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HONG KONG — It’s a rural tradition that faded out decades ago as Hong Kong turned into a neon-lit megacity: rice seedlings being dropped into watery paddy fields with gentle plops.

But now a new wave of farmers are growing the staple again in sleepy Long Valley in the city’s northern New Territories, where buzzing insects and flocking birds offer a rich contrast to the high rise blocks in the distance.

Former supermarket supervisor Kan Wai-hong went from working late shifts to harvesting sacks of fragrant, golden rice.

“In the past people in Hong Kong grew rice,” said Kan, 42, about his move. “I could teach the people again and revive rice farming.”

The naturally farmed rice paddies started reappearing in Long Valley seven years ago after a 40-odd year absence.

Started as part of a bird-friendly wetland conservation project, five farmers now produce around three tonnes of rice a year near the border with Hong Kong’s biggest food supplier mainland China.

It’s a mere drop in the 833 tonnes of rice that Hong Kong goes through every day, but it fetches several times the price of mass-produced imports as part of a growing demand for naturally grown food.

A relentless run of food scandals across the border — from rotten meat in fast-food to dead pigs floating in rivers, recycled “gutter oil”, and heavy pesticide use — has made people rethink the way they shop.

“When food safety in mainland China or even other places is not that good, then Hong Kong people will choose foods that are safer,” said Kan.

“The trend of society has changed, people have become more affluent and they care more about food safety — so more people have come into contact with these products,” he said of the more expensive organic fare.

One of the world’s most densely populated places, the former British colony imports nearly all of its food with just 2 per cent of its vegetables locally grown.

But the number of organic-style vegetable farms has increased from a handful of trailblazers in the 1990s to several hundred today — of which 130 are certified as fully organic.

‘We’re scared’

While still flown in to the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city, homegrown organic vegetables now make up 12 per cent of the 45 tonnes of vegetables the city produces daily.

Shoppers are shrugging off the fact that they cost more than their mass produced counterparts.

“After learning that there are quite a lot of different kinds of pesticides or different ways of growing the plants, I think it’s better to have the organic ones,” Jenny Ho told AFP while browsing one of several weekly organic markets.

“[The food] from Hong Kong does not have to travel so long and is more fresh and delicious as a result.”

Despite the shock of a 2008 melamine-laced baby formula scandal that killed six infants, China’s scares have continued to flare.

Sixteen per cent of the country’s land area was estimated to be polluted, according to China’s environment ministry in April, with almost one-fifth of farmland tainted by inorganic elements such as cadmium.

Among the latest alarms to fuel distrust are chicken feet soaked in hydrogen peroxide and a cook who painted dishes with a banned pigment to look more appealing.

Last year, Hong Kong authorities tested around 65,000 food samples and found only 57 from various countries to be unsatisfactory.

Best practice supply farms are also identified on the mainland, and last month new rules on pesticide residues came into effect.

But apprehension remains. “The government is doing quite a good job in Hong Kong,” said Jonathan Wong, director of the Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre. “We’re scared, but we have a better control system now.”

“Food supply in Hong Kong is still safe but we worry,” Wong added, blaming the regular mainland scandals. “This psychologically makes people in Hong Kong feel worried about the food supply from China.”

High demand

By 1980, 40 per cent of farmland in Hong Kong was reported as abandoned and rice paddies made up less than 1 per cent of what was in use. Today, a total of just seven square kilometres is actively farmed.

While the government provides no farming subsidies, it has encouraged farmers to convert to organic and provides technical support.

But shrinking farmland, also eyed by property developers, is often limited to small plots on short-term leases in the space-challenged city, which is also home to rooftop vegetable gardens and vertical fish farms.

Farmer Thomas Fung lives in Hong Kong’s skyscraper sprawl and commutes to his New Territories patchwork of plots rented from six different landlords on leases ranging from two to five years.

It means even more pressure for the farmers, but those prepared to go organic to meet the city’s changing tastes acknowledge that the fears play to their favour.

“The people are quite afraid of the quality of mainland China veggies, so the demand is very, very big in Hong Kong,” said Fung, one of the city’s self-claimed organic farmers.

