stage with, and often lags behind, another British upper-class invention gone proletarian, rugby.

Cricket is the dominant sport in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, but they are such small island countries that 15 of them field only one joint team in international cricket tournaments, under the collective name of "the West Indies", or colloquially, "Windies". Surely that can't warrant cricket more than a footnote in any survey of the sporting world?

It's the unquestioned sporting hegemony of cricket throughout South Asia that gives it its place as the world's second most popular sport, far behind soccer but far ahead of any possible rival. (I suspect that basketball's growing international popularity, especially in China, places it third. But I can't find any hard evidence to support that speculation.)

To more than one and a half billion people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, cricket is sport and sport is cricket. Students in South Asian schools play a variety of other games, especially field hockey, and my grandfather once coached the soccer team at Punjab University in Lahore. Cricket, though, is what South Asians mostly play for fun, what they watch on TV and in person in stadia some of which hold more than 100,000 spectators behind barbed-wire fences to keep them from charging the field in their enthusiasm, and what fills the sports pages of newspapers and an entire array of specialty magazines and Web portals.

Boys playing pick-up cricket are the ubiquitous backdrop to every scene of Indian outdoor community life, whether in urban alleys or patches of waste ground between planted farmland.

Cricket and Bollywood are the two main sources of Indian celebrity, both of which -- like Hollywood in the USA (Reagan, Schwarzenegger) or hockey in Canada (Ken Dryden) -- have often provided steppingstones to electoral politics as well as the gossip columns. Like baseball and American football in the USA, cricket in South Asia provides an array of metaphors so commonly used in discussing other issues and topics that without knowledge of the rudiments of cricket terminology it's hard to make sense out of an Indian newspaper op-ed page.

It's tempting for someone new to the game not to take seriously a sport in which a single match can go on for three days with breaks for lunch and "tea", where the fielding positions include "silly mid-off" (is that part of the stage directions for a comedy skit?) and a "googly" is a type of pitch. But having accompanied several foreigners to their first American baseball games, or tried to explain to them the logic (logic?) of a televised American football game, I've realized that any sport with sufficient complexity to be interesting is likely to be perplexing to the uninitiated. Why are people at a baseball "park" now sitting down chatting to each other and eating things, and at another moment -- when nothing obviously different is happening on the field -- on their feet and screaming before a ball has even been hit?

For what it's worth, most cricket matches, including those in the professional Indian Premier League (where the preeminence of the salaries, like that in American NBA basketball, attracts the best players from around the world), are now played in one-day formats. And the American baseball counterpart of a three-day cricket "test match" is a "best-of-seven" series played over a week, with strategic decisions like the choices of starting pitchers that have implications throughout the series and not just for a single day's play.

I first paid attention to cricket when when it was impossible not to. My traveling companion and I were staying with family friends in Mumbai during an India-Pakistan test match. (The epitome, like some South American soccer wars, of national conflict sublimated to sport.) The patriarch of the family and all the rest of the men of the house who weren't working were watching the match all day on TV, while outside on the streets throughout the city you could follow the sound of the match on radios and TVs from one open window to the next.

The more closely I looked, and the more our hosts explained the game to me, the more I realized that cricket is harder and subtler than it looks, for bowlers, batsmen, and fielders alike.

The teams in "The Amazing Race" only had to bat, but I was surprised that they were able to get any runs at all without more practice. Each team member was required to hit at least one ball over the "boundary" around the "pitch" (field), which counts for four runs if the ball bounces or rolls before crossing the boundary marker (like a baseball ground-rule double) or for six runs if it goes over on the fly (like a home run).

How hard is that? The "bowler" (pitcher) doesn't have a raised mound to throw from, and is supposed to "bowl" with their arm straight rather than "throwing" with a bent elbow. (A certain amount of elbow-bending is allowed in practice, and the limit of impermissible "throwing" is perhaps the most difficult judgment call for the umpires.) The lack of a mound is more than made up for, however, by the cricket bowler being allowed (1) to take as long a running start as they like before releasing the ball, (2) to release the ball about 1/3 closer to the batsman than the distance from the pitcher's rubber to the plate in baseball, and (3) to bounce the ball on the ground in front of the batsman, rather than being required to deliver the ball on the fly.

