fyi

As you may have noticed I've got a backlog of things to write about here. Things like my two weeks in Beijing, my time in Manchuria, the north Korean border, the Russian built city of Haerbin and the time I just spent in Hong Kong. I don't think any of those need as finite a treatment as I gave my two day boat ride from Japan, so I'll try to get them up periodically. I swear.

Basically I've been a bit too temperamental about writing. Internet cafe's in China are widespread and (yes) quite cheap, but they also aren't the clean dark little cubicles you find in Japan. Nope, they are full on screaming arenas of combat, where Chinese nerds hunker down for hours, their screens blazing with exploding starships and speakers wailing with the screams of dying orcs. And since the enemy is usually just sitting across the room at another terminal they'll be yelling taunts at each other. Which makes it hard to read the paper, let alone try and put my thoughts together. Excuses excuses.

Also, as you are probably aware of, modern China is obsessed not only with damming up every major river, but also the entire flow of the internet. The most populous nation on earth is extremely wired, but they are only connected to the outside internet by three cables. Very big thick cables. Last year an earthquake damaged one and all of northeastern China lost internet access for a week. Oops. Three cables means they can effectively block anything they don't like, including the BBC, Wikipedia and the Blogger websites. (Although I can access all of the Wall Street Journal's articles on Chinese development from last year. Weird.) For some reason I can access the page that let's me write stuff, I just can't see my actual blog. Or your comments. Sorry.