Wong Yu-wing, whose nearby family farm is one of the largest to be fully certified, agreed.

“Organic planting is much more better than the traditional method because Hong Kong people are looking for organic vegetables — fresh, planted in Hong Kong — so we have a big market.”

NEW YORK — Apple wants the plastic credit card to become as rare as the paper check.

On Tuesday, the company announced Apple Pay, a digital payment system that lets people pay for retail store purchases using their phones rather than cash or credit cards. The service, which will work both with iPhones and Apple’s new Watch, is backed by a host of big retailers, along with most major banks and credit card issuers, including Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

So-called contactless payment isn’t new. Starbucks, McDonald’s, PayPal, Google and Square offer their own services, but only a small portion of customers use them. Some experts believe Apple Pay — with its presence on millions of iPhones and its advanced security features — could be the service that leads to widespread adoption of the digital wallet.

Citi Investment Research analyst Mark May believes the sum total of mobile payments could grow from $1 billion in 2013 to $58.4 billion by 2017.

Payment digitisation paints an enticing vision of shopping’s future: simply tap your device against a checkout screen and walk away with your new shoes.

But despite the flashy Apple Pay launch, Apple faces challenges making that vision a reality. The company and other digital wallet providers must convince shoppers that the transactions are safe — especially in the wake of recent high-profile data breaches at Home Depot and Target. Meanwhile, the company must also make a case to retailers that it’s worth it for them to invest in new point-of-sale systems.

Many US merchants still aren’t sold on the idea. About 220,000 stores are set up to accept Apple Pay. That’s only 5.5 per cent of the 3.6 million retail locations in the US, according to the National Retail Federation. The biggest US retailers, including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, are not participating in Apple Pay.

The main reason is cost. Each point-of-sale device, which uses something called near-field communication technology, costs hundreds of dollars, plus hours of worker training. And there’s been little customer demand for the systems.

That may change now that Apple has entered the arena, says Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

“There’s no doubt young people want to use phones to make payments, but they have to have a place to pay,” says Litan. She predicts bigger retailers will see how well Apple partners like McDonald’s do before they move into mobile payments.

“If it goes well at other retailers, Wal-Mart and other companies may break down and start taking it,” Litan says.

In countries such as Canada and the UK, contactless point-of-sale systems are widespread, and as a result, such payments are far more common. In Canada, for instance, about 20 per cent of transactions at registers processed by MasterCard are completed by contactless payment, according to MasterCard.

“What you learn from that is when consumers start ‘tapping’ two or three times, they never go back to their old behaviour at that merchant... It’s just a much better experience,” says Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard.

One of the strengths of Apple Pay is its security. Its system uses the company’s Touch ID fingerprint technology, a secure chip and payments that require a one-time security code.

That kind of security — similar to the chip-and-pin credit card system used in Europe — would prevent the type of breaches that happened at Target and Home Depot. And it could be a compelling reason for retailers to adopt Apple Pay, Litan says.

“If you get enough people using the service, it would cut down on retailers’ security costs, and that’s why over time it may really take off,” she says.

Still, not everyone is convinced that swiping a credit or debit card is that much of an inconvenience in the first place. Bill Ready, head of next generation commerce at PayPal, points out that near-field communication has been around for 10 years without catching on. His vision of the mobile payment future is more akin to an “e-commerce style transaction happening in the physical world,” he says, citing the example of car-sharing service Uber, which works with PayPal to processes riders’ payments by way of a mobile phone app.

“Uber addressed a real pain point, in that hailing a taxi and payment for a taxi is cumbersome,” he says. “We’re focused on those types of things more than killing the card swipe.”

Even amid the differing visions, most experts agree that the march toward the digitisation of payment will continue.

“Someone is going to figure out how to make mobile payments easy and cheap and then we’re talking a real shift in consumer behaviour,” says Gartner’s Litan.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Robert Plant has been a lifelong rambler with almost no interest in returning home to Great Britain. These days, though, he’s as snug as a hobbit in his hole in his native country after returning to record his latest album, and he doesn’t plan on changing his home base soon.

