Yesterday was the 4th of July, the mid-summer holiday in the United States and the celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 declaring independence from Great Britain. The day is usual spent celebrating the history, government and traditions of the USA by having barbecues, picnics, parades and other traditional “American things” with friends and family. The day is capped off with fireworks in every city and town. Other then not having any email from our US colleagues, yesterday didn’t seem like much of a holiday here in Shenzhen.
Since Pei Lin is in Beijing for work, last night I went to a BBQ at a local expat members club alone. There were 75-100 people and it was very traditional American picnic style in that everyone brought a dish and the meat was provided. There was the option to pay more if you didn’t bring a dish - am sure you have a good idea which I took advantage of. Loads of potato salad and the best hamburgers I have had since moving to China. Normally I dislike the hamburgers here because they are so dry but these were perfect. Only things missing were my better half and fireworks.
While I don’t agree with the stance my government takes on many issues and I live overseas I am still very proud to be an American. As I head to work this morning, the evening celebrations are just beginning back home, Happy Birthday America!!
When I found Wordpress I was excited about its ability to be customized fairly easy and have more of that “website” look and not all the ads and stuff of other blogs. Unfortunately, when I came across Wordpress and subsquently blogged I was either logged into the internet through my work VPN at home or blogged during lunch from the office. This kept me from realizing that while the Wordpress home page can be viewed and accessed within China it’s blogs cannot. The Mozilla Firefox has a add-in that allows a bypass around the Great China Firewall, unfortunately it doesn’t always work and keeps people from being able to comment.
So in my infinite wisdom, I thought I would acquire another domain and convert my blog to the same hosting service in the US that we are using for our website . Great idea but horrible execution. I switched packages which allows a second domain and hosting for all of an additional $12 dollars a year but I chose the wrong package and lost our website while it “converts” to a Microsoft hosting package that doesn’t support the Wordpress format. Fortunately, I had just backed up our website to our computer and portable storage device. Unfortunately, the switch can’t be changed for 30 days unless I cancel our original plan and start all over. Apparently they are willing to refund our first package under their 90 day no hassle guarantee even though it says if you upgrade packages the guarantee is void - because they must think you are happy…But because I was so nice, calm and sweet talking on the phone they said no problem.
Maybe, just maybe our website will be back in a few days along with the new home (and I promise final move) for my blog… Worst case scenerio is our website will be offline for 29 1/2 more days while I wait out their you can only switch packages every 30 days policy. Lesson learned? The machine is smarter then man!
