Crazy Haimen Internet

The internet access here in Haimen City is sporadic at best. I have a DSL connection in my room, but the speed is relatively slow, at about 200 Kbps. That compares to the 6 Mbs I get at home, and everything suddenly moves at glacial speed. All my QuickTime and RealOne videos streams weren't coming through, so I had to adjust the players' setting down to 128Kb for streams to play properly. But the speed really isn't much of an issue, I'm getting by just fine with what I have.
The problem, though, is trying to access different sites. Each time I click on a new link in Safari, I get the "can't open the page" message. Yet, if I click on it the second time, then the page usually opens. That goes for almost all the new URLs that I type in or click on. Once the link has been established, then I don't have to click twice the next time I go back to it. Oh, but that only works if I don't shut down my iBook. If I restart it, then it's double-clicking for every link again. But the extra clickings aren't the biggest problem here; that, I'm getting used to; I would be content if only every page I clicked twice would open.

The single most annoying thing about internet access here is that when you click on a link, you have no idea whether the page is going to open, or not. Also, a page that opened before does not guarantee that it will open again. This is something that's driving me crazy, and something I still can't get used to.

Perhaps the ratio for open to cannot open a page is small, say around 80/20. But still, that means for every 10 page I want to access, 2 will be denied. That's a lot, and totally unacceptable in most other countries. It wouldn't be so bad if all I'm doing is browsing and clicking on links at random. But I need to pay my credit card bill online, and no matter how many times I tried, I can't get access to http://www.americanexpress.com/. Now I'm late for payment, and will probably be fined. But what am I to do? I'm in the middle of nowhere, and I can't find an American Express branch anywhere in Haimen.

Then there's the access once, you're lucky, but don't expect the same treatment every time issue. I was happy when I was able to read Johnnie's blog from here, because I wasn't able to the last time I was in Guangzhou, another region of China. But for the past several days, I couldn't go back to his blog. I tried everyday at different hours, but no luck. His site isn't the only one, though; I have a few sites I can't get back to for some strange, mysterious reasons.

All I can do at times like these is to remind myself that I'm in China, and that's how the internet is run here, so I just have to learn to deal with it. I should feel so lucky to even have my own broadband connection in the first place; at least I have no problems posting this complaint to my blog. Yes, Haimen rocks...sometimes.

Filed Sun - May 16, 2004, 12:19 PM in

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