“I’m back,” Plant said in a recent phone interview from his home along the Welsh border. “My dog is curled up in the sunlight here in the late afternoon and it’s a beautiful day. It’s a beautiful place to be. All the flowers are at maximum full boost.”

Like his choice of place, Plant is returning to musical territory he long ago left behind for the songs on “Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar,” his 10th solo studio album out this week. It’s his first work in years that includes material he mostly wrote. The 66-year-old former Led Zeppelin frontman has been interpreting classic American folk, blues and roots songs for decades to great effect, roaming the back roads of Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas in an endless quest, compelled, he said, by his DNA.

Then something changed in his internal chemistry, and he felt drawn home: “In a way, ironically, being a guy who sang in Led Zeppelin and stuff, I actually just returned to the misty mountains to be honest.” It wasn’t the only life change. He also split with Texas singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, his girlfriend of several years.

“Life goes on, and I have a huge and deep affection for Patty,” Plant said. “I just had to come back.”

You’ll hear Plant obliquely address his personal life on the album in songs like “Embrace Another Fall,” which he says “is about the regret of turning around”. He reflects his experiences on the road in America as well and reconnects with the new/old surroundings of his upbringing.

“The Welsh, you see, have a totally different culture,” Plant said of a history he was introduced to as a child on vacation. “They’re quite lovely players. But once upon a time their stories were way different than the Anglo-Saxon stories. There were stories of changelings and all this stuff that’s inspired by the landscape. It’s there in this current record, too. I’m here and my feet, my body, my energy, it goes deep into the ground.”

He signed up The Sensational Space Shifters, a band of longtime collaborators who deliver muscular trance-rock spiced with rootsy moments, electronic bits and the exotic sounds of Gambian performer Juldeh Camara. They spent 15 months together on the road, then hit the studio. The result is ambitious and strikingly different, and Plant calls the results “a triumph”. After years as an interpreter, he found he had lots to say as a songwriter again.

“All I know is I can do it,” Plant said of songwriting. “There are times when I don’t do it and I wonder whether or not I still can... So to be returning to the gift again is slightly daunting, but really it’s like a current. It just flowed. I had things to talk about, so I wasn’t just thinking about some romantic moment sitting in a barroom or anything like that because that doesn’t suit where I come from, what I do.”

LONDON — London Fashion Week opened on Friday with a new push for online sales, as designers seek to turn the democratisation of the catwalk through live streaming and Twitter into cold, hard cash.

The five-day event will showcase the creative talents of more than 80 designers including Burberry, Vivienne Westwood, Mary Katrantzou and Christopher Kane, including a one-off show by New York-based Marchesa.

More than 5,000 visitors are expected — but as elsewhere, the abundance of live streaming, and instant updates on Twitter and Instagram mean the latest looks are now available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Bigger and more established names in New York, Paris and Milan are seizing on ways to turn this new interactive and global audience into sales.

But like a teenager showing her parents how to use the latest smartphone, London — traditionally the young upstart of the fashion world — intends to lead the way.

Google enlisted

“London is set to be the most tech-savvy fashion capital in the world,” said Natalie Massenet, the chairman of the British Fashion Council (BFC) and founder of designer fashion portal Net-a-Porter.com.

“And the overall aim is to drive sales.”

The BFC, which organises London Fashion Week, has enlisted Internet giant Google to help in its efforts to get designers to boost their online presence, and a raft of new initiatives are planned this week.

Burberry Prorsum will sell the nail varnish used in its runway show on Monday directly to Twitter users during the event, as the social media site trials its new “Buy Now” button.

Fans of the funky label House of Holland wereable to watch Saturday’s show live online and try the clothes on their very own digital avatar as the models walk out.

And Hunter boots will be posting curated video clips from its catwalk show almost instantaneously on Twitter, and targeting content based on users’ geographic location.

More than half the designers here still have to set up a way of selling their wares online, but Peter Fitzgerald, a top sales executive at Google UK, has been holding boot camps and “digital surgeries” to show them the way.

The potential rewards are huge — online clothing sales are set to reach £10.7 billion ($17.4 billion, 13.4 billion euros) in Britain this year, 17 per cent of total spend, according to market research firm Mintel.

