Dinner and an Internet Update

I went to dinner with six other people tonight. I’ve become “the one who speaks the best Chinese” out of the people I’ve met, so I ordered everything. It was amazing – I didn’t have any problems with ordering! I’m excited.

However, things that I am not excited about include the very real block over here on weblogs. It isn’t an urban myth or something. I seriously cannot access blogger blogs. And yes, that means I can’t even view my own. This bothers me, to say the least. I guess there’s a list of about 200 kinds of blogs that are blocked. They haven’t gotten xanga or livejournal yet, though. I wonder if I can get around this with RSS feeds directing blogs to somewhere else.

This block is insane to me. Before I left for China I had heard of it, but I dismissed it as virtually impossible. How are you going to censor the internet of an entire country? Or even just one city? It can’t possibly be done. Well, unfortunately for me, it can and is being done. Maybe it bothers me so much because I just don’t know how they did it. And whatever they’re using isn’t tricked by domain names that don’t include blogspot (like hillaryisinchina.com or 805southhenderson.com). I’m going to try to get around it. If you have suggestions about how to do the RSS thing, send them along to hdemmon at gmail dot com.