Growing up, I always wanted to be in the heart of the city—a densely populated, well-connected place (which is why I moved to Singapore). But gradually, I’m starting to crave a quieter life… something more remote, peaceful, and slow-paced.

I’ve spent countless hours dreaming about living in a small town in the French Alps, a secluded village in Bali (away from the tourist spots), maybe on a boat, or nestled in a Norwegian fjord with a breathtaking view, perhaps a smaller town in French Brittany, or a tranquil town in New Zealand.

As romantic as the idea sounds, I’m not entirely sure I could actually go so far off the grid, away from airports and civilization. After all, our family is quite international, so we need to fly to visit—plus, my wife isn’t exactly on board with the idea right now 😅.

Via Kottke.

The promise of travel has always been transformation: we go away and return changed, more broad-minded, more enlightened about the world. In ‘The Case Against Travel’ (non-paywalled archive view here) Agnes Callard argues that not only does travelling rarely change us, we’re the ones changing the places we visit:

“Touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed? Here is a telling observation from the concluding chapter of [Hosts and Guests, the classic academic volume on the anthropology of tourism]: ‘Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community.’ We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others. ...

“We already know what we will be like when we return. A vacation is not like immigrating to a foreign country, or matriculating at a university, or starting a new job, or falling in love. We embark on those pursuits with the trepidation of one who enters a tunnel not knowing who she will be when she walks out. The traveller departs confident that she will come back with the same basic interests, political beliefs, and living arrangements. Travel is a boomerang. It drops you right where you started.”

I believe a certain type of travel can have positive residual effects. However, the majority of touristic travel has what Callard calls a ‘locomotive’ character: Go to Paris. Go to the Louvre. Take a photo of Mona Lisa. Next. In this way, tourists seek not life-altering experiences, but proof to shape their personal narrative for friends and followers.

So why is the appeal of travel so strong? In Callard’s view it’s because we seek escape from the monotony and banality of our everyday existence:

“Imagine how your life would look if you discovered that you would never again travel. If you aren’t planning a major life change, the prospect looms, terrifyingly, as ‘More and more of this, and then I die.’ Travel splits this expanse of time into the chunk that happens before the trip, and the chunk that happens after it, obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation. And it does so in the cleverest possible way: by giving you a foretaste of it.

“You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things: you are experiencing, you are connecting, you are being transformed, and you have the trinkets and photos to prove it.

“Socrates said that philosophy is a preparation for death. For everyone else, there’s travel.”

It may be harsh and perhaps a bit dark, but Callard hits a nerve. Especially in the age of social media, whatever virtues we used to assign to the traveller are mostly gone. Travel is now often a means to curate one’s personal brand – seeking validation, not transformation.

Source: Kottke

Source.

"Moving some of our passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice is also not realistic," the airline said. "Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall."

It's worth asking how come (European) airports were unprepared for this rebound. I've travelled quite a bit within Asia¹ the past few months, and I fail to see any of the same problems Europe is facing.

It seems like the big airports are affected most (AMS, LHR, FRA, MUC), whereas regional airports have long queues but due to lower loads are not affected as much. But then again, information is not super transparent, and it's hard to figure out how many flights are cancelled in Brussels or Copenhagen as opposed to Amsterdam.

And Iceland seems to have plenty of staff... ;)

Stockholm airport a couple of weeks ago was a disaster in terms of massive queues (the only reason it was smooth for us, was because we had priority lane and were lucky to be able to skip the hour-long queues).

We can't blame the sudden opening/dropping of Covid regulations either, as Europe has been significantly more lax and easy going than most Asian countries that basically went from lockdown/full test regiment/quarantine to opening up in a matter of days or weeks.

One could also argue Asia does not have the same workers' protection/unions/training/safety standards (which may be true in some cases, not sure about training for example) and generally salaries/costs are lower (i.e.: you could hire four for the price of one).

It's also unfair to shove the costs back to the airlines (that need to rebook or refund passengers), while having to fly empty planes during Covid to retain their airport slots...

Note that most of the problems seem to affect departures (transit/arrivals are generally smooth).