“The UK is so advanced in how much people spend and their appetite for fashion,” Fitzgerald said.

“But what we’re also showing designers is that the Internet is truly borderless and many of them are getting over half of their sales now from outside the UK. So that world of e-commerce is just awakening.”

‘New visual language’ 

New technology is not just a way of making money, however. For some designers in London it is a tool for creativity and even an inspiration in its own right.

The label Fyodour Golan, one of rising stars in London, used smartphones to film its show on Friday and streamed the blurry pictures live on a giant inverted pyramid descending onto the catwalk from the ceiling.

The collection itself was inspired by the “new visual language that’s all around us”, where people express their mood by posting pictures on social media, said Fyodour Podgorny, the Latvian-Russian designer who forms half of the label.

The catwalk was a riot of colour — neon orange, green, turquoise and pink, as well as multicoloured stripes, incorporated into the clothing or protruding on a stiffened piece of fabric out the side of a dress.

In among the colours are strips of photographs, of footballers on a pitch and images of flowers, but they are only fleetingly recognisable, just as “in watching a lot of things on Instagram, you don’t understand what it is”, Podgorny told AFP.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple’s website was swamped Friday in what appeared to be a record-setting buying binge fuelled by smartphone buyers’ desire for large-screen iPhones.

Bigger did indeed seem to be better to the throngs who jockeyed in a virtual scrum to get access to the Apple website to order iPhone 6 and the larger-size iPhone 6 Plus models.

Many people took to Twitter with terse tales of frustration and perseverance needed to get through and pre-order the new Apple smartphones set for release on September 19.

The delivery date for iPhone 6 Plus steadily crept outward as the morning wore on and word by mid-day here was that pre-orders had sold out for what will be the biggest Apple smartphone. Apple was promising delivery of the biggest iPhone in three to four weeks.

Those ordering iPhone 6 models or early to order its larger sibling iPhone Plus are still in line to receive them as originally scheduled next Friday.

Technology news website Re/code quoted an Apple spokesperson as saying  “response to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been incredible with a record number of preorders overnight”.

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its first smartwatch and two large-screen versions of the iPhone, in a move to recapture its role as a trend-setter.

Apple added in a new mobile wallet that will allow consumers to simply tap their phones to pay retailers.

New iPhone 6 models boost screen sizes in what some see as the company catching up to a “phablet” trend combining features of smartphones and tablets.

The frenzy at Apple’s website on Friday indicated that in the eyes of myriad iPhone lovers, bigger is indeed better.

Apple’s main rival Samsung has long had a range of larger handsets and has tried to market a smartwatch of its own. 

The iPhone 6 will have a screen of 4.7 inches and the 6-Plus will be 5.5 inches, allowing Apple to adapt to consumers’ apparent preference for bigger displays.

The new iPhone 6 starts at the same price of existing iPhones at $199 for US customers while the iPhone 6 Plus will be at $299 with a two-year contract. Unlocked or unsubsidised models will start around $650.

Apple’s move, expanding the latest iPhone with a four-inch screen, comes as consumers are switching to handsets with bigger displays to watch videos and browse the Internet.

SYDNEY — Australia is the most expensive place for an international student to attend university, ahead of Singapore and the United States, with India the cheapest, a study showed.

The research report by banking giant HSBC, which surveyed 15 countries, said an overseas student would need $42,000 a year to meet university fees and living costs in Australia.

This was nearly $3,000 more than Singapore, and $36,000 greater than a student heading to India. 

Despite the cost, the United States was regarded as offering the highest quality of education, followed by Britain and Germany with Australia only ranked fourth, said the study released late Wednesday.

“The key reasons to send children overseas are the acquisition of foreign languages, international experience and independence,” said HSBC’s head of wealth management Simon Williams.

“But an international education brings an extra dimension of complexity to planning, particularly financial planning. 

“The majority of overseas education is privately funded by parents, and while the concept of a college fund is well established in the US, it is still the exception elsewhere.”

The report, The Value of Education, said that of the nearly 5,000 parents questioned, 89 per cent wanted their children to go to university and 74 per cent would consider sending them abroad.

