Singapore Offline

Most of us probably didn't know that a earthquake that registered 7.6 on the Richter scale struck Taiwan on Tuesday 1.47am. We probably wouldn't care until we notice that nothing that requires internet access seems to work anymore. So in the morning, as a unsuspecting Singapore wakes up to the new reality, shrieks of horror and confusion echoed through the island when the dread PAGE NOT FOUND errors flooded every monitor screen on the island.

6 of the big fat pipes used by our Internet Service Providers were not operational. The earthquake didn't just shake and destroyed southern Taiwan. It went about breaking the optical fibers in several places laid around the sea near Taiwan. Apparently, nobody noticed this right after the earthquake because we were busy snoring away. Then came office working hours. At 8am, the Internet feels sluggish. By 9am, it was so bad that international Internet access gave up the ghost and responded with timeouts instead of our cherished World Wide Web. The demand for bandwidth caused the remaining surviving optical cables to buck under the heavy load.

Then the great Singapore Offline begins. Everything powered by the Internet twisted got out of shape, gave a long whine and finally drop dead altogether. Our reliance on the Internet was apparent in moments. Even the most resilient email timed out and got lost in cyberspace.

"Foong ! My MSN and yahoo doesn't work...how come ah ?"
"Reuters cannot update ..."
"Is Internet down ? When will it be up ?"
"Why no email ? Cannot be that I don't get emails leh"

IP phones dropped dead. Emails got lost in time outs. WWW yielded "PAGE NOT FOUND". Pushmail devices fell quiet. Traders couldn't submit their bids nor check the market status. MMORPGs players couldn't kill anything online. Youtubers couldn't get their fix. And the list went on. The digital silence was maddening.

The consolation prize is that locally hosted sites were still available. Unfortunately, our Singaporean content on the Internet is a measly tiny but compared Singapore and Japan.
Oh well, just cross your fingers that this doesn't happen too often.