Memoirs of Beijing

It’s Day 7 since the Great Firewall of China blocked access to Facebook due to the “Xinjiang riots”.  Facebook officials are saying that they’re not blocked but I would say otherwise.  A lot of expats are scrambling and begging IT geeks on ways to go around the firewall.  Advice range from having your own vpn, accessing through companies overseas access, proxy or by installing a software.   For me, I’m lucky enough to have overseas access at the office.

In any case, if you’ve been following my personal blog, I got hooked into playing facebook games.   I sometimes play all of them at the same time as they involve time.    Let’s see.. last count I was playing Restaurant City, Pet Society, Mafia Wars, Be A Tycoon and Vampire Wars.  Right now, with the low resolution and old version of IE, I can only play Mafia and Vampire Wars.

Now I know how those people who got addicted feel like when they’re in withdrawal.  I do hope that the government unblock it soon.  I mean, I can do without youtube.  I’ve already worked a way to blog without resorting to wordpress.com and I’m happy that they’ve brought back Flickr.

I hope the government is listening to the clamor of the expats.  They could always just ban by keyword not the entire social networking site.  I mean you’re grouping everyone as someone who supports the riots when for some people they just use it to connect with their friends and loved ones.

PS.  Bypassing the GFC on my next blog.