Indonesians were keenest on an overseas education (89 per cent), followed by Malaysia, Turkey and Hong Kong.

More than half of those questioned said that paying for a child’s education was the best investment they could make, with many — led by Malaysia and China — wishing they had started saving sooner.

The study said Singaporeans were the most positive about the quality of their own education system, with three quarters rating it better than anywhere else. 

However, just 6 per cent of Brazilian and 9 per cent of French parents believe the quality of education is better at home than abroad.

Most expensive countries for international students: Australia, Singapore, United States, Britain, Hong Kong, Canada, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Taiwan, Turkey, China, Mexico, India.

It is OK to dream of the next spectacular IT innovation, to wait for it to be commercially implemented and to get into your life, as long as you don’t neglect what is already available and make good use of it, putting order in your digital contents.

There’s still a long way to go before driverless cars are commonly seen on the road, though there is little doubt that it is going to happen in the not so distant future. Even the much simpler connected smartwatch or wearable smartphone requires significant fine-tuning and design improvement to get wide public acceptance.

Yes, indeed high-tech is well and alive. Suffice it to watch highly publicised events like Apple’s iPhone 6 this week. However, there are the things to come and then there’s what we’re living at this moment, the kind of down-to-earth tools, if this term can be used to refer to high-tech.

I’m not referring to physical devices and machines but to all the practical software tools and methods that are easily available and that help us put order and manage in the ever growing number of digital files we keep.

My line of work in the field of IT puts me in contact with countless users of various walks of life and allows me to come up with my own statistics. I estimate that some 80 per cent of private users have disorganised filing, waste time managing files in the wrong way and are always at risk of losing their data. Even business users do not always do it right, but the percentage of poor data management here drops to about 30 per cent — still an unacceptable figure by today standards

I will skip the question of data backup that is definitely a critical part of any good file management scheme, for by now I would sound like nagging. Indeed this matter has been covered time and again in this very column.

Putting order in your folders and files, managing them efficiently, it all starts with a basic, almost trivial aspect of living with digital information: It simply consists of better knowing the operating system that fuels your computer or computer-based device. Whether you are a Windows, a MacOS, an iOS or an Android user, learning the essentials of file management under these operating systems is where to start.

Naming in a meaningful way, sorting, grouping, filing, copying, moving, searching, and so forth, these are the main tools that you need to keep your treasure of digital information in good order. And yet, after more than 30 years in the personal computing age, few can claim they know well enough how to use these precious tools. How many times have you searched for a file you are sure to have saved somewhere, without being able to find it?

In addition to the functions and methods that are built in to the operating system, one can find a wealth of additional tools that can bring valuable, added efficiency to file management.

To tag and sort your multimedia files, photos, videos or music, avoid doing it manually, it tends to be frustrating, tedious to the point that you would give up from the start. Instead, use JRiver Media Centre for instance, an excellent, if not the best media player around. For photos only Adobe Bridge is a fantastic tool that comes with powerful batch naming, tagging and sorting functionality.

Better File Rename (BFR) takes out the pain from what is an often-needed task, renaming large numbers of files. The best testimony comes from the authoritative PC World: “Of all the file renaming products we’ve tried, the most versatile and easiest to use is Better File Rename.” It has been around since 1999. An example of its power. You have 300 photos of your last trip to Aqaba. Unfortunately you named them all with the word “Dead Sea” by mistake and already numbered them. Then you have also decided to delete a few not-so-good shots. With BFR you can replace “Dead Sea” with “Aqaba” and create a new numbering order if you wish with a couple of BFR keystrokes.

Last but not least, Macro Express is a fantastic keyboard automation tool that is absolutely spectacular and can save you precious time when doing repetitive keystrokes, a task often associated with tidying up large amounts of data and files. Just let it “memorise” any given series of keystrokes and/or mouse actions, however long or complex it may be, and ask it to repeat it any number of times, whenever you want to. It is so useful and so important that I fail to understand how come it is not included with Windows or MacOS.