Maybe having the entire ground-staff exist out of (underpaid) immigrations/interim/temp workers was not a sustainable model to start with, and that's finally showing.

Do better, Europe.

1: Bali seems to be the exception: customs had super long queues, and their new visa regulations (i.e.: many people now need to buy a visa-on-arrival, when that wasn't needed before) added to confusion and people being sent back to buy their VoA. 

Just like Air France-KLM is already offering Thalys tickets for some of its flights from Brussels: instead of departing from BRU airport to AMS or CDG; just take a train from Brussels South.

It looks like Lufthansa, and soon all of Star Alliance, will offer more comprehensive (long-haul) tickets including a train ride to or from your final destination.

Can only applaud this: planes are here to stay; but I’d 100% prefer to take the train (at least a high-speed one like Thalys, Eurostar or the Shinkansen) over a small CRJ9, A220 or other sardine cans for my layover flight (BRU doesn’t have a lot of decent direct connections to Asia). These inter-city flights (short distance, frequent take-off and landing) heavily contributing to noise and environmental pollution.

Europe will also impose additional tax on short flights, so hopefully this may make the entire journey a bit cheaper (and more relaxing).

Oh, and if I get miles for this, it’s even better (and I’m going to guess a lot of people think the same: earning miles on train rides, yay).

Deutsche Bahn is the first company outside the aviation industry to become a partner in an international airline alliance.

Deutsche Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn are already working together on the German transport market and are offering joint tickets. This service could also be opened up to the customers of the other Alliance members.

Source: Aviation24

Some damn scary shit right there.

The jumpers blocked the airflow and shifted the gravity balance:

The stall and subsequent spin happened when we allowed too many jumpers on the outside step, causing an aft center of gravity and excessive blocking of the airflow to the left horizontal stabilizer. The nose then pitched up beyond the controllability of the elevator

Xei, pilot, King Air

More details can be read here.

Video from 2018. Since then, we've seen the riots (revolution?) in HKG. Suddenly, the HDBs in Singapore make a lot more sense, and we should credit the SG Housing Board for their solution (sure, HDBs are not perfect, but compared to those cages...).

Couple of days of Dubai with Shan. So going to ski and quad in the desert !

SQ/SIA (yay) direct flights from and to.

Thanks Shannyo!! <3

Heading a few days to Taipei!

1x A380 and 3x B777.

I’ll be around for a few drinks in Belgium !

This payment card works on all transport modes. Bus. MRT (metro). No matter who operates it.

Sadly it doesn’t work on taxis though.

Nonetheless. With a bunch of different players (SMRT, SBS, any other? But the same is true for London – and they have more players on the market) they have one simple unified payment system (and prices are the same no matter who is operating).

Why is this not possible in Belgium? Don’t get me started on MOBIB.  “In order to travel validly on the networks of the various operators, you will need to store a valid transport tickets on your MOBIB card for each of the mobility operators you intend to travel with.” That’s a joke.

This seems to come with unlimited data for ~20USD for 24hrs. I manage to stream Google Music just fine.

I totally went Matrix mode during the flight. While the flight is half empty I am wondering if they think I am haxoring it now.

EVA uses T-Mobile Germany as carrier.

Public IP routes to a German IP (and Google redirects to Google.de).

nazgul ~ $ curl canhazip.com
88.128.80.215

Whois info:

[...]

inetnum: 88.128.80.0 - 88.128.95.255
netname: ca-de
descr: Telekom Deutschland GmbH
country: DE
admin-c: TH12429-RIPE
tech-c: AS8728-RIPE
tech-c: MS47198-RIPE
remarks: ***************************************************************************
remarks: Please send any abuse complaints to: abuse@telekom.de
remarks: Behoerdenauskuenfte koennen nur ueber folgende Ruf- bzw. Faxnummern beantwortet werden:
remarks: Fax: 0180-18812-66 (0,039 Euro/Minute aus dem Festnetz der Deutschen Telekom AG.)
remarks: Tel.: 0180-18812-77 (0,039 Euro/Minute aus dem Festnetz der Deutschen Telekom AG.)
remarks: ***************************************************************************
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-TMD
created: 2008-05-06T07:54:12Z
last-modified: 2012-07-30T08:54:39Z
source: RIPE

