Before I left for New Orleans I was telling friends and neighbors of my plans. "Are you going to Eat at Mother's?" "I bet you can't wait to taste some Jambalaya." "There's a place on Bourbon where you can get a Hurricane and next door some Sweet Potato Fries just covered in powdered sugar, please have it for me." No, No, a thousand times no. New Orleans is guilty of feeding some garbage food to tourists and the tourists are guilty of loving it and going all over the internet screaming the authenticity of the overpriced Jambalaya they had on Bourbon Street. I once wrote about the bad food done in New Orleans name outside of New Orleans. The bad food has also infiltrated the Quarter. Here are a few common sense tips to eating in New Orleans. If the sign says 'voted the best" or "authentic" run away. Most of the places guilty of food fraud are in the quarter, there is even a place in the French Market offering 'authentic Cajun Tacos.' There are exceptions like Galatoires, Johnny's and Central Grocery however you should do most of your dining outside of the quarter.

When a former client's secretary was arrested for embezzlement years before his own crimes were uncovered, Bernie Madoff commented to his own secretary, "Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand. You get comfortable with that, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big." We now know that Madoff's Ponzi scheme started when he engaged in misreporting to cover relatively small financial losses. Over a 15-year period, the scam grew steadily, eventually ballooning to $65 billion, even as regulators and investors failed to notice the warning signs. Many of the biggest business scandals of recent years - including the News of the World phone hacking scandal, billions in rogue trading losses at UBS, and the collapse of Enron - have followed a similar pattern: The ethical behavior of those involved eroded over time. Few of us will ever descend as deeply into crime as Bernard Madoff, yet we all are vulnerable to the same slippery slope. We are likely to begin with small indiscretions such as taking home office supplies, exaggerating mileage statements, or miscategorizing a personal meal in a restaurant as business-related. Nearly three-quarter of the employees who responded to one survey reported that they had observed unethical or illegal behavior by coworkers in the past year.

Traveling abroad with credit card? You better bring cash

American travelers prepping for their late summer (or increasingly common September) trip to Europe might consider the above items as standard for their pre-departure list. But there's something that they may not have packed, and that item has become quickly the norm as the worldwide trend towards cashless consumer purchases continues to rise.

When it comes to the debatable necessity of smart cards, some travelers heading overseas are receiving mixed messages from their banks. To ensure that his magnetic swipe credit card would work abroad, Daniel Hayes, an English teacher from Fort Myers, Florida, called Chase Bank before his summer trip to Europe.

"They said I could use the credit card anywhere, or at least in 99 percent of places-there was no mention of chip and PIN," Hayes said as he strolled along a shaded canal in Amsterdam's tourist-packed Red Light District. Yet Hayes and his friend, David Thorpe of Cape Canaveral, reported that their ability to use their credit cards while traveling cross the European continent had been inconsistent at best.

Anyone heading abroad will likely notice that smart chip cards are quickly becoming the worldwide standard. According to the Smart Card Alliance, 99.9 percent of European terminals are chip-enabled. The United States significantly lags behind other continents on EMV technology, too: more than 86 percent of terminals in Africa and the Middle East are chip-enabled. In Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, that number is nearly 85 percent.

The phrase "chip and PIN" may draw a blank for American consumers long accustomed to the traditional "swipe and sign" credit cards, in which account information is contained on a magnetic strip on the back of the card. Chip and PIN cards take advantage of EMV "smart chip" technology: data is embedded within a chip, and transactions are verified through a PIN, or Personal Identification Number. Because encrypted chips are hard to counterfeit, smart cards enabled with chip and PIN offer superior security to magnetic strip cards.

Contrary to appearances, American financial institutions have long been aware of the merits of EMV technology. After all, JPMorgan Chase originally developed it. One reason U.S. banks have been slow to launch smart chip cards is their expense: EMV technology remains a pricier option than the status quo of magnetic strip cards.

That's despite an upswing in well-publicized credit card fraud crises that have recently swept the news, including Target's notorious December 2013 security breach. In Target's case, the payment information of more than 40,000 cardholders was compromised when it was "skimmed" from the magnetic stripes on the back of the cards, leaving some experts to question whether EMV technology might have prevented such a debilitating assault on a secure customer data.

No chip? No burger and chips

One country that has fully embraced the Chip and PIN system is the Netherlands. While local businesses tend to take cash, they are less likely to welcome traditional magnetic stripe credit cards. For the Dutch, PIN-enabled cards are such a part of life that a relatively new verb has firmly entered the lexicon: "pinnen" means to pay by PIN-enabled card.