There are many more variations in cricket deliveries than baseball pitches. Most often the ball is aimed more or less at the batsman's feet, forcing them to make a split-second choice either to step forward to hit the ball on the fly, or step back (without bumping the "wicket", which would put the batsman out) to play the ball on the short hop. There are curveball pitchers ("spin bowlers") in cricket, but spin can be used not just to make the ball curve in the air but to deflect up (backspin), down (topspin), or sideways when it bounces. A "sticky wicket" is a pitch damp enough for the soil to give more friction with the ball when it bounces, so that spin deliveries jump more sharply as they bounce up in front of or alongside the batsman.

To those used to watching baseball, cricket fielding looks unimpressive -- until you realize that the fielders are trying to catch a ball slightly smaller, harder, and heavier than a baseball, barehanded. Only the "wicket-keeper" (catcher) uses a catching glove. That also makes cricket more accessible to the masses: Only one bat, one ball, and perhaps a glove for the wicket-keeper are needed for 22 people (or more if the teams are expanded in informal play) to take part. Bats and balls can be, and often are, improvised by those too poor to buy them, but the most prized and valuable possession of many a South Asian boy is his cricket bat. Even in England, most of the cricket bats and balls are imported from Pakistan and India.

Cricket fielding is complicated by the flat blade of a cricket bat, which can be used to direct the ball much more precisely than is possible with a round baseball bat. Worse, the bowler and batsman are in the center of the field, and balls hit in any direction are in play. Cricket isn't like baseball, where only 90° of arc are in play and all the other directions are "foul" and out of play. Also unlike baseball, there are no fixed fielding positions other than that of the wicket-keeper. A large part of the strategy for the bowling and fielding team therefore lies in optimally arranging the fielders to be able to catch balls wherever a particular batsman is likely to hit them off a particular bowler delivering particular pitches.

Like Bollywood movies, cricket is often considered an acquired taste. If you haven't yet acquired a taste for either, but you're curious, "Lagaan" is a Bollywood cricket flick (yes, the cricket players periodically break into song and dance!) that had considerable crossover success with audiences outside South Asia familiar with the language and conventions of neither cricket nor Bollywood film. The Practical Nomad says, "Check it out!"

PG&E "SmartMeter" opt-out fees are suspended

I've just received word after weeks of stonewalling by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that PG&E's proposed fees for those who "opt-out" of having a "SmartMeter" and the wireless mesh network data transceiver bundled with it -- or who aren't home, don't have authority to grant access for that purpose, or don't chose to give, sell, or rent to PG&E siting rights for an antenna and transceiver -- have been suspended (at least for now) as a result of procedural errors by PG&E and the CPUC in handling my protest of the proposal.

I was told on April 5th that the CPUC Energy Division's earlier approval of the PG&E "Advice Letter" proposing the fees and other terms of the "SmartMeter" opt-out program had been "withdrawn", but where the CPUC thought that left the status of the Advice Letter and fees remained unclear.

After weeks of unanswered e-mail and voicemail messages, I finally received the following e-mail message today:

Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:15:06 -0700
From: "Dorman, Elizabeth" elizabeth.dorman@cpuc.ca.gov
Subject: ... Re: protest to PG&E Advice Letter 3278-G 4006-E and related matters
To: "Edward Hasbrouck" edward@hasbrouck.org
Cc: "Miller, Karen" karen.miller@cpuc.ca.gov, "Randolph, Edward F." edward.randolph@cpuc.ca.gov, "Tousey, Mary Lou" marylou.tousey@cpuc.ca.gov

Mr. Hasbrouck,

I'm sorry that I have not previously responded to your requests....

Legal Division has instructed Energy Division that the Advice Letter filing is suspended, and requested that they include such label on our website....

I have contacted our attorney who handles public records requests regarding your concerns about communication between CPUC and PG&E staff regarding the above-referenced Advice Letter.

Elizabeth Dorman
CPUC/Legal
elizabeth.dorman@cpuc.ca.gov
415.703.1415

-----Original Message-----

From: Edward Hasbrouck edward@hasbrouck.org
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 9:58 AM
To: Dorman, Elizabeth
Cc: Miller, Karen; Randolph, Edward F.; Tousey, Mary Lou
Subject: ... protest to PG&E Advice Letter 3278-G 4006-E and related matters

Dear Ms. Dorman:

I have received no response to my outstanding request for a definitive official statement as to what the the Energy Division and/or the CPUC consider to be the current status of PG&E advice letter 3278-G/4006-E, and specific[ally] whether you consider it to have been automatically suspended.

