Interoperable travel (and not)

I’m in the air on the way to Melbourne, Australia to do 3 weeks of work on a variety of things. I thought it would be interesting to note the standards that delighted, or were used or abused along the way:

Good things:
1. English: It’s nice to have a standardized communications interface all along, and comforting for me to know that all the pilots have standardized on English as their standard command language. I enjoy going to other cultures and trying different languages for pleasure, but work is much easier without translation.
2. Internet: a glimpse into the future of global standards – its all the same and familiar no matter where I am for the next 3 weeks. Could run into a modem if I get to the outback, but unlikely.
3. Commerce: Got VISA? No problem. Need cash? ATMs abound. Sure beats letters of credit, money belts and travelers checks of yesteryear. Score one for interoperable, cross organization data and security.
4. Government: Seems like a pretty standardized disregard/disdain of government everyplace I landed, though it’s pretty remarkable how well we seem to have figured out a lot of things in terms of governance, visas, and the like. I’m not going to comment on security.
5. Airline reservation system: Built in the 60’s and improved ever since – pretty amazing when you start to think about all the moving parts that it encompasses.

Frustrating or suboptimal:
1. Left side driving – no renting a car in Australia – I’m not comfortable driving on the other side of the road – what if we all went one way or the other worldwide – what would cumulative impact on manufacturing, travel, etc be?
2. Plugs: My adapter is at the ready for Australia, and can interface me to about 9 other countries as well. Too bad we don’t have a globalized standard – though you can understand that it grew up separately.
3. That pesky metric system: This is “our bad” in the US. I remember in 5th grade we were going to convert, and we bailed apparently – likely that last generation of lobbyists.
4. Cell phone: I’ve gone from unlimited usage to $1.69 a minute while I’m down under. Hello, Skype.
5. Wireless roaming – sheesh, you think there would be transparency and some simple way to do this without yanking out your credit card every time – like telling TMobile to make it happen as long as it doesn’t cost more than $5/hour for short term access.