Gave Up

Nobody likes to give up. It's hard to face yourself in the mirror (or reflective glass surface, back of a spoon, whatever happens to be around) when you're filled with such guilt and shame. Knowing that you didn't do all you could have, knowing that your second thoughts, uncertainty and laziness brought about such a horrible chain of events. I don't know how I live with myself...
You may be wondering: Why all this negativity? Well, it's quite interesting, if you really would like to know.

In the glorious old days, when I hadn't been getting screwed thirty ways to Sunday by our lovely rulers [Editor's note: just to avoid any surprises, we'll avoid most directly antagonizing words or names from here on out, lest we attract any government attention] and their fickle web-blocking schemes, a thing called "Xanga" was a big part of my life. Admittedly, it was a huge part of my life. It proved to be the catalyst that I needed to awaken some long-dormant abilities. (No, no, I am not some advanced, genetic, next-thing-in-evolution mutant, but - oh - how a boy can wish...) Namely: writing. Be it ranting, raving, reviewing, posturing, fawning, observing, entertaining - the list of gerunds goes on and on - it provided a much needed outlet for my word-diarrhea and a powerful tool to keep me connected to friends around the world. So when it was suddenly and nonsensically blocked, I was at a loss.

I tried proxy servers. But my own impatience proved to get the best of me and I couldn't deal with the slowness.

I even bought my own address. Too lazy to get it started, it sat in the weird, black nether-regions of the Internets for over a year.

Then, I decided it was time to get off the proverbial pot. But, lo and behold, surprise! NeilYeung.com is not accessible here either. Even THAT, a virgin webpage that hadn't harmed anyone (yet) was already magically blocked by the powers as well. I haven't the foggiest idea either.

So finally, I just gave up. I gave up and continued to write, force-feeding select pieces on unsuspecting and unfortunate friends who couldn't bear to deny me an audience. And this went on. Too stubborn to give up on my $20 USD per year hosting fee, too lazy to pay for a proxy service that may or may not allow me to use my own homepage. Two years since the Great Xanga Kill of 2006. And I've cracked. In all my conceit, I needed more. So I come crawling to Blogger. I'm tempted to make some sort of resurrection comment here, in the spirit of Easter, but I'll hold my tongue, lest I incur the wrath of the Pope as well.

Who knows how long this site will be able to function before Beijing decides to give it the axe for whatever silly reasons they come up with (usually involving "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people"). So as long as it (and I) am around China, it'll have to do for now.

Neopolitan v2.0. Thanks for reading.

Edit: Haha, I spoke too soon. The actual blog is "inaccessible" for poor souls within these borders, but that won't stop me. I can still post, just won't be able to see the actual finished product on the shiny, pre-formatted template. Oh well. Can't give up again.