Trace routes are quite odd:

nazgul ~ $ traceroute yeri.be
traceroute to yeri.be (83.149.69.152), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 ns.evawifi.com (172.19.248.1) 3.429 ms 2.746 ms 2.921 ms
2 10.207.1.1 (10.207.1.1) 2.998 ms 2.535 ms 2.455 ms
3 172.18.15.41 (172.18.15.41) 553.837 ms 536.711 ms 541.207 ms
4 172.18.14.34 (172.18.14.34) 615.658 ms 534.722 ms 536.465 ms
5 * * *
6 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 728.306 ms 749.172 ms 738.020 ms
7 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 743.171 ms 735.898 ms 858.885 ms
8 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 731.611 ms 764.056 ms 734.694 ms
9 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 745.765 ms 745.182 ms 729.407 ms
10 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 745.248 ms 1002.078 ms 750.183 ms
11 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 901.702 ms 758.616 ms 898.359 ms
12 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 750.162 ms 779.888 ms 863.083 ms
13 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 777.654 ms 777.442 ms 750.133 ms
14 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 745.435 ms 783.786 ms 942.607 ms
15 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 926.653 ms 939.882 ms 830.519 ms
16 yeri.be (83.149.69.152) 1239.295 ms 754.112 ms 753.986 ms

nazgul ~ $ traceroute google.com
traceroute to google.com (172.217.17.46), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 ns.evawifi.com (172.19.248.1) 1.716 ms 1.200 ms 2.627 ms
2 10.207.1.1 (10.207.1.1) 2.155 ms 1.932 ms 2.165 ms
3 172.18.15.41 (172.18.15.41) 583.366 ms 588.440 ms 730.303 ms
4 172.18.14.34 (172.18.14.34) 552.347 ms 963.682 ms 550.350 ms
5 172.30.1.34 (172.30.1.34) 841.324 ms * 637.136 ms
6 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 752.359 ms 744.614 ms 819.851 ms
7 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 735.554 ms 737.249 ms 785.678 ms
8 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 766.046 ms 738.774 ms 750.276 ms
9 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 817.491 ms 736.133 ms 765.344 ms
10 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 1047.754 ms 754.939 ms *
11 * ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 761.013 ms 762.848 ms
12 * ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 840.602 ms 750.186 ms
13 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 935.149 ms 808.133 ms 745.638 ms
14 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 736.075 ms 881.481 ms 788.661 ms
15 * * *
16 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 876.269 ms 1195.194 ms 754.661 ms
17 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 749.985 ms 850.065 ms 742.763 ms
18 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 737.418 ms 1079.194 ms 751.415 ms
19 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 765.339 ms 763.116 ms 754.928 ms
20 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 765.059 ms 767.733 ms 762.777 ms
21 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 860.458 ms 780.965 ms 757.507 ms
22 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 768.432 ms 747.930 ms 764.553 ms
23 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 758.869 ms 747.489 ms 751.329 ms
24 ams16s29-in-f46.1e100.net (172.217.17.46) 797.699 ms 818.899 ms *

nazgul ~ $ traceroute t-mobile.de
traceroute to t-mobile.de (46.29.100.15), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 ns.evawifi.com (172.19.248.1) 1.978 ms 1.080 ms 1.071 ms
2 10.207.1.1 (10.207.1.1) 4.575 ms 1.885 ms 1.847 ms
3 172.18.15.41 (172.18.15.41) 540.670 ms 739.430 ms 787.836 ms
4 172.18.14.34 (172.18.14.34) 646.621 ms 775.771 ms 562.301 ms
5 * 172.30.1.34 (172.30.1.34) 630.660 ms *
6 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 1014.377 ms 813.739 ms 755.431 ms
7 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 766.290 ms 805.572 ms 735.697 ms
8 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 806.918 ms 792.377 ms 945.535 ms
9 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 783.751 ms 736.085 ms 781.832 ms
10 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 817.682 ms 738.980 ms 1031.463 ms
11 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 872.993 ms 767.682 ms 807.777 ms
12 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 986.659 ms 804.279 ms 806.750 ms
13 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 846.340 ms 767.556 ms 939.215 ms
14 46.29.100.15 (46.29.100.15) 737.330 ms 759.259 ms 786.724 ms
15 * * *
16 * * *

