(Wednesday, February 17th, 2016)
I just thought that I would put that song in your head. Everybody needs a little Zep once and again.
I am in a nice hotel in Shanghai that my family stayed in more than 10 years ago. Fun! I will be walking a bit tomorrow and will likely take a few pictures. It will be interesting for me to see how many 2004 pictures I retake in 2016. There’s a really tall building across from the Bund (I’ll write about that later) that was under construction last time, and now is complete. World’s almost tallest (I don’t know the number, just know that it isn’t number one). Of course they don’t call it that. I hope to go up it.
And I have internet. But. I seem to be able to get to Yahoo, like Yahoo Mail, but not Google, or GMail. And I am able to get to WordPress and post some blog posts, but my Dropbox is stuck on “connecting”, and hasn’t been successful yet. Hmmm.
So I think that my internet choices are receiving some extra guidance here. It’s 1am and I am not going to push the hotel staff to explain. I might try a Starbucks tomorrow but I have low expectations.
In the meanwhile, darn. I posted a few posts, as you no doubt already saw, but I am currently thwarted at uploading the pics that go with them. Oh well. We are making four stops overall in China before we head to other places. In a couple of weeks or so we’ll be in Korea and Japan. Might just have to wait ’till then.
—– Addendum (February 21, 2016) —–
I’ve been thinking about what I wrote above. I have a VERY limited and expensive satellite capability on the ship (tied to a South Korea ISP). I used some of that precious capability to look up a couple things about China and internet blockage. The Great Firewall of China. Ha!
It’s a lesson for me, and I am writing about it in case it is a lesson for others. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Our world has too much going on for us to be able to “go deep” on everything. We skim. It is happening “way over there”, and so we go on to skim the next thing. That’s normal. We aren’t expected to consume everything. We wait ’till it makes the headlines again, then think about it again.
There is a danger there, eh? We passively accept situations that we shouldn’t just accept. Example: My Romanian friends are wondering why we in the US don’t think Crimea is important anymore. With this note I just wanted to renew that awareness of our skimming. I have no solution, I am way not smart enough for that. I just thought I’d spew while I was thinking about it – in response to something that just happened to occur “right here” for me.
I’m finally starting to see and understand the adventure/excitement you are experiencing on this journey. The beautiful sites, the challenges faced on getting a huge ship in and out of ports, the diversity in the people you meet, both on and off the ship. Great posts and pictures. Keep it up. Duane and Kathy
So good to hear from you. Thanks for the update and all the information. I’m not sure if you posted any photo’s to Dropbox, but I didn’t see any. It will be interesting to hear what you have to say about Shanghai after 10 years. I hope you were able to go up in new hotel next to the Pearl Tower. They have a great “chocolate bar” plus a great view of the city. Smooth sailing….
Thanks for the great blog John. I seems lots of people are follwing you. Haha, now you have pressure. The Chinese government started blocking Dropbox about a year ago. It’s been a huge pain for our business; we had relied on it heavily in China. Here you can see what popular websites are blocked in China: https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains. It actually changes quite often.
Okay! That answers my question about the map. It probably was your map that got you in trouble.
Janis