As most are aware, an earthquake last month near Taiwan damaged several undersea cables that–for reasons passing understanding–constituted most of China’s principal internet connection with the rest of the world. The China Daily earlier this month reported that the connection would be up and running again by January 15. I’m not sure why I believed them. When did I drink the Kool-Aid? These are the same people who were telling me two years ago that SARS was definitely not in Beijing.
My lack of internet access can’t compare to a government cover-up of a deadly epidemic, but it still seriously takes the jam out of my daily donut. Right now I’m limited to kowtowing before my laptop as the ADSL connection in my future inlaws’ apartment tries in vain to reach my email, my library, and my fantasy basketball team. YJ’s mom and dad must think I’ve gone totally insane…every evening all I do is sit hunched over a tiny laptop screen mumbling ominous curses with occasional vulgar yelps of profanity as the bits and bytes creep their way to my computer like ants drowning in tree sap.
I am desperately fighting the urge to pour baijiu over the keyboard, light a match, and throw the whole flaming mess through the window of the nearest CT office, but that might lead to…unpleasantness. So I will instead DRINK the baijiu and continue to offer supplications to whichever god/goddess (Mazu?) is in charge of subsurface fiber optics. Wish me luck.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Jan 23, 2007 at 6:57 am
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, either. Much as I’m looking forward to getting back to Dalian in (gulp) a week and a half, I’m sort of dreading the internet situation. Who knows, maybe they’ll have fixed it by then. And I’ll have learned Chinese by then. Right.
I’ve often found a long string of multi-lingual swearing does something magical to computers. I usually start in Italian, throw in a bit of Spanish, then finish it off with Brazilian-Portuguese. My Chinese hasn’t caught up, yet, but maybe you shouldn’t use the native tongue for such unpleasantries within earshot of your future in-laws.
2 Gracchi // Jan 23, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Good luck- multilingual swearing is the way forwards- being a history PHD in early English stuff I tend to throw some biblical epithets at my computer it has been compared to Cain and called a blasted Royalist machine, I have a passing interest in Monty Python as well so have occasionally labelled it the Popular Printing Front. I can understand your woes though- internet connections going funny are the most annoying thing- computers always crash- its an inevitable law- when you’re just about to do something. My worst blog moment was when I’d written a truly wonderful piece (as you are about to see noone read it so for once I can say it without contradiction) about I think the history of Roman Republicanism to see the internet decide to Time out at the precise moment that I attempted to post it to my blog- having not saved the post (I know stupid) I had to retype the whole thing from memory nad it wasn’t as good as the original. I don’t know what the point of any of that was- but I hope your connection is back soon- I’ve been missing my Chinese history fix for a while.
3 無名 - wu ming // Jan 24, 2007 at 1:46 am
the itching and cold shakes tend to wear off after the first week. i go through this every time we visit the wife’s family up north, who only recently switched from dialup and an archaic iMac powered by lethargic hamsters. i spend a lot of time sitting on the porch staring off into space until i remember what in the world human beings used to do before the freebased crack that is the internet came into our lives (ie. civilization III, oops, i meant conversation and quiet walks in the woods).
4 The Humanaught // Jan 24, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Down here in Suzhou it’s improved quite a bit over the last couple weeks. It’s virtually up to the pre-earthquake levels (which were, admittedly, hit and miss).
Maybe it’s us Jiangsu’ers that are eating up all you Tianjin’ers’ bandwidth through the Korean access points… Jiangsu’ers are known for being porn fiends.
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