Not very sure what witchery is going on here.

arp shows AP isolation and two different servers running for the WiFi:

nazgul ~ $ arp -a
ns.evawifi.com (172.19.248.1) at 0:d:2e:0:40:1 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
www.evawifi.com (172.19.248.2) at 0:d:2e:0:0:a8 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (172.19.249.255) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (224.0.0.251) at 1:0:5e:0:0:fb on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]
? (239.192.0.0) at 1:0:5e:40:0:0 on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]
? (239.255.255.250) at 1:0:5e:7f:ff:fa on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]

There seems to be a transparant Squid/3.4.6 caching proxy running:

More random things can be found here.

EVA air SIN - TPE - JFK and back.

I haven’t posted much since arriving here… That’s because life here is pretty straightforward and nothing is complicated.

The post office.

In Belgium buying stamps is usually ??????*** and, like in Singapore, I end up going to the post office and asking them to weigh it and stamp it.

However, unlike Belgium* (and most of Europe?) they have these handy machines.

You pick the country you're mailing, it weighs the damn thing, you pay, and it prints the stamp. Doesn't get any easier.

I'm not sure if there's just an iPad running in there (UI reminds me of iOS somewhat)... But... It just works, it's simple, it only took me 30 seconds (if I didn't take all those pictures at least). <3

In terms of payment I don't remember if they accepted cash. But card-wise is was NETS only (so foreigners are out of luck).

**) One of the few things in Seoul that was available in English too. And accepted credit cards.

***) Only in Dutch or French. Expat? Fuck you.

First time in like years I did a long haul flight without transit (well technically last time was Montreal but that wasn’t as far). Direct lah!

And I haven’t been in London in like 2 years. I should have one full spare day to walk around and visit. Let’s see how it changed. :)

Had a few days in HK last week for an offsite with work. Jetstar + first time Tiger.

Now flying from SIN to ICN via KUL because the direct flights didn’t fit my price cap at work for that period. Business class on Korean Air (and MH – but that’s supposedly not as good).

Flying SIN to BRU with Lufthansa.

BRU to MAD with Brussels Airlines (which I guess is now Lufthansa too) from 20/10 till 23/10.

BRU to BCN with Brussels Airlines from 27/10 till 31/10.

Leaving the 5th November to SIN again with Lufthansa and returning with Swiss (their brand new b777!) on July 6th.

Also changed blog timezone to Singapore.

1. DBS: wanted utility bill < 3 months old of my residence in Belgium (which I didn't have -- most of the stuff is on my company's name). Payslips and other bank documents didn't count. Also 2hrs queue. -- (at this point I signed a tenancy agreement and had my own address/place/crib in Singapore) --
2. UOB: Required a physical Singpass (which you only get after you started working and your employer submitted your IPA).
3. Citi: IPA was enough, but tenancy agreement wasn't enough; they need the "stamp duty" proof. Also doesn't provide NETS. Getting a online banking token has to be "requested", and getting cards (and thus access) takes ~2 weeks
4. Went back to DBS with my tenancy agreement and IPA: opened bank account, got access to online banking, everything up and running in about 30 minutes. Downside of DBS Android app: seems to drain battery (requesting GPS high accuracy all the time for some reason; uninstalled for now as I'm not in Singapore until end of this month). Bank cards (did I mention I received them directly?) comes with Visa payWave. It's a Platinum (not sure why I received this -- seems standard as they didn't ask -- don't think they noticed my other credit cards were Platinum too) Visa debet card.