The Advice Letter is now listed on the CPUC web site as "Closed -- No Action". But it is not listed on the CPUC Web site as "Suspended".

Please confirm whether you consider this Advice Letter to be rejected or suspended, including automatic suspension by action of CPUC rules.

As of now, the CPUC still lists PG&E Advice Letter 3278-G/4006-E as closed with "No Action" rather than still pending, and doesn't list it as suspended. Equally, or more, importantly, PG&E (which presumably has known of the suspension for at least two weeks) still lists this Advice Letter as "Effective 2/16/2012 Pending Final Disposition" -- fraudulently misrepresenting the status of regulatory approval for its proposed fees in order to induce people to agree to accept a "SmartMeter", and/or fees related to it, under false pretenses.

I've requested that the CPUC itself review the Energy Division's actions, and submitted that request directly to the CPUC at their meeting yesterday (see my comments at 6:11-8:19 of the video archive of the meeting), but the Energy Division has tried to exercise a "pocket veto" of my request for review of its actions, and give itself a "do over".

I'm continuing to pursue both my public records request (which includes records of communications within the CPUC as well as between CPUC staff and PG&E) and my request for the CPUC itself (i.e. the voting members of the Commission) to review what has happened.

[Update: A journalist (David Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle) who contacted the CPUC for comment on this story was told by a different person in the CPUC Energy Division that the e-mail message reprinted above was in error, and that the PG&E Advice Letter is not suspended. I have received no further communication from Ms. Dorman or anyone else at the CPUC or PG&E, so I don't know whether this means that there is a difference of opinion within the CPUC staff, that the CPUC Energy Division is unwilling to accept or acknowledge the legal opinion of the CPUC Legal Division, that someone has changed their mind, or that the statements in Ms. Dorman's e-mail message to me really were (more) "mistakes".]

[Futher update: On April 25th, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) filed its own Advice Letter 2348-E/2109-G containing a provision identical to the one in the PG&E Advice letter that I protested. (See more info here on SDG&E Advice Letters.) I expect that Southern California Edison (SCE) will file a similar Advice Letter shortly. Feel free to cut and paste from my protest of the PG&E Advice Letter if you'd like to file your own similar protest against SDG&E or SCE.]

[Further update: On April 27th, I received a belated, incomplete response to my request for public CPUC records about my protest. It confirms that some CPUC staff think the PG&E Advice letter is not suspended, and is still in effect, but leaves unclear who, if anyone, speaks for the CPUC as an institution on this question. Among the missing records were any records of who was instructed to put what information, when, about the Advice Letter and/or my protest on the CPUC and/or PG&E Web sites or dockets.

The most significant revelation in the records the CPUC has released is that the idea of including provisions in the Advice Letter for those who do not affirmatively indicate that they don't want a "SmartMeter" -- which was outside the scope of the CPUC's decision, and formed the basis for my protest -- originated not with PG&E but with a "suggestion" from Marzia Zafar of the CPUC staff in an e-mail message on Feb 13th (also included as p. 18 of this PDF): "In your advice letter, you may want to add language about those customers who do not choose. Either they are automatically opting in or opting out or you may want to add penalty language or disconnection language. Just a thought after looking at the meter that was under lockdown," Ms. Zafar told PG&E, apparently referring to a picture of a PG&E customer who had secured their analog meter against unconsented replacement or tampering.]

The Amazing Race 20, Episode 8

Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Tanzania) - Karatu (Tanzania) - Mto Wa Mbu (Tanzania) - Lake Manyara (Tanzania)

[Queen of Sheba's Pool, Axum, Ethiopia]

This week the teams on The Amazing Race 20 got a taste of something that's a daily necessity for at least a billion people around the world: waiting in line to fill water jugs at the communal tap, then carting or carrying the water home.

As we saw on the race, the availability of "tap water" doesn't necessarily mean that there's a tap in every home. And in much of the world, those who have access to pumped well water at a tap within walking or hand-cart distance are the fortunate ones. The race was in small towns in Tanzania this week, but there as in most of Africa, any place along a paved road, or within sight of one (in some countries in Africa, any road passable by four-wheeled motor vehicles) is by definition privileged relative to most rural locations. Even in Tanzania's capital, three-fourths of the homes have no piped water, and rely on door-to-door water vendors.

