China: Oh, woe!

Well, it looks like we chose a heck of a time to get hit with an excess bandwidth shutdown, which we got because we've exceeded our bandwidth by almost 100% in just about two weeks in September.

Here I am in China with a U.S. bank-card that has nothing much on it (the one with a few pennies on it is back home with my sister who will not enter banking information online) and a Chinese bank card that can't be used internationally. There is RTFM in the USVI, coping with the after effects of Ivan, Jeanne, and all those hurricanes he's been blogging about. I've not heard from him, so I don't know if he's been blogging (remember, I can't see this blogspot site).

Previous to this weekend, the only 'net service I had at my apartment was in-China; at the office, where I had international access, I could look at some sites on the web. No blogspot sites at all (I can't even see this one though I can blog to it using BlogThis! Thank you, Blogger!), no Baldilocks, no Iraqi bloggers, and so on. Reading Gmail was not an option, though I could access the account.

On Friday, after talking to a friend here, I discovered internet cards. Yes, Virginia, there is such an animal. You buy a card for 23 yuan, about $3 U.S., and it's good for a month. If you don't have a phone line, you buy a phone card and pay 1.5Y per hour. If you have a phone line, and I do, heaven knows what the cost is. I'll moan about it at the end of the month. With this new discovery, then, I could access the www from my apartment.

So, I managed to scout out a new web host that allows LARGE bandwidth. Donations helping us to get back up and running on the CaribPundit domain (http://carib.us) would be very much welcome. Please hit the tip jar if you like the blog.