With FlatTurtle we have people working for us via a Singaporean company, outsourcing. So I already transfer money every month to Singapore with BNP Paribas Fortis (~€40 fee), but for my rent deposit I wanted to try something new: enter TranserWise. Works really well and fast, and needless to say, the fees are much lower (more than half).

While I’m at it, I’m also using a Revolut credit card when abroad and not dealing with euro’s. I use this card all the time when travelling (now that I have a local card in SG I won’t need it in SG anymore, obviously).

Lufthansa BRU => FRA => SIN.

Back in Belgium in October for a bit though.

Auf wiedersehen for now. Be good Belgium.

Salut!

Flying Turkish BRU to IST (A321), and Singapore Airlines (SQ/SIA; B772) IST to SIN. #Woohoo.

Let’s see if it’s really world’s best airline*. :)

Having a quick citytrip to Hong Kong (not Cathay this time, but Scoot (B789 Dreamliner) & Jetstar (A320)) and then returning in a little over two weeks just before Pukkelpop with Turkish (A333 & A332), together with Leanne.

• apparently Qatar surpassed SIA? Always heard SIA was best... :o

Edit: wrote this pre-terrorist attack and pre-coup… Quite less excited now.

Grounded flights here.

The tickets have been cancelled though:

Ik heb u vandaag eerder per telefoon proberen te contacteren echter is dit niet gelukt. In aansluiting op het voicemailbericht dat ik heb achter gelaten, wil ik u het volgende informeren.

Ik vind het buitengewoon spijtig dat ik moet informeren dat als gevolg van een fout van de luchtvaartmaatschappij Ethiopian Airlines bij het laden van de tariefgegevens voor businessclass tickets van Brussel naar Kaapstad, uw ticket door de luchtvaartmaatschappij ongeldig zijn verklaard. Er zijn door de luchtvaartmaatschappij per abuis incorrecte en extreem lage businessclass tarieven in de wereldwijde reserveringsystemen geladen welke ‘actief’ hebben gestaan van 5 januari 2016 tot en met 6 januari 2016. Naast haar welgemeende excuses voor deze situatie en het ongemak dat u hiervan ervaart, biedt Ethiopian Airlines u de volgende opties:

• Kosteloos omboeken van uw vluchten naar economy class. Ethiopian Airlines zal dan zorg dragen voor de uitgifte het nieuwe e-ticket. Wanneer wij dit ontvangen, zullen wij dit zo spoedig mogelijk doorsturen naar u.

of; 

• Volledige restitutie van het tarief en de luchthavenbelasting van de tickets indien u besluit om niet te reizen.

Natuurlijk vinden wij de situatie buitengewoon betreurenswaardig. Desalniettemin willen wij u erop wijzen dat wij, Vliegtarieven.nl, geen partij zijn bij de vervoersovereenkomst tussen u en Ethiopian Airlines. Op de reserveringsovereenkomst tussen u en onze organisatie zijn onze algemene voorwaarden en de ANVR Boekingsvoorwaarden van toepassing. Conform artikel 8 van onze Algemene Voorwaarden, alsmede artikel 5.2 van de ANVR-Boekingsvoorwaarden, wijzen wij u op deze fout van de luchtvaartmaatschappij en kunnen wij geen aansprakelijkheid aanvaarden voor eventuele nadelige gevolgen en/of schade die voortkomt uit deze fout van Ethiopian Airlines. 

Het spijt mij dat ik u (op dit moment) niet anders kan informeren.

Ik vertrouw erop u voldoende te hebben geïnformeerd en verneem graag uw keuze zodat wij dit voor u kunnen organiseren bij de luchtvaartmaatschappij.

I complained to see if they could do something about it, but no reply so far (and I guess not).

I’ll keep track of which airlines honour their error fares.

Flying Xiamen to HKG for ~€350 return in 4 days (BA has similar prices last year for a short while via expedia.com.hk) in economy, which isn’t an error fare as far as I can see. The prices also seem to pop up quite often now & then, so probably just trying to win market share and fill up the plane. Cheap but fairly long flight / transit.