Obtaining water, including both waiting and carrying time, consumes an astonishing portion of the time and labor of people in much of the world.

Axum, for example, is by Ethiopian standards a wealthy, privileged, and cosmopolitan although remote town. It's on a motorable gravel road, has an airport with a paved runway and daily scheduled flights to the capital, and is a major destination for both foreign tourists and domestic Ethiopian Christian religious pilgrims who believe that the Biblical Ark of the Covenant is kept at one of Axum's churches in the care of a special order of monks.

Many people in Axum, however, rely for drinking water on an open, untreated rainwater catch-basin called the Queen of Sheba's Pool, pictured at the top of this article. Looking down from the hill above, we watched a constant procession of townspeople, mostly women and children, coming to dip water from the pool into plastic jugs of every size, to be carried home on their heads, slung across pack animals, or in a few cases on wheeled donkey-carts. From dawn to dusk, there was almost always a line of people waiting for their turn to get to the pool.

These elementary school students in Axum, down the road from the pool, invited us to meet their English teacher, who asked if we would be willing to come back the next day to their class to give them practice talking with native speakers of English.

Would we ever! It's always a privilege and pleasure to find out how local students, and their teachers, see the world. I've gone out of my way to find such opportunities from Indonesia and Vietnam to Turkey and Argentina. Don't be afraid to knock on schoolhouse doors to offer your services as a volunteer. Many public schools and private English-languages academies alike welcome English-speaking volunteers if, as is common, none of their teachers are themselves native speakers of English.

We asked the students what they usually did after school. "We help our families get water," they said, describing a chore that could take an hour or two even for those who live close by.

So what, if anything, is the lesson in this for travellers?

From clean water to clean clothes (remember the episode at the dhobi ghat in India on The Amazing Race a few seasons ago?), things travellers take for granted may have required vastly more labor to provide than we are likely to realize. That makes it important to consider and respect the amount of effort it may have taken to fulfill our requests or offer us goods and services.

When we haggle over snacks and drinks -- even just a glass of water -- by the side of the road, we may be dealing with someone who waited an hour or two in line at the tap, then carried a jug of water on their head for several miles to be able to offer refreshments at a place where tourists like us, or other travellers, would pay for them.

A request for something that seems inconsequential to us, and that we may have asked for without thinking about whether we really "need" it, may turn out to have sent our hosts on an hours-long errand, or depleted their stores of something -- like water -- scarce and for them expensive. That doesn't mean starving, dehydrating, or otherwise depriving yourself, but it does mean trying to be attentive to what will be required for your hosts to fulfill your requests, in both time and money. Don't shower three times a day, for example, if the water arrives by oxcart and has to be bought by the bucketful, or carried home by the hotelier's children after school in the time they might otherwise have spent on schoolwork.

The other question the racers' task raises is what to do when the water that is available isn't safe to drink without a high risk of traveller's diarrhea or worse?

One possibility is bottled water, which is available (for a price) in most places. Aside from the problematic politics of water privatization epitomized by bottled water -- I highly recommend the documentary film Thirst about the anti-water-privatization movement in Cochabamba, Bolivia, as food (drink?) for thought on this issue -- bottled water can be expensive, can't be counted on to be safe to drink, and isn't always available.

Sooner or later you’ll find yourself somewhere bottled water isn’t available. If you don’t have some way to purify or treat contaminated water, you’ll drink whatever water is available, and you’ll get sick. Or you’ll drink no water at all, and soon get dangerously dehydrated. You can’t trust bottled water from street vendors: in places where a bottle of purified water sells for a significant fraction of a day’s wages, local entrepreneurs will go to great lengths to make used bottles refilled with impure water look new and freshly sealed. You’ll probably be able to tell you’ve been conned as soon as you take your first drink, but by then it’s too late.

Boiling water is an effective way to render almost any water drinkable, but isn’t always practical when you are travelling. If you do plan on boiling your drinking water, make sure you have suitable water bottles. The type of plastic used for most bottles in which water is sold will shrink, crumple, and leak if filled with boiling water. Nalgene bottles will hold boiling water without leakage or damage, but aren’t always easy to find while you are travelling. Bring boilable water bottles with you, preferably with at least 2 liters (2 quarts) capacity per person.

