Well, the last time I timed myself, for the record, running up the flights of stairs to my apartment on the sixth floor, I got 23 seconds. However, at that time it seems I didn't also check the fractions of a second.
Today I timed myself again and got 23.58 seconds. Maybe it was faster than last time, maybe it was slower. In any case, I think 23.58 will be the new standard as it is more precise. Looks like I have some work ahead of me to break the 23 second barrier without also breaking my neck.
In other news, the reason I had been having trouble the past couple of weeks prior to last week updating my blog is because blogpot.com, the website hosting my blog, fell victim to the Great Firewall of China. Youtube.com was blocked sometime back in March, but as recently as this week, it seems there has been a firestorm of firewalling on all sorts of other blog websites, up to and including twitter.com, Microsoft's live.com, and even the photo sharing site flickr.com
I didn't know why the sudden extra outburst of censorship, but I read an article on ArsTechnica.com that clears things up a bit. It seems that tomorrow... well, I'll let Ars explain:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/06/twitter-flickr-ms-services-added-to-chinas-great-firewall.ars
The hope is that after this anniversary things will lighten up. For my convenience sake, here's hoping!
Also, recently I was checking out flight info for my uncle and aunt and cousins' upcoming trip to China. I was usinga Chinese airfare search enginer qunar.com. (FYI qu nar = go where) Some of the flights are actually pretty cheap, so, for kicks I decided to search for a flight from Shanghai to Tampa and back, the one I will be making here shortly. I found the EXACT same flight, EXACTLY the same flights for $150 cheaper. Ugh!
I already bought the tickets so there's nothing I can do about it now, but I have at least two more flights I will make from China: one in winter 2010 and my final return in summer 2010. For those I will definitely make sure to add qunar.com to my airfare research list.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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