Happy New Year!

For New Year's Eve, Beth & I celebrated at Hong Kong Disneyland. The park is definitely smaller than the US one, but we had fun anyways. We rode Space Mountain twice as well as a couple of other fun rides. You can view are pictures here.

Consider this a Public Service Announcement:

And, in case you're wondering how I made this post...google is fairing pretty well during this outage, don't know how they do it, perhaps they have distributed servers around the globe...although, anything we can access is at glacially slow speeds. I feel like it's 1992 and I'm on dial-up with my 9600baud modem!

So, google products (gmail, google, blogger) work as does skype I believe...and, of course anything hosted in HK, such as: thestandard.com.hk, from which I copied this story:


Earthquake pulls plug on local businesses

JonathanChengandagencies

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Hong Kong struggled to cope Wednesday without access to large swaths of the Internet and the regional phone network, fearing the implications of a telecommunications slowdown that could drag on for weeks.

The tie-up, triggered by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake late Tuesday night off the southeast coast of Taiwan, sent ripple effects through the heavily wired and technology-reliant territory.

Financial traders worked without up-to-date stock prices and travelers were unable to call home, while ordinary Internet users were left without the staples of modern life, like access to Google and Yahoo.

Leng Tai-feng, president of international business for Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest phone operator, said two of its undersea cables were cut, with repairs likely to take two to three weeks.

Crews fixing the cables would have to pull the cables up and transfer them to a ship for repair, the company said, while Lin Jen-hung, Chunghwa's vice general manager, added: "Quality will improve day by day."

Voice calls to the United States were down to 40 percent of normal capacity in Taiwan, while Singapore Telecommunications, the largest phone company in Southeast Asia, reported a slowdown in Internet traffic in its area.

PCCW, whose local telecom services rely heavily on those damaged cables, warned users to expect "congestion over the next several days."

PCCW said the damage had slashed data capacity in half, while an upsurge in usage of Internet sites in the region added to the congestion problem.

"We are in the process of diverting the data and are monitoring the restoration of the cables," the company said.

Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong also issued a brief statement Wednesday, saying it had contacted and followed up with the suppliers of the undersea cables.

"Immediate actions have also been taken to provide limited telecommunications service to affected areas," the statement read.

SmarTone-Vodafone, the mobile service provider, sent a message to its Hong Kong users in the afternoon, promising service would be back to normal as soon as possible.

Internet access in Beijing was reported to be slow.

But officials there declined to give further details.

Vinh Tran, a spokeswoman for HSBC, said that there was no access for its online banking service in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland.

Both the Hong Kong stock exchange and the Securities and Futures Commission reported no disruptions to operations.

Some telecom companies were working Wednesday to reroute their service by other channels, including through Australia, the Indian Ocean or by satellite.

Meanwhile, Ng Nam, director of the computer center at Hong Kong University, said service may not reach normal standards as those cables are not accustomed to handling so much traffic.

The long-distance telephone service was cut off from Hong Kong to 19 places, including the United States, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand.

Experts were hesitant Wednesday to attach a price tag on the shutdown, but warned that delays could persist for some time.

"A lot of people are definitely going to be seriously affected," said Gary Chan Sheung-han, a professor of computer science and engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Those people included traders like David Leong of First State Investments in Singapore, who told a reporter: "I can't trade if I don't know the prices."

Diego Wittlin, managing director of the Hong Kong office of a small German toy exporter, said the telecom meltdown meant that business - and all means of contact with head office - has come to a crashing halt.

"I tried to call Europe about 20 times today," Wittlin said. "But the phone and Internet are both down, so we can't even fax."

For the time being, he is taking solace in the fact that his competitors are down as well - and that business is in the traditional Christmas season lull.

Still, Wittlin added: "It's a very uncomfortable situation. It just shows how vulnerable our systems are." Should the outage continue, Wittlin said he will resort to more basic means of conducting business - using courier services for important documents, burning data on to CDs and mailing them through the post, and trying to fax as much possible.

"You just have to redial 20 or 30 times, that's all," he said. "When e-mail's gone, these days, unfortunately everything stands still."

Wittlin's headaches highlighted a troubling point for IT experts trying to prevent a repeat of the incident: that global communications in the region, now more vital than ever, rely on a surprisingly small number of cables under the sea.

Charles Mok Nai-kwong, a former head of the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers' Association and current chairman of the local chapter of the US- based Internet Society, said he hoped the situation will be fixed quickly.

But he admitted there are only "very limited things" that local telecom providers can do.

"Some people may be asking what Hong Kong can do to prevent this from happening again, but the question is: what can the world do?" Mok said.

He called on the consortiums that own and operate undersea cables to "re- evaluate the situation" by diversifying traffic and placing cables in different locations.

But it will cost money: up to US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million) per kilometer, according to a report earlier this year by Paul Budde, a telecommunications analyst in Australia.

"Planning an undersea cable, we're talking about billions of dollars and years and years of time," Mok said.

One of the two cables that were broken is owned by a consortium that includes Singapore Telecom, France Telecom and Pakistan Telecommunication.

The other is partly owned by China Unicom, StarHub and Telekom Malaysia.

Great new song, cool new video

by U2