Apparently Taiwan trembled last night: a 7.something quake, complete,
with 2 aftershocks, hit in the ocean near that island. You could feel
it in Hong Kong; although myself, Amanda, and her family all didn't
feel enough to notice it, some saw their fish tank water move and a
few ran into the streets.
But, more interestingly, it snapped a bunch of fiber optic cables:
Taiwan has a lot of data move through it between the U.S. and Asia.
Things reroute, but that's causing such overload that U.S. webpages
typically aren't loading at all here. And it's supposed to stay like
this for 2-3 weeks! Interestingly, Gmail and other Google pages load
if a bit slowly; I think this is because of their server centers
ringing the world. Not necessarily that useful, when I can't get to
actual copies of most pages returned in search results...
Anyways, we're at Causeway Bay most of the day. Pageone Bookstore
puts those in mainland China to shame in terms of English-language
holdings, and Fantasy Vegetarian restaurant is unbelievable. Our
day's a lot less strained than the remaining net connections, to put
it mildly:)