Friday, March 28, 2008

The Problem Is Not With Your 'Net

17A Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi--

In our 10 or so days of travel we've had slow internet, slower internet, bad keyboards, keyboards without a working spacebar, etc., but have been able to eventually navigate pretty much anywhere.

Except for blogger (insert Socialist government plot conspiracy here).

Gmail is fine, NYTimes no problem, even the slowpoke ABQJournal gets through (although honestly I haven't even tried to get past the infamous burly sports guys home breakfast invasion ad yet). But Blogger ain't been happening. I spent an hour banging on a wasted keyboard in Cat Ba Town, squeezing out tortured prose in a post that was just as unspecial as is this one.

And Blogger ate it. That's an hour and 573 words of crap I'll never get back.

And here, at the end of our trip to Vietnam I'm trying again in some "Business Center" at the De Syloia Hotel in Hanoi's French Quarter. May I say before Blogger and the archly evil Socialist government conspire again that it's been a great trip, I've had pho seven times, bun a couple, a pretty damn good lemon tart, and seen a group of small flying fish and a gynormous jellyfish.

We've taken photos and dig film from many markets, 1.4 million artistic renderings of "Uncle Ho", 1.4 billion moto-scooters and a trekking trail so steep our quad muscles still ache.

It's been fun...and largely unrecorded here. No matter. One thing you find working on a broken keyboard is that mental acuity and condition of keyboard go somewhat hand in hand. Bad keyboard, lousy thinking at the keyboard. At least for me.

Or maybe it's the humidity, the pollution of Hanoi or a overdose of pho. All I know is that it's a relaxing state of mental blankness, one certainly worth paying for a plane ticket to Asia for.

Ommmmmmmm....or is that, more precisely, Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?

And now the dreaded hitting of the "publish post" button. What will happen this time? If a blogpost falls in the Internet forest, does it leave any trace of its existence? Does it matter? Did it really ever matter?

This Eastern psychology is really getting to me...time to hit the damn button.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It worked!
I'm glad your back. I didn't realize how much I depended on my morning blog fix, until you were gone.
Was this your first trip to Asia?