eFreedom (And: I Want Pizza)

Huh. That's weird.

My blog, it ... loaded. In China. Without incident. Hm. No Tor, no Anonymouse, no proxy of any kind.

A few weeks ago, YouTube was unblocked. Then I heard that BBC was, at long last, accessible. Now Blogger ... wait a minute, maybe this means ...!

Holy shit! Wikipedia! It loads!

What's happening to China? Is the government at long last trusting people with information? Is this all just to earn some face for the Olympics? Will the Great FireWall come crashing down in a matter of hours, weeks, months?

Regardless, it's nice to enjoy some eFreedom, at least for now.

It hasn't hit me anywhere near as hard as it hit me last year in Zhanjiang, but the pangs for good Western food are upon me something fierce yet again. I was gChatting with Lawler and somehow the idea of food around Villanova came up, and I would be lying if I said I didn't start to salivate at the idea of big juicy greasy cheesy Garrett Hill pizza with those beer-battered fries and a icy-cold DFH90 to wash it down.

Bah, stop this nonsense Matt, food porn is poison.

But you don't realize how important simple things are like good food and tasty beer are until you go without. Kevin likes to cook, as did Nicki last year, and though we usually eat out (in China, where great food is so cheap, how can you not?), sometimes you get a taste of home-cooked food, food just unlike all the other food in China, and you realize there's a whole paradigm of preparation and ingredients and style and snacks on the other side of the Pacific, and you miss it in a different way from friends or family but just as deeply (OK, not just as deeply, but deep), and before you know it the foodlust is upon you.

I know I'm repeating myself, you can find these yearnings is previous entires, but screw it, I want pizza and beer, and I'm just desperate enough to close my eyes and march into Jilin's newly-opened Pizza Hut and pretend it's the same thing. And I assure you, that itch will be only very slightly scratched, "fulfilled" the same way a man in a desert is "thirsty," because my friends I say to you, the same thing they are not.