On a Thursday evening in Amsterdam this summer, customers ordered exotic-sounding pumpkin and beef burgers at the Jordaan neighborhood's popular burger joint De Burgermeester. Most paid with chip and PIN cards; a few paid with cash. Sorry, the cashier apologized in perfect English, no "American cards" taken. In the same neighborhood, De Pizzabakkers, a popular local pizza chain, declined to take cash at all: waiters circulated with hand-held portable electronic card readers. At the end of their meals, diners paid table-side by inserting-not swiping-their cards and entering a PIN. Tourists desiring to leave a tip at either Amsterdam establishment must still bring cash-the card readers aren't set up to add tips.

Where should travelers headed across the Atlantic expect to find chip-and-PIN cards required, yet without an alternative to pay with cash?

Automated points of sale remain the most likely culprits: think ticket machines at parking lots, rental kiosks, and public transportation hubs such as subway, train and bus stations. In Amsterdam's bustling Centraal Station, for example, this forlorn sight is familiar: the tourist struggling to buy train tickets from an automated ticket machine. While fluent English-speaking agents offer assistance at the ticket counter, many frustrated travelers end up heading to the ATM to withdraw cash before returning to wait in line: the ticket counters accept cash, but not magnetic stripe cards. Continue reading...
 

Paul Haswell is a Hong Kong-based technology and telecommunications lawyer at Pinsent Masons LLP who moonlights as a hip-hop DJ at Hong Kong's RTHK radio.

The U.K. native spoke to the Journal about racking up a million air miles, traveling as a vegetarian and the wisdom of being polite while on the road.

How often do you travel?

It comes in spurts. I don't travel for two months, or I travel every single week.

Where do you go most?

[In 2007, I] started commuting from Norway every single week. I was living in an airport, or a plane, or a hotel for three years. Nowadays, I'm focusing more on Asia-spending most of my time going to places like Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and occasionally back to the U.K.

Preferred airline?

I tend to fly Oneworld…completely for air miles.

How did you get started on the frequent-flier program?

When I started to do the Norway trip, I was always flying with [British Airways IAG.MC +1.24%] and started accumulating air miles. I realized about six months in that the miles were really adding up, and I was getting status.

How do you collect air miles?

It became an obsession. I always book my flight to maximize the number of air miles. I discovered if I stay in a certain hotel, I'll get miles, and even when I'm going out for dinner-if I just eat in a hotel, I'll get miles for doing that. If I buy clothes in certain shops at the airport, I'll get miles. I get credit cards that also give me miles. Literally everything I was doing was focused on maximizing the miles.

Do you have an example?

I lived in the same hotel for three years. I'm vegetarian, and the hotel where I was staying had only one meal option for vegetarians, but it was the only way I could get miles, so I had that for dinner almost every night for three years. I lost a lot of weight, but I did get over a million miles.

How do you use your air miles?

Just for holidays.

Favorite airport?

Hong Kong. I can land at the Hong Kong airport and be home or at the office within 30 to 40 minutes. Hong Kong puts the least number of barriers in the way.

Worst travel experience?

A few days before Christmas [in 2010], I had to fly from Oslo to Hong Kong via Heathrow. In Norway, they had about six feet of snow, plus two millimeters of snow in Heathrow, so my first flight from Oslo to Heathrow was canceled. Normally you don't mind if the flight is canceled because there's always a next one. The worst case is you stay in a hotel and you get out the next day-I ended up spending five days in the Oslo airport.

Best travel experience?

I had a trip with fellow colleagues, and we were supposed to fly economy. Everyone was very unhappy about this. But I got upgraded to business-but business was also full-[and then upgraded] into first class because I had so many air miles. I also believe that was the flight where Brad Pitt was on the same plane. I didn't say anything to him though because I was too nervous.

How do you stay in shape while traveling?

I don't like to go to the hotel gym. If you have some spare time, just go walking-walk around the city and see as much as you can.

Any tips on traveling as a vegetarian?

It can be really difficult. There's a website called Happy Cow that I check to see which restaurants are good when I go to a city, but some aren't very good for business travelers-not good places to take clients.

What's left on the bucket list?

I like all types of music, but one of my favorite musicians of all time is Louis Armstrong, the jazz musician, so I've always wanted to go to New Orleans. I also would like to spend more time in Japan just because it's an interesting place and quite difficult for a Westerner to get around.

Favorite travel app?

The translation ones-iTranslate-there are a few of them and they're all different. I tend to use them to try to figure out what menus are. Also, it's very difficult to explain to people you are vegetarian, so I use them a lot for that.

What's your travel advice?

My No. 1 tip for traveling is-wherever you go in the world and no matter what goes wrong on the trip-always be polite. I've found the best thing to do is just be nice to people.