Where you can't boil your drinking water, you need some means of chemical or mechanical water purification. For the last several years, I’ve been using this odd-seeming mixed oxidant water purifier:

The "MIOX" purifier has its faults. It's expensive (about US$150), a bit complicated to use (not insanely so, but you have to think about what you are doing and follow directions carefully), and requires special though long-lasting camera batteries. You mix some common salt into a capful of water, push the button on the device, and in a few seconds it produces enough of a bleach-like mixture, through electrolysis of the salt water, to render a large container of water safely drinkable.

On the plus side, it’s a fraction of the size and weight of a water filter like the ones I used to travel with, and has worked reliably for me. When you’re not travelling, you can keep it with your home emergency supplies. The MIOX water purifier was originally designed for military field use in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a civilian version has been available at REI under the MSR brand name. I can't find it in the current REI catalog, and some stores list it as recently discontinued, but other stores still show some in stock, so get one wherever you can find it.

Flawed California bill (SB 1464) would endanger bicyclists

An open letter to the sponsors of SB 1464 in the California legislature:

To:
* Members of the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee
* John Casey, office of Sen. Alan Lowenthal
* California Bicycle Coalition
* Chris Morfas, chair, California Bike Coalition Board of Directors
* Andy Thornley, Policy Director, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Dear fellow bicyclists and bicycling advocates:

As a lifelong bicyclist and longtime California resident, I write to call to your attention my concerns some unintended consequences of one of the provisions of California Senate Bill 1464, recently introduced by Sen. Lowenthal on behalf of the California Bicycle Coalition and others, which would do more harm than any good done by the other provisions of the bill.

I welcome the good intentions of the sponsors of SB1464. But I strongly urge you to reconsider the portion of the bill related to crossing double yellow lines to pass bicycles, to work to amend the bill to remove these provisions, and to oppose this bill if it is not amended.

I had planned to come to Sacramento to explain these objections to you in person at the first Senate Transportation Committee hearing on this bill scheduled for 17 April 2012. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be in Sacramento that morning, so I request that this letter be entered into the hearing record and forwarded to the Legislative Analyst. I've also posted this open letter in my blog, to make others aware of these overlooked issues with SB 1464.

Most of what I had read about this bill and its predecessor, SB 910 (which was vetoed last year by the Governor), including alerts from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, had described these as "Three Foot Passing" bills. I was therefore surprised to find, when I read the complete text of SB 1464, that in addition to amending the requirement for motorists to overtake bicycles "at a safe distance" to require motorists overtaking bicycles to do so with a minimum horizontal separation of 3 feet, the bill also contains what appears to be an entirely independent provision which would make it legal, for the first time in California (or anywhere in the US?), for a motor vehicle to cross a double yellow line in order to pass a bicycle where there is insufficient space for a motor vehicle to operate alongside a bicycle within the same lane.

I would not have inferred, from the title of the bill or the summaries provided by bicycle advocates, that it would have contained such a provision. Certainly this bill was never represented to bicyclists as a bill to legalize motorists' crossing double yellow lines to attempt to pass bicyclists in places where there is impaired visibility of oncoming traffic -- the standard meaning of the double yellow lines indicating a "no passing zone" -- and no room for the motor vehicle attempting to overtake the bicycle to pull back onto its side of the road, should oncoming traffic approach, without having to sideswipe the bicycle off the road.

I find it particularly problematic that the circumstances in which this bill would legalize crossing the center of the road into an oncoming traffic lane -- where there are both double yellow lines and substandard lane widths -- are precisely those circumstances in which unanticipated oncoming traffic is most likely and where any misjudgment by the motorist of the required passing time or distance, or of the likelihood or proximity of oncoming traffic, is likely to result in the type of collision with the bicyclist that is among those most likely to cause serious injury or death.

If there isn't sufficient space to pass a bicycle -- or any other vehicle – safely without crossing the center of the roadway, and there isn't sufficient visibility ahead to see approaching vehicles in time (which is the meaning of, and reason for, double yellow lines), the safe and proper action by motorists – which is, and should continue to be, required by California law – is to wait for a safe place to pass. This could be where the road widens, where oncoming traffic becomes visible for a greater distance (and therefore the double yellow lines end), or the bicycle or other slower vehicle pulls out – whichever comes first. And the safe and proper action by a bicyclist moving slower than other traffic (or any other such slower vehicle) – which already is, and should continue to be, required by law – is to pull out to allow following vehicles to pass.