Getting disconnected…

Since a certain government decided that websites such as Facebook or Twitter could harm the harmony, they were unavailable here in Shanghai. When that happened in 2005, I actually asked my wife to call the internet company and to tell them that I am a foreigner, hoping that they’d ‘unblock’ my line completely. Well, that didn’t happen. And they tell you always the same thing, anyway: The website is offline. Facebook is offline for weeks now? Yeah, sure.

So, to access the websites - that’s one of the ways I’m staying in touch with friends and family - I used to use a certain software which would open me a gateway to the country of the free, from where on I could access anything: Facebook, Twitter, YouPorn YouTube.

But yesterday, something weird happened. After the little icon turned green and I surfed around for about three minutes, my internet got disconnected. It simply stopped delivering data, the modem said it is connected. After an hour, the connection was back. I thought it was an error in the line, probably someone somewhere was fixing a cable or something.

Wrong. It happened again, as soon as I turned on the proxy software. Damn. 60 minutes later the censored web worked again.

I used my iPod touch to connect by some random neighbors open WiFi signal - worked for a couple of minutes, then he went DOWN! Jesus. It just happened again today. I was out most time, but just now I was off for 60 minutes again after turning the shield on. Damn it!

I mean, that’s just great. Now I’m really disconnected. Thank you, dear Hu. It’s more and more enjoyable here.

Better City, Better Life. Definitely.