When I call Hong Kong a Zeroth World city, this is what I mean. I just checked my luggage at the downtown train station, got my plane boarding pass, and it all took about 70 seconds. Now I'm on high speed rail to airport, no bags in tow
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The train has phone chargers for those who need them. Just try to imagine going to a NYC airport like this. You check bags at Penn station, buy a slice with your MetroCard, and are at JFK in 21 minutes. No one can imagine this
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It might be easier to get things like this if Americans traveled more, especially as kids. But the country is insular and growing more so. So we miss out on cool things we could all enjoy, while talking about how great we are
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Jingoism doesn't just hurts foreigners, it hurts Americans. If we were willing to let go of the idea that we're exceptionally blessed, we could adopt lots of great ideas from abroad in many areas of life
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Hong Kong was paralyzed by a massive downtown match yesterday, and today is completely functional. LaGuardia takes days to recover from a rainstorm
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The even crazier thing about this is that 7-Eleven and Circle K accepted Octopus cards when I lived there, over *15 years* ago
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Oh they existed for a few years when I came to this country (2002) and when I tell tales of the touchless RFID cards to my college classmates I was met with wide eyes. I was surprised I couldn’t “beep” everywhere…
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NYC is, finally and at insane cost, skinning this cat from the opposite direction: the OMNY card system will accept taps from contactless credit cards and phone pay systems. As to the rest of it.. welp.
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(It is, of course, going to cost over a billion dollars and take 4 years to roll out fully, and it’s a bolt-on to the existing terrible inaccessible fare gates.)
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But to buy an Octopus card you still need cash, right? I think HK is still pretty cash-based other than ability to use Octopus at convenience stores etc. Actual credit cards aren’t used for small transactions, especially at mom and pops.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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I know you said your device doesn't allow it, but using transit card to pay is *so* yesterday. WeChat Pay / Alipay QR codes are the future!
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It's not that my device doesn't allow it, it's that I don't feel safe installing WeChat onto my device
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