Technical Difficulties

China is having technical difficulties today.

Many of the expat sites are exploding with complaints- google issues, gmail issues, basic internet connection issues....it's down, it's all down.

For me this means two things- uno, no home phone....something about the port being blocked. Two, very spotty VPN. That means no internet with no VPN! We may as well be in the 14th century here.

The reason....well most here agree that big brother is blocking as much as possible ahead of the leadership transition here (new President). Why, I don't know. They are taking extra steps to block google, gmail, and some routes to servers in the US and elsewhere.

The solution....well 3G on my phone works, and I can run VPN through it....but it's slow and inconsistent. So, today I'm going to let it all go. No internet, no phone, just me and Mother Earth. David asked me to give him a casting lesson today since we are going sea bass fishing on Wednesday...and he really wants to try to fly fish when we go. I brought him over a Lamiglas spinning rod, think he should stick to that....but he's excited and I think he'll be a good student of the sport, so who am I to tell him what to do?

Sarah has to go to work today (sucker), and I think she is traveling to Beijing later in the week...maybe that's next week....at any rate I think I'll be tagging along as a few people have asked me to scout out the scene there before they come visit.

I'm hoping we can take the train over. It's about a 5 hour ride- and it rips at 240MPH! I was looking at the schedule and rates....they run like 50 SH to BE trips a day! There are 5 classes of seats that range from real cheap to about $300 each way. A basic seat is about $20, then there is hard sleeper, soft sleeper, 3rd class, 2nd class, 1st class, and business class. Gong du!