Remember The Time?

Since sometime in late spring- around Memorial Day weekend and certain unspeakable events that happened twenty years ago around the first week of June- just about every Western blog has been blocked, leaving me unable to post anything without the help of a good proxy filter. Avoiding China's Great Firewall is not very difficult to do, but it's often a nuisance. I've been using Facebook and Twitter- two other blocked services- with much less frequency than the nearly hourly use to which I was accustomed. Like many other expats here, I was hoping this would all just blow over as the summer passed by notable anniversaries that could be exploited by overzealous internet users. Unfortunately, since then we've seen a steady stream of major blog-worthy events, of which several gave the monitors of the Great Firewall more cause to keep the current bans in place.

I fell ill and was treated at a Chinese hospital, giving me valuable insight into the current American health care clusterf*ck.

Michael Jackson died, which was a bummer but ultimately not world changing. His influence lasts, but them man was essentially irrelevant.

Chaos and violence in Xinjiang Province. The western province home to a substantial ethnic minority has been in a state of unrest due to ethnic and political tensions that spilled over into violence this July. Twitter got blocked again in the wake of this. I spoke to a guy from Xinjiang I know recently about this. He said that things out there are bad, but that his people are treated well in Shanghai. I found this curious, since many Chinese people I've spoken to stereotypically talk about Xinjiang people in racist stereotypes.

Friends and I formed a band and have our first concert scheduled for Novmember 4, the one year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama.

More ethnic tension across China as stabbings involving syringes and ethnic minorities occur.

I started working a second job as I learned the true face of working in China. Don't believe what you've read in the NYT or AP regarding working here. They're aloof.

Soon, we will have a major holiday: the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Things should get ridiculous.

The Yankees made it back to the playoffs.

Keep alive.