Dream-blown as the notorious pigeon population, contemplating the sky, they became aware that morning of something else was about to emerge from the sfumato, some visitation . . . something that was to transcend both Chums and Tovarishchi, for all at once there was a great stunning hoarse cry from the invisibility, nearly a material thing, a lethal impedance in the air, as if something malevolent were making every exertion to take form and be released upon the world in long, dry, cracking percussions, as if jarring the fabric of four-space itself.

From Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day. British Vintage edition. Page 288.

• With Angie Baecker, “Beijing Before the Olympics: Business as Usual?” ArtAsiaPacific, Issue 59
  

  … As the city approaches “8/8/08”—which, with its numerological connotations of good fortune many times over, is the most auspicious opening date possible this decade in Chinese culture—Beijing’s art community has also pursued breakneck development and attracted increasing international interest. From its earliest days, when art in China first began to take the forms it is recognized for today, Beijing’s art communities have passed from sensation to legitimization: the clandestine exhibitions once forced into apartment-complex basements have since been welcomed into official spaces as the market for contemporary Chinese art has exploded. …

• “Search Wars,” China International Business, July 2008
  On the competition between Google and Baidu in the China market. Short version, Baidu is winning for some interesting reasons, but the future is unclear.
• “Healthy Profits” (an interview with David Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council), China International Business, July 2008

Speeds less than 1KB/s are just not useful these days. Even for updating a Wordpress blog, the battery of scripts that come with the “post-new” page were enough to render those connections useless.

What’s going on here? Some days ago the connection at Zarah failed. The laoban told me people were on the way to repair it. So I went to a nearby bar and restaurant called Room 101 to see if theirs would work. Alas, they had suffered the same fate.

My best guess is that the construction in the neighborhood, which includes the installation of at least half a dozen surveillance cameras on Nanluoguxiang in the last week and the recent digging of a trench where they submerged a great copper cable, has cut some important internet line.

After eating dumplings and walking jealously by an internet cafe that was apparently unaffected, I headed to Waiting for Godot, a great cafe on Jiaodaokou Dong Dajie. And it was closed. Godot is usually closed on Mondays, but today there was a sign claiming that for reasons beyond their control they must shut down for four days.

I was forced to head for a dependable connection where the atmosphere is considerably more noisy and foreigner-heavy (yes, even more than Nanluoguxiang). Is someone conspiring to deprive my neighborhood of digital communications?

Thanks Adriane of Pizza Buffet.