By knowing your OS filing tools better and acquiring a few additional ones so as to make a perfect job, you will ensure that your precious digital contents are in good order and well kept. Think of this as “homework first”. Only then you can resume dreaming of the crazy things to come in the realm of IT.

PARIS — Teenagers under 17 who use cannabis daily are 60 per cent less likely to complete high school or get a degree than peers who have never taken the drug, researchers said on Wednesday.

They are also nearly seven times likelier to attempt suicide and are almost eight times likelier to use other illicit drugs later in life.

The data, published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry, comes from an analysis of three large, long-running studies in Australia and New Zealand.

“Our findings are particularly timely, given that several US states and countries in Latin America have made moves to decriminalise or legalise cannabis, raising the possibility that the drug might become more accessible to young people,” said Richard Mattick, a professor at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in New South Wales.

The three studies considered the welfare of several thousand young people, who were assessed regularly between the ages of 13 and 30.

The analysis divided them into five categories of cannabis use frequency over 12 months in “mid-adolescence” — meaning, over a period before the individual turned 17. The categories ranged from never to daily use.

And it compared this to their educational achievements.

As far as possible, the review took into account factors like gender and socio-economic status that could skew the picture.

“The estimates... suggested that individuals who were daily users before age 17 had odds of high-school completion and degree attainment that were 63 per cent and 62 per cent lower, respectively, than those who had never used cannabis,” the study reported.

The researchers conceded it was possible that some cannabis users turned to the drug after dropping out of school, rather than before.

But the figures clearly showed that the more cannabis was consumed, the likelier it was that a teen would not finish secondary education.

The link with suicide risk was not a surprise, given previous research evidence of an association between suicidal thoughts and heavy cannabis use, the authors said.

But the study swept aside the notion that teenaged cannabis smokers were more prone to depression or to be dependent on welfare.

No such association was found in the data, they said.

Scientific backing 

Other experts said the results of the study were unsurprising but still provided needed data to support anecdotal evidence about pot use.

“None of the findings will surprise mental health workers, and indeed previous studies have reported similar findings for each of the outcomes separately,” said Robin Murray, a professor at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.

But, Murray added in comments reported by Britain’s Science Media Centre: “This study reminds us that it is important to discourage cannabis use among teenagers.”

“Educational campaigns outlining the risks of heavy cannabis use are warranted whatever the legal status of cannabis.”

He also regretted that the probe did not explore the impact from high-strength cannabis, which now constitutes a major component of sales of the drug.

A contrasting view came from Professor David Nutt, former president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, who argued that cannabis abuse was rooted in the same problems as alcohol abuse.

“In all cases it is likely that significant proportions of the users have pre-existing problems and seek cannabis as a way out,” he said.

“These data don’t really help with the legalisation debate as it’s been legal in Holland for decades with little impact,” Nutt added. “Indeed, young people may use less once it’s legal, if they were rebelling by using it.”

DETROIT — With a thumb swipe on a smartphone, your car one day will be able to drive into a parking deck, find an open spot and back into a space — all by itself.

Technology being honed by French auto parts maker Valeo uses a dozen ultrasonic sound-wave sensors, 360-degree cameras and a laser scanner to safely park within a few centimetres of other vehicles. Then, when you’re done with dinner or a business meeting, the car will return to you after another swipe of the thumb.

The potential benefits are plenty. More orderly parking means less congestion. Drivers are spared the time and frustration of the hunt for a spot. Parking lots can squeeze more vehicles into limited space.

The fully-automated system called “Connected Automated Valet Parking” is still about a decade away, however. More states must permit driverless cars and regulations have to be crafted. Equipment needs to be rolled out.

Still, Valeo executives see it as a big step towards the day in the distant future when cars actually drive themselves with no one behind the wheel.

Other companies have already demonstrated self-parking systems, but in most cases the driver has to find the spot and activate the system to make it work. The Valeo system, demonstrated Monday at an intelligent vehicle conference in Detroit using a Land Rover SUV, allows cars today to do tasks currently performed by human valets.

“The car is able to do a much better parking manoeuvre than we as humans,” said Amine Taleb, Valeo’s project manager for advanced driver assistance systems.

