Archive for the “Gadgets” category
That’s my 4-year old daughter Tifa challenging me on a spelling bee and reading contest while video chatting on Skype. She would key-in dog, cat, sun and other three letter words and ask me to read them. In return, I would write my own set of words for her to read. She was able to read fox, apple, melon, watermelon, banana, coconut and other words but she’s still having difficulty reading words starting with two consonants such as star and flower.
Way to go kid! Daddy now owes you a bouncehouse for Christmas 
Manila is five hours ahead of Jeddah, i.e. time zone. Manila is at GMT+8 while Jeddah is at GMT+3. In other words, by the time I woke up here at five in the morning, my daughter is already in school and when I go home from work at seven in the evening, the kids are already sleeping. I only get to talk with them on Fridays, when I’ll be able to leave work at 3:30 in the afternoon and arrive at the villa around 3:45 PM. That’s 8:45 PM, Manila time.
I’ve been to China and Japan where the time difference with the Philippines is only zero and one hour, respectively, so I never thought a bigger time zone difference would be this complicated and if you’ve been stalking me in Facebook, you would notice that I already changed my laptop’s time zone to GMT+3 because it’s affecting my sleeping time since surfing the net, playing silly computer games, computing time differences and battling sleepiness all at the same time is such a very advanced-level multitasking, your neurons would shut down just thinking about it. So now I can track the local time and get to sleep on time but I can no longer track the time in Manila unless I revert to that complex multitasking again.
I recently bought a cheap basic mobile phone (a ruby red SAMSUNG GT-E1150, my favorite feature so far is the most brilliant “fake call simulation” which is designed to help you get out of meetings or unwanted conversations) in a local electronic store just so I could use both my local SIM card and the one from the Philippines. The original plan is to use the Philippine SIM card on the new phone and the local SIM card on the Sony Ericsson K790c named Shaider whose battery charging is becoming more and more difficult and I don’t how to manually repair the charging terminals and I don’t want to take it to a repair center in fear of having the repairman telling me to just throw it away and just buy a new one and this sentence is getting too long and not making one single solid point.
Anyway, I find the new phone so light-weight and therefore so handy so I decided to put my local SIM card on it and the other SIM on the old phone. The phone with the local SIM card is set to local time while the one with the Philippine SIM is set to GMT+8 and I went to sleep thinking I saved the world from a much dreaded time confusion.
And I was wrong!
The old phone (which also functions as an alarm clock) alarmed at five in the morning so I jumped out of bed as quick as a god-dammed snail, picked up my bath essentials and off I went out of the room to the shower when I suddenly realized my roommate (who’s supposed to be up by 4:30 AM) is still in bed. Then I noticed the bathroom floor is still dry when there’s supposed to be two persons taking the shower before my turn. So I went back to the room and checked the time on the new phone and to my surprise — it’s only 12:00 midnight, for chrissakes. Still in doubt, I turned on the computer and checked my roommate’s alarm clock which both confirmed it’s still midnight.
The alarm was trying to wake me up from a different time zone!
Good thing I never tried waking up my roommate who probably just got in bed at that time.
Time zone. How complicated!
Since I got an internet connection at the villa, where I am staying, I have been on the look for VoIP calling services offering unlimited calls to Philippine mobile phones. So far, MobileLINK Asia is the only company offering unlimited VoiP calls to Philippine mobiles however, upon checking the plans listed on their website, they are currently accepting signups by invitation only and I don’t know anyone who could send me an invite to create an account and avail of their subscription plans. I tried sending emails to their customer service and other departments weeks ago but I haven’t received any reply from them. So much for their pride in offering “unlimited calling to mobile phones in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Guam, Hong Kong, Loas, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand.”
Now, I’m only using one of Skype’s monthly subscriptions and it provides me 120 minutes of call time to Philippine mobile phones for USD 23.99. That do it for now but I do hope Skype would soon include the Philippines in their Unlimited World subscription package so I could spend more time talking to my kids, friends and relatives in the Philippines without having to worry about the phone bills. Someone told me to use Google voice instead but when I tried, it says the service is currently not available here in SIM City.
On a completely different topic, the internet is also being filtered and moderated here in SIM City but unlike in China, the moderation is not that super tight. Adult and gambling websites are blocked as well as other websites which promotes things that are against their laws and religion. One example is this website which offers live chatting with Asian Girls on a per point basis.
