It's now been nearly a month since a Boxing Day earthquake near Taiwan damaged some of the Internet cables that connect China to the rest of the world. International Web sites are still accessible from China, much in the same way that a magazine at the other end of a football field is technically readable if you have binoculars. You can do it with some patience, but it's a drag turning the page.

We've had a series of updates from the Chinese Government on repair status. Every update says more or less the same thing: Another two weeks.

So what do you do if every Internet site and service you rely on is essentially inaccessible? Well, you either get used to reading your news off Chinese Web sites or (whisper it) a printed newspaper, or you get a non-Internet-based hobby, like stamp collecting or base jumping.

And if you're an IM-addicted Chinese youth, you consider dumping your non-functional MSN Messenger for QQ.

Nature has accomplished what the Net nanny never could: It has essentially cut China off from the global Internet. Technically, the rest of the world is still reachable, but service remains so spotty and inconsistent that it is far more frustrating than useful. Chinese sites and services meanwhile continue to tick along merrily.

The good news is that overseas services are still technically reachable. And, if you're the kind of person who likes being wrapped in Hefty bags, beaten with rubber hoses and then doused with gasoline and then set alight, you might even try to use them. The arbitrary nature of the outages is excruciatingly frustrating, however. So if your colleagues are sensitive to harsh language you might want to isolate yourself before trying.

Nothing makes you realize how central the Internet has become to your life like not having access to it. It's one thing when you go on vacation and choose to forget about the Net for a week. It's another when you're on the job and your company Intranet, your client's Web sites and Extranets and every newspaper you read on a daily basis are inaccessible. Hard to believe that when I arrived in graduate school in 1992 and was ordered to get an email address, I accused my professors of being a bunch of nerdaholics.

In fairness, I'm not the only one who's been suffering. Chinese youth and young professionals are addicted to instant messenger services. Among the Chinese people in my office MSN is the service of choice, and it's typical to see several windows open at once on any given computer (some of this chatter is even work related, as our Chinese employees use IM to communicate with clients and journalists).

For me, MSN came back to life just last Monday. The news report linked to above suggests that the outage has been a boon for Chinese-based services like QQ. But when I asked one of my colleagues if the MSN outage was driving her to QQ, she sneered: "That's for teenagers!" So much for that. If QQ has had a little jump, it might be temporary.

AIM has remained relatively spotty, although it did improve somewhat this week. Skype has been the champion, working throughout, possibly because its main servers are based in Europe, not the US, and it is peer-to-peer-based.

Gmail has been almost useless, and only functions in its simplified HTML format. As for YouTube and other US-based bandwidth-hungry sites, they remain barely useful, if accessible at all.

This situation casts an interesting light on those Internet companies such as Google that keep all their servers in the US to avoid entanglements with Chinese law enforcement. Whether that is an effective business and legal tactic remains to be seen, but it certainly makes those companies' services vulnerable to access problems. The myth of the Internet is that it is impervious to damage. But there are always bottlenecks, especially where nations rely on a few, thin cables lying under 4,000m of water for interconnection.

Update: A comment from a reader brings up something worth mentioning. Much like censorship and blockage of sites in China, the service interruption caused by the cables is inconsistent. It varies from city to city, ISP to ISP, and hour to hour. A reader in Guangzhou says his service is essentially back to normal. However from Beijing and Shanghai it is still awful most of the time, with marginal improvement in the evenings when, presumably, usage drops off.