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tasty bytes from China
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05/08/12
Life Uncensored (well, sort of)
Filed under: General
Posted by: @ 4:01 pm

  

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I’m sure if you never lived in China, you’ve heard stories about being watched and under constant surveillance all time.

 Anyway, security cameras are everywhere, just like the high crime areas of Chicago. Busy intersections, stores, airports, buses, and trendy eateries are taping you. That means if you are in Wal-mart and orphan a bag of dried seaweed in the great mound of chicken parts, they have it on film.

ChickenforGrabbin

Or if you end up wading in the vomit pool, you better smile.

P2170041

Now you’d think with cameras everywhere, the fashion police wouldn’t be asleep on the job.

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But they are.

On the internet, expats call the 24/7 surveillance the Great Firewall of China. It should be called The Great Procrastination Preventer. You can’t access Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other time drains on a regular basis. There are ways to get around this, using a VPN service. These services bounce your internet signal to the US and back. So, it takes twice as long to waste the same amount of time.

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When internet sites are blocked you get a page that reads Internet Explorer Cannot Display This Page or an italicized ACCESS DENIED. These sites are usually blogs, possible mine.

But recently, I discovered Uncle Mao can mess with your computer in different ways. Either that or my HP laptop is possessed.

I was dozing off the other day when I was woken by the chimes of my Microsoft sign in page. The chimes weren’t unusual. The weird thing was, I don’t remember turning my computer off.

P3100051

All I could think of was that my computer, like an independent child, decided to install updates without my permission then restart itself.

I thought nothing of it, other than to disconnect from our WiFi signal when not online.

But this morning, I had another strange thing happen. While entering grades into our school’s cyber grade book, my mouse decided to have a mind of its own. I was chasing it around my screen like a greased pig. Every time I thought I caught it, it would scurry around again, opening a new folder, document or picture.

I switched off the internet connection and the cyber demon went away.

Is this Uncle Mao or is it just my old jalopy computer?

Stonebuddha

Actually, I think it’s this guy. He looks like a chinese version of my dad, the way he sits and all with a button cap pirched on his head.

VNBBENNQYY2Z

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So if they block this post, you’ll know why.

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