On the Iraqi elections and a China Taxi scam

I've been back to China for a few months now -- actually, close to 6 months! Amazing how time flies. By now, the 34ID has redeployed back to Minnesota and a much smaller contingent from the 1ID has fallen in on the old battlespace. I've been following the Iraqi elections with interest. How the elections went were really the acid test of success for the military and civilian reconstruction strategy. When all was said and done, 38 Iraqis lost their lives in expected voting violence, but a full 63% of eligible voters turned out and there was no landslide victory (unlike in the staged Afghan elections), which indicates that there was some amount of true democracy going on. In other words, things worked out better than expected.

I think it's a great result, but I'm no longer there and so I sent a note out to one of my friends, an Iraqi Air Force captain, with whom I spent a lot of time when I was there. I'll share his thoughts when he gets back to me.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a lesson I learned recently. Here in Shanghai, you have these RFID commuter cards that store value. They can be charged up with cash, etc. and used for convenience in taxis, subways, buses, etc. I had recently charged mine up to over 700rmb (~USD 100+). One day, I was getting out of a cab and gave my card to be swiped. The taxi driver said that there was no value left. I thought, "WTH? I just charged and used it this morning!" He swiped it a few more times and each time, it came up empty. I assumed that there was a technology issue -- his card swiper or my card might have lost charge, so I just paid with cash. Fortunately, I was able to find a receipt from the last time I successfully used it that showed it still had a lot of stored value. Yesterday, I went to the customer service station to investigate. They told me that the card did in fact have no value on it and that the number didn't even match the receipt print out. The guy asked me if I had carefully watched the driver. I honestly don't recall. Turns out that what likely happened is that the driver saw that I had so much value on mine and pulled a switcheroo on me, giving me an empty value one and holding onto my own. Really sucks, but there is no real way that I can prove anything. The receipt means nothing because he could easily say that he gave it back to me and I lost the cards or confused them later.

Lesson learned, keep an eagle eye on the card to make sure you get it back. Even better -- mark the card with something indelible, like a sticker or some writing, so you can identify it easily when it comes back to you and also to prevent someone from even trying.