It’s been three months. There’s been no definite word of Ian’s whereabouts or state of health, and Banana Oil is still showing that same WordPress database error.

It seems extremely unlikely at this point that any serious harm has come to him; the consulate’s been actively looking for him, and if he’d turned up at a hospital–or worse–the word would have gotten out. Barring thriller plots, of course, which as I say I figure to be extremely unlikely. That was my main concern, and I’m glad to be able to lay it to rest.

That really leaves two main possibilities. Either he’s engaged in some job or other that prevents him from getting on to the Internet, or he’s purposely decided to cut ties with some or all of his friends on the ‘net. I’m hoping for the former, as cutting ties without a word of explanation would be a really shabby thing to do, and I don’t wish to think that of him.

The thing is, I don’t believe he expected Banana Oil to be down; in one of our last e-mail exchanges he mentioned arranging for his web hosting service to be renewed for another year. It’s entirely possible that there’s one final post on Banana Oil explaining that he’s going to be incommunicado for a while–which none of us can see because the database went down and hasn’t been restarted. (If he wanted to simply turn off Banana Oil, there are more obvious ways to make it happen.)

Anyway, I hope that he’s OK; and I hope that he’ll get back in contact eventually. I’m not going anywhere; I can wait. In the meantime, I’ll continue to keep him in my prayers.