Here’s how it works: Drivers approach their destination and the system finds a deck with an open space. The driver goes to the deck and activates the system. The deck then tells the car where the open space is. The sensors, cameras and laser activate, letting the car drive itself about 4.8kph, winding its way to the space and backing in. The system can even find a space on its own without a signal from a deck.

The system won’t let the car hit anything, Taleb says. And it can brake and even take action on its own to evade a hazard such as another moving car. A driver can even watch the car park through the cameras and software that simulates an aerial view.

Although the technology is already available, there are hurdles. Only nine states allow driverless cars on public roads, and then only for testing purposes, said Scott Belcher, CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the group holding the conference.

Also, parking decks will have to be equipped with systems to communicate with cars. Radio frequencies haven’t been allocated yet by the federal government. The auto industry is vying with the cell phone industry for the bandwidth, for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, Belcher said.

Cyber security guidelines and government regulations have to be put in place. And legal liability has to be sorted out if the car somehow gets into a wreck.

What’s likely within five years is an interim step: The driver finds the space and the car then parks itself. Taleb wouldn’t say if an auto company is interested in buying the self-parking system.

The traffic benefits alone are tremendous. Omno Zoeter, a senior research scientist at Xerox, says some studies show as many as 30 per cent of urban drivers are looking for parking at any given time.

Eugene Tsyrklevich, the CEO of Parkopedia, an app that monitors more than 30 million parking spaces in 45 countries to help drivers park, predicts a decade of transition as cars and then parking garages adopt technology.

“Driving around looking for a space is not dead yet,” said Tsyrklevich. “But it will be.”

This week I complete the 200th run. Of my column Talespin, that is. Four years ago, when I was a brand-new resident of Jordan, I did not realise how far this literary journey would take me. 

I took up the job on a whim. I liked the newspaper office, the friendly staff and the enthusiastic editor. Besides, the elderly doorman who escorted me into a lift, on the day of my interview, had the kindest smile I have ever seen. He wished me luck in a language I did not understand. But the sentiments behind the wish were unmistakable.

Once there, I naively floated various random ideas, which were easily approved. I was asked to send some pieces, in the next several days. I went home, and spun a few tales, typed them as neatly as I could, and handed them in. 

A picture was requested of me, to add to my byline. I mailed them the one that I had in the saved folder of my computer. It was clicked in Zanzibar on a windy morning. I was wearing dark sunglasses, and a part of my face was concealed behind my windswept locks.

It was a perfect snap because it did not even look like me. Unless you enlarged the photograph, and peered rather closely at it, but who had the inclination to do that? I loved it. Also, it gave me the added assurance of being able to write incognito. I mean, who wanted to be roughed up by an irate manager after he read my rather uncomplimentary musings on his restaurant?

But, the subeditor rejected my favourite photo, at first glance. Entire face not visible, was his cryptic response to my melodramatic pleas of, why, O why? I took two days to get over my sulk, and then sent him a picture of myself in front of the Qutub Minar, wearing an artificial smile. This one was accepted, and ran for the first two years and then, as often happens with major reshufflings, my article was moved to a new page, minus my mug shot.

But by now I had a small following of regulars, who did not care if my visage accompanied the write-ups or not. All they looked forward to was my weekly spin, on the spin. Actually, look forward is a very mild term here. I can today understand the dilemma of people, whose creations become larger than the creator.

If, for any reason, I were unable to provide the addictive dose, I got a barrage of brickbats from far and near. The worst accusation I got was from one of my so-called fans in San Diego, who accused me of spoiling his entire week, when he could not find my column online.

But the bouquets were greater in number. It humbled me. Always! Difficult to name all of them here, but for those, who in a relentlessly consistent manner, reviewed my work, and gave feedback, here is a big thank you.

The inspector general of police in Calcutta, the ex army officer, presently an organic farmer in Mhow, the two brilliant college professors, who are also real-life sisters, the popular lady teacher in Jamshedpur, and the vivacious one in Chandigarh, the cheerful live-wire in Texas, the commercial attaché at the American embassy, the businessman whose daughter is getting married in January, and the erudite booklover of Chennai.

From a writer to her readers: Shukran Jazeelan.