Tempus fugit! It is astounding how quickly years pass by.

My encounter with X5 is rather an interesting one. In 1995, I was stationed in U.A.E. I was delighted to find a functional internet service there. I used to travel many countries due to my work. Computers, let alone internet was unknown in many places. So imagine my surprise.

Yes, days of Wildcat BBB logins, 9.6 baud modems and irritating dialup sounds!

Unfortunately, our happy-go-lucky days were over when the local government imposed internet censorship beginning of 1997. Research about security, cryptography and network services were part of my curriculum and to my surprise, all of a sudden entire internet was blocked for me. In fact, anything about security was blocked.

Let me remind you that those were the days of flashy websites about so-and-so's cats, dogs and rodents and usable information was rather limited.

I asked the fellas at paranoia.net where I frequented plenty and within days I had my internet unlocked thanks to X5.

2 years later I was transferred to Bahrain and censorship, now prevalent in entire Middle East, was implemented there too. Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman... All same. Wherever I travelled, freedom was limited.

Later on I was transferred to Lebanon, but unfortunately service would not work there and X5 had to devise a tunnel for me to access internet.

You would think with all the improvements in digital age, censorship would be a thing of the past... Well, skip forward to year 2007... I am in China since 4 years... and same story I started 10 years ago all over again!

X5 to the rescue!

This has been one crazy ride through memory lane.

Thank you for everything for all these years. I don't know what I would have done without you!

Andrew