Apparently, as discussed in #nomads this requires getting out of the Xiamen airport (with your luggage) and getting inside again. Weird transit, but whatever, means I’ll get a Chinese stamp again. :D

yeri at startups.be or +32 472 30 00 90

Bru => Mumbai => Singapore => Kuala Lumpur & back again.

Also flying Air Asia… So let’s hope there’s no storm -.-)

You can find me at The Working Capitol in Singapore.

There is on board WiFi, and it’s unlike those I’ve seen before on Lufthansa.

The WiFi is provided by OnAir (owned by SITA, ex Airbus), a Swiss-Merican company using what cell towers (that’s what their landing page said – but their website says satellites + and it worked over the sea).

I only had a tablet, so very limited information I could dig.

• There is a private SSID active at all times (QTR<plane registration>, in my case it was QTRA7-BCT)
• Once in the air, a new SSID pops up, called "Oryx Comms" (Oryx being Qatar's entertainment system, including personal movie/music displays)
• IP of the gateway is 172.16.64.1
• Blocks all and redirects you to a landing page
• Landing page https://web.archive.org/web/20130802092743/http://onboard.onair.aero -- which seems to be locally hosted in the airplane (it was too fast to be over satellite).
• Price is exuberant
• End user license agreement was dodgy: "personal information logged in Switzerland and/or US of A", "some data retained for quality improvements and better services", "Data not given to third parties, with the exception of XYZ", "both anonymous and personal information used".
• More interestingly: while above a certain height, there was cell coverage inside the plane: "OnAir" network (roaming), allowing you to text and call from the plane.

I’m almost starting to miss Shenzhen… ;) They are barely overselling it…

See you in two weeks.

Also… Off to New York !

Hong Kong, Shenzhen (and I’m going to personally bring back that broken shit they shipped from a Shenzhen factory), Guilin, Xi’an, more Shenzhen, couple of days in Hong Kong (to get that thing I’ve been meaning to get), back to Shenzhen, and then off again to Brussels via Hong Kong & Amsterdam.

I've been saying this for years.

Brussels Midi to London St Pancras.

105 km distance skied (including lifts) with a top speed of just below 80km/h.

Tracked using WRDSystems GPS tracker prototype.

My record last year (using Google Tracks) was 83km/h.

Source.

<3 Latitude.

Using Galaxy Nexus, Android 4.2.1.

Latitude rocks (although it contains some errors here & there).

If you want to know why the Brits are so good at cycling, then just look at public transport prices.

— sickipediabot (@sickipediabot) August 3, 2012

Apartment was about same price as a 2 star hotel, but at 5 minutes walk from times square and with a lot more freedom (cook what we want, do what we want, more spacious) than in a hotel. And it was a good experience for us. Something different than the usual 5 star hotels in Tibet/China.

Thanks to Jamie for hosting us. I can greatly recommend him and this apartment.

We’re planning on renting through Airbnb again for a trip to Paris in March.

I’ll honestly admit we didn’t take one single good picture, but here it goes anyway:

 [AFG_gallery id='4']

Oh, and New Year in New York is greatly overrated. ;)

bubye!

Set on Flickr.

Toedeloe.

I had to root it to get OpenVPN, ssh tunnel, or system wide proxies up and running. Things I needed to by-pass the Great Firewall in China on my mobile.

However, when landing in Beijing, and connecting to Twitter, Facebook, and all that other shizzle on my “backup” Nexus S; I noticed all sites were working just fine. Just a tad slow…

I was amazed. As if someone turned off the Great Firewall… ;)

But apparently, when checking what public IP my phone had, it was a Belgian IP address. So basically it seems when roaming, all traffic is rerouted from, say, China Mobile to Proximus (through a VPN?), and routed to the internet, in my case, from Belgium. Which is pretty cool here in China. Means I can access everything as if I were in Belgium.

Anyway, something I didn’t know. Learned something new today. ;)

Tons of pics will be posted on Flickr.

I'm not entirely sure what sites and services will be blocked (yay for the Great Chinese Firewall), but my VPN tunnel should do the trick. Hopefully. And I'm still reachable through e-mail.

Bubye x!