[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] Amazing Race 15, Episode 10

[Edward Hasbrouck]

Scroll down for the latest on "The Amazing Race",
following other news and upcoming events:

=====

Keeping Track of Travelers' Personal Information:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001790.html

WSAV-TV used my forms and instructions to request
the US government's records about their travels,
and has posted a 20-minute interview with me about
what they found, what it means, and why it matters:

http://www2.wsav.com/sav/news/local/article/while_you_watch_the_skies_is_someone_watching_you/71678/

=====

I'll be in Boston, New York, and Washington DC this week
and next to meet with National Writers Union chapters
concerning the revised proposal for a settlement of the
copyright infringement lawsuit against Google for scanning
books without the authors' permission. Details:

http://hasbrouck.org/events/#schedule

All of these events are open to NWU members and other writers,
including former and prospective NWU members, but please RSVP
to the respective local organizers.

I'll also be attending the Federal Trade Commission
Privacy Roundtable in DC on December 7th, on behalf
of the Consumer Travel Alliance, to urge that the FTC
take action to protect the privacy of travel records.

=====

The Amazing Race 15, Episode 10

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001792.html

Prague (Czech Republic)

Lessons in travel bureaucracy

This week in Franz Kafka's home town, the cast of "The Amazing Race  
15" faced some of their most difficult challenges yet. Harlem  
Globetrotter teammates Nathaniel and Herbert were defeated by a  
bizarre task involving an anagram of "Franz" composed of letters  
provided by voices on five of several hundred simultaneously ringing  
telephones filling a room at the Kafka museum, to be filled in along  
with a panoply of other irrelevant personal information on a form  
submitted for approval to a pair of silent and inscrutable  
"Supervisors". Unable to unscramble the anagram after several hours of  
guesswork, the Globetrotters gave up on the challenge, and took a  
four-hour penalty that eliminated them from the race.

In reality, travel isn't usually this Kafkaesque, though it sometimes  
seems that way. Unlike in Kafka's stories or in this episode of the  
race, even bureaucrats generally aren't trying to torment you with  
inscrutable forms or requirements. Their procedures have, in their own  
minds, a logic, and the key to understanding them is for you to see  
them from their point of view. The essential task of the traveller as  
amateur anthropologist, if you want to get things done with a minimum  
of bureaucratic hassle, is to grasp the perspective of the people you  
are dealing with, and their understanding of the meaning of their  
interaction with you and the roles they see themselves and you as  
playing, rather than to figure out the official "rules" that might (or  
might not) nominally govern the interaction.

There's also a lesson in the Globetrotters' decision to give up and  
take the penalty. Sometimes it's a rational choice for a traveller to  
give up on someplace you wanted to go or something you wanted to do or  
see, or to take a penalty of time or money rather than carrying on  
with what had seemed a better alternative but that has become  
intolerable or interminable. More often, however, if your approach to  
a travel task seems to have led you into a maze of twisty little  
passages, all alike, that should be your clue that there is probably  
an easier way to accomplish your goal.

Rather than continuing to beat your head against the wall, or giving  
up entirely, take a break. Ask for help from local people, language or  
gestures or pantomime permitting. Observe what other people are doing.  
Consider whether there is some completely different way to pursue your  
goal -- perhaps another day, after a mental and physical rest.

One corollary, of course, is that haste is a major contributor to  
frustration with bureaucratic delay. If you aren't in a hurry, it's  
not necessarily a problem to come back tomorrow when the paperwork  
will be complete or the proper official will be in the office.

There are places where people spend much of their time negotiating  
bureaucratic mazes, but they are rare. And even in the worst of such  
places, local people have, of necessity, learned the paths of least  
resistance. Unless you are trying to do something strongly counter to  
prevailing community values (or the values of any local counterculture  
from within which you might find assistance, if helping you wouldn't  
endanger your helpers), most people are usually happy to steer you,  
too, to those paths of least resistance. Often, doing it the locally  
normal and expected way is easier for them as well as for you than  
trying to do it your way.

Most of the time, you'll get better results if you start by telling  
people your goal, and at least listen to how they suggest that you try  
to accomplish it. Say what you want, and let them suggest how best to  
get there. If you ask specifically about the bus schedule, you can't  
blame your informant for not telling you that you'd be better off  
taking a train or hiring a car and driver. That requires a higher  
degree of trust in strangers, of course, but there's a very direct  
trade-off: the more willing you are to trust others to figure out  
routes and methods, the more efficiently you'll get things done -- and  
the more you will learn about local ways of doing things. You don't  
have to take their advice, but it's educational to hear what it is,  
even if you then insist, for you own reasons, on doing otherwise.

Rarely in "The Amazing Race" have we seen a team give up trying to  
complete a challenge, as the Globetrotters did this week. But even  
more rarely have we seen a team stop, take a break -- sit down,  
perhaps have a copy of tea, enjoy some music or light reading or a  
chat with a passer-by about something unrelated to the task at hand to  
clear their minds -- and ask themselves, "If it's so difficult to do  
it this way, is there a completely different and better way to  
approach this problem?"

In the case of the Kafka anagram, the Globetrotters filled out the  
entire long form to submit to the "Supervisors" with each of their  
random guesses. But there are only 120 permutations of the letters  
FRANZ. It took me only 10 or 15 minutes to write them all down on a  
piece of scrap paper. I know no Czech, but once I had written down all  
the letter sequences, it was obvious that only a a handful were even  
conceivably words in any European language.

If the racers had thought about it before throwing in the towel, they  
might have realized that systematically exhausting the possibilities  
would have taken them less time than they thought, and almost  
certainly less than the four-hour penalty. As it was, the  
Globetrotters had no chance to catch up after their penalty, leaving  
the three other remaining teams to race back to Las Vegas to the  
finish line and the million-dollar prize next week.

-- 

Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214