New Years and Old Internets

Welcome to 2007 everybody.

You may or may not know that an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan on Boxing day destroyed the cables that provide internet services for the 1.3 billion of us living round these parts, so for the last week or so I've had a wonderful trip down memory lane, internetting at speeds reminiscent of the mid 90s. I've come to the realisation that most webpages these days just aren't designed for viewing at a startling 1kb per second.

I'm assured that the finest network repair technicians in all of China have donned wetsuits and are working on the problem now, but it will be late January until they are back to speed, so I probably won't be putting much up here.

On the other hand, there probably won't be much to write about, I am officially payroll ballast until the start of March, as my classes have finished (as far as I'm aware anyway, getting a definitive answer on that issue has been difficult. For all I know I'm supposed to be teaching right now.) As it is snowy and freezing outside, I'm basically confined to quarters for the next few weeks, working on my Chinese and going crazy (probably at the same time).

Come the end of January I've got a week in Beijing, followed by a train to Hanoi and a few weeks there (including Vietnamese New Year - Tet, which should be fun), which I'm pretty damned pumped about. Expect plenty of photos and blather then.

xin nian kwai le!