A circuitous route around access denied

A friend of mine recently got married in the United States and signed off on his deservedly self-congratulatory e-mail by saying: "I'd point you to our pics on Facebook but that would be provocative of me."

The implication was, of course, that since I am in China and there are restrictions on foreign social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and so on, that I would not be able to access the happiest day of his life.

Not so. I could be shooting myself in the foot here, but I've never had a problem accessing the World Wide Web.