Hello, China!

So, loyal readers (all ten of you)- You may have noticed a little change in the looks of my Peeps.  Whaddya think?!

I spent the first part of last week trying to figure out how to fluidly switch over from Blogger to WordPress, and then spent the latter half of the week not-so-fluidly making formatting corrections, CSS tweaks, loading (and unloading) plug-ins, and testing out dozens and dozens of themes.  Here, for better or worse, is the still-in-progress yet presentable blog.

Why the switch?  Well, most Americans in China subscribe to a VPN to get their fix of Facebook, YouTube, Hulu, and Google Reader- among hundreds of other sites not accessibile with the regular internet in China.  VPN for all you non-techies, is a subscription-based service which once loaded and keyed-in from a computer, allows a person to remotely log on from an American IP address.  Our VPN is hosted from a SF location, so we’re technologically close to home- it’s as if we connect and log-on via a router in San Francisco.  Anyway, VPN access, though amazing and inexpensive and easy to install, is just another step which slows down what is an already blazing-slow internet connection.  It’s really quite amazing.

As you’ve guessed, Blogspot (and subsequently all blogspot-hosted blogs) is blocked here in China.  Wordpress, surprisingly, has so far flown under the radar of silly government internet censorship rules, although me writing that probably doesn’t contribute much to keeping things under wraps.  Anyway, in an effort to reach my Chinese homies, I made the switch.  So really, whaddya think?!