Vocal Blocks Hong Kong, Help ?!

This Monday, as someone convinced that a daily routine is the main thing that enables a middle-aged adult to avoid complete existential collapse, I trudged to my neighborhood Starbucks right after waking up.

I ordered the usual: a Cinnamon Danish — a 'Danish' being American code for something European style: small, overpriced, and packed with butter — and a Tall Coffee.

“Tall,” they call it. As if giving it a height instead of a dimension neutral size will distract you from the fact that it’s just a Medium sized cup of brown water you could make at home for 20 cents.

I take my favorite seat, the one with a good view and unlike most other Starbucks seats, without an air conditioning draft blowing intermittently on your head to remind you to leave.

Laptop open. Wi-Fi connected.

For one glorious, fleeting moment, everything in the universe appeared to be where it was supposed to be.

I navigated straight to Vocal.Media — my happy place where friends publish their latest attempts at literary catharsis and where I, like a moth to a slightly pretentious flame, hunt for writing challenges that briefly convince me that drinking lukewarm coffee alongside a tiny danish while I gaze at my laptop, could be a career.

Then… Kaboom.

“Vocal is not available in your country.”

Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

I refreshed with the frantic optimism of a man who believes that if he just hits the elevator button hard enough, the out-of-service sign will reconsider its position.

No change. The page just sat there, smug.

Panic hit me faster than the sugar crash from that cinnamon roll. How was I supposed to survive without Vocal?

Was I really expected to:

1. Submit a short story to some literary contest’s black void, only to hear nothing back for three to six months? (or longer).
2. Lower myself to Medium.com — that cesspool of AI-generated slop, SEO-optimized listicles, and humans desperately trying to go viral with “10 Things I Learned From My Divorce”?
3. Or, God forbid, wade into the gladiator pit that is X, where every political discussion follows the same predictable trajectory: mild disagreement → → spamming each other with links at best slightly tangential to the topic →accusations of moral failing → calling each other “Hitler!” in unison→ attempting to get in the last argument before blocking the day’s opponent.

I stared into the abyss.

Then, like a child remembering he has some slightly rusty change hidden under the bed, I recalled my VPN App, one which I hadn’t used in years.

I opened PrivadoVPN (sorry if this sounds like a sponsored post)) and Clicked “Connect.”

Whoosh.

Problem solved!

Suddenly, my laptop was pretending to be in Los Angeles, California.

And just like that — like a genie coming out of the bottle — Vocal.Media loaded.

The main page appeared in all its glory. I let out an audible sigh of relief that made the barista glance over nervously. Extreme joy can mimic the outward signs of schizophrenia.

I dove into my notifications like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And there it was: an Honorable Mention in the latest challenge.

For one beautiful, fleeting moment, I felt like a writer again. Validated. Seen. Slightly less delusional.

Almost, dare I say it, writerly.

Then the paranoia crept back in. Why is Vocal suddenly blocked in Hong Kong? I asked Google’s AI. It muttered something about CloudFlare issues. I did a quick search on international website checkers.

Brazil was also blocked.

I started wondering: Do people in half the world just casually turn on their VPNs like wearing sunscreen? Is my little Monday morning crisis just a luxury problem?

Am I spoiled, because contrary to what people in more liberal minded countries might assume, Hong Kong’s internet is, for the most part, gloriously open. Everything works.

Even when one crosses into mainland China, one can still access Bing (yes, Bing, that wallflower of the search engine party), Yahoo, and roughly ninety percent of the Western internet. NPR usually loads. The BBC, however, is apparently too dangerous for the people’s republic – but that’s a separate article.

Back on my screen, the real enemy revealed its hand.

The VPN data counter began its slow, inexorable countdown:

10GB remaining… 9.98GB… 9.96GB…

I started closing tabs with the desperate energy of a man throwing deckchairs off the Titanic. It made no difference. The numbers continued their cruel march toward oblivion.

“Upgrade now!”

Do I really want to hand over my credit card details to a faceless VPN company whose entire business model is “helping people get around things”? For all I know, their data center is a basement in Eastern Europe staffed by guys named Dmitry who collect personal data as a hobby.

No. Absolutely not. I shall not be complicit in my own digital undoing.

Vocal, I beg of you: please come back.

The cinnamon roll is going stale. My fragile writerly ego is withering. And some of us overseas are just trying to produce mediocre fiction in peace without having to impersonate an Angeleno every time we want to check our notifications.

If computer illiterate me can fake my location, certainly the international baddie hackers can too ?

We deserve better than this technological farce. We deserve an internet that doesn’t force us to fake our location to feel mildly creative on a Monday.

One can dream.

In the meantime, I will log in occasionally to check-in while keeping a very close eye on my data usage.