I've used bing.com more times in the past 6 days than I have in the entire 18 years of my life. Maybe chuck in the combined 100+- years of my parents too. This is how unprepared I was for the 'Great Firewall of China'. (It might also be a wake-up call that I rely on Google too much. Yahoo, your time has finally come!)
Note: this post is a long complaint fraught with first-world privilege and bad writing.
Further note: this entire blog is a long complaint fraught with first-world privilege and bad writing.
So for the past almost-week since I've been out of Australia, I've been fighting a downhill battle against technology. Something I always thought I could do without was my only-just-functional Asus notebook. So when the opportunity came for me to leave the country and most of my belongings behind, I jumped at the opportunity to leave my laptop and rely on only my phone for 6 weeks.
Thank Merlin's Beard I decided to pack my (read: Charle's) 1st gen iPad on the morning of the flight.
Honestly, it's usefulness outweighs that of my Galaxy s2 by the fact that I can read reddit without squinting too much, and inserting a 'Sent from my ipad' signature from my Gmail so I no longer have to worry about filling blank space with an interesting ending. Spices things up.
The things that has annoyed me the most is that I forgot to set up a VPN before I left Australia. For those who aren't in the know (and for those who are) owning a Virtual Private Network basically allows access t
o blocked sites in China, such as the classic Faceyb and YouTube, but also through my findings newspapers such as The Guardian and also access to Gmail (though I'm now located out of central Shanghai and Gmail seems to be working again).
>
> So here's the thing: I'd much rather post pictures here on my World Nomads journal than describe how the buildings on the Bund of Shanghai has smooth concrete that smells like foot and looks shiny (this is what happens when I try write fiction) (Mary had ate a bread and it was delicious to her though it is stuck in her teeth and she's removed it with a shovel) (point proven again)
> However the pictures taken on a mobile device ie my galaxy s2 go through a lengthy process to be uploaded to this blog, namely being transferred through a 3rd party app called Aurigma Up. So I obligingly hop onto the Google Play store and try download Aurigma Up. Knowing that access to Gmail and Google eas blocked, I wasn't sure what I was expecting with Google Play, but it sure as hell wasn't 3 hours of my night trying to install this app.
> So after that ordeal, I decided upon an alternative method: transferring photos from my Samsung to my ipad, and then uploading from there- the ipad is a mobile device hence it also needs Aurigma Up though it downloads through iTunes which has mo problems in China). Here we begin our two tumultuous nights of my war with technology/myself. I tried a few alternatives: emailing myself the images (Gmail was still being nasty- I could read but not
send emails), I tried Evernote (never got past the log in stage as I decided using up all my monthly data for a few pictures was not worth it), Wechat (lost my verification code for my login and couldn't recieve it via SMS), Dropbox froze and then Australia lost to Spain.
> Eventually though I got through to sending one email to myself- see the photo of outside the airplane on my gallery! It might just be one photo out of hundreds, but if you count it as a private victory then I'll take it!
>
> Until I figure out a foolproof/faater than waiting hours for an email to send, you'll have to put up with my attempt at narrative English for now.
> Peace.
> Amy
> You can view some of my pictures on my Instagram account, @metaamy. If you keep scrolling you'll find poor photography of flowers and some hands. Apologies to any broken brains in advance.
Sent from my ipad
