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Hold on fellas! Before you bat those eyelashes or raise those eyebrows, give me some room here, ok? And please, let’s try to lower our expectations… I may be exaggerating a bit, but then again, maybe I am not.
First, here’s a statement of fact. This country, the Philippines, has just been battered by a series of killer typhoons. I mentioned two of them in my other blog here in Orble and those two were immediately followed by two more - both with gustiness of around 200kph or more.
At the very least, those typhoons inundated villages, brought landslides, toppled power lines, and as had been reported by traditional media - print, radio and TV- killed people (I believe super typhoons or hurricanes do the same things everywhere else.)
I was lucky to be out of harms way in a number of those instances but I found myself right in the path of the last one (Typhoon Marinae?) locally known as “Santi” when it veered West South-West from it’s original track. It has relatively weakened when it reached our place but it still cut the power supply in our area for a couple of days!
Well, you know what happens when there’s no supply of electricity and you don’t have a power generator. You are thrown into darkness at night and it is like you are back to stone age at daytime. No TV, no computers, no radio (unless you still have one that runs on dry cell batteries), no air-conditioning, no refrigerators, no microwave ovens, no water pumps, no electric fans, etc., etc…
And, if you are a heavy user, you’ve probably ran-out of cell phone batteries as well.
This is where the gadget that I am referring to would come in – its usefulness will depend on what you need (or perceived that you need) the most under the circumstances. If what you require are simple amenities in life, then, that’s probably all it can give you.
It can make you watch free-airing television, listen to a radio station, power up your electric fan, make you work on your computer to meet a deadline or something… save you a job and so on and so forth…
But consider a situation wherein you are caught in between landslides, or a landslide and a collapsed bridge in the middle of nowhere – you can’t go either way of the road. The typhoon that is still raging loved your area so much it doesn’t want to get out, a rampaging flood is on the way, the power lines are down and you have a family member that depends on a very efficient medical equipment that runs on a rechargeable battery that you need to recharge soon – but there is no supply of electricity!
Thank God that was not the situation I found myself in, but like most everyone else whose life almost practically freezes when the power supply stops, my days without power needed a little cranking up.
So, I dashed to the nearest mall (which of course has its own gigantic generator set) and bought myself an inverter. That tiny little box that can be attached to a car battery or cigarette lighter that converts 12 volts of electricity to a 60 hertz 220 volts. I looked for one that has at least 500W of load capacity but they were all gone so I settled for 150W capacity.
Power Inverter
That can’t power up most of our house appliances and electronic gadgets, but it was enough to give life to my 28W flat screen TV and enable me to watch the news and the weather. It has two outlets, so while waiting for weather alerts, I started charging my drained mobile phone battery…
After learning from the news that the world is still pretty much as I have known it, except for some destructions caused by the super typhoon, I unplugged the TV and replaced it with that of my laptop to finish some overdue reports. With paper works done and my mobile phone battery fully charged, I felt my life starting to go back to normal…
I can use the phone again to call the authorities in cases of emergency, I can call the office 120 kms away to check if there are still things that needed to be done, I can send my reports via the internet using my mobile phone as a modem and a host of other things…
And guess what, I can use my submersible with it to pump clean rainwater (not for drinking) I caught in a couple of drums from the drainpipes inside the house. Uh, I live in a subdivision which sources its water supply from a deep well. They pump it into a huge water tank using electricity so…
Sure, that small gadget will not be able to carry the power loads that an ordinary household often requires, but hey, I only paid an equivalent of $15 US for that!
First off, I would like to emphasize that I do not intend to malign techno products, gadgets or brands in my babbling, now or ever.
I like tinkering with these stuffs, though. So, I buy them with certain kind of expectations. I, on the other hand, like many marginal consumers, do not have great resources. Thus, when I check out the gadgets that I so darn believe I cannot live without I am ready to part ways with what, to my mind, is a great deal of money!
And, therefore, since the techno products are being positioned in the market to meet certain kind of needs, of people like me who cannot live without them, I expect them to answer my needs. I am paying for them, right?
Sometimes, however, they don’t. The result is a “babble.” My fervent hope is the products improve.
I’ll start this babbling with one of my latest purchases: a U800. It is a Samsung, bar type cell phone. I like its animated display that changes with the times of the day. It shows a daytime display during the hours that you set as daytime, and it shows a nighttime display during hours that you set as nighttime.
The migrating birds that go from one direction to the other every time you activate the display by pressing a button are cute and it even has pyrotechnic display that goes off and victory fly bys by miniature planes every time you receive a message or a call. They are great to watch and they give an impression of happiness. Love them.
The size of received text messages can be magnified with a press of a button, if you need to, and the phone comes with a 3.0 megapixel camera in its slim body. Unlike other mobile phones this one is a sturdy unit. The case is made of metal and the back cover comes off easily. You can change the battery or the sim anytime (if you buy an open line) without causing any damage.
It has a bluetooth that connects without a hassle to my bluetooth headphone and it took me just a wee bit of a while to connect it to my laptop. No problem.
The keypad takes a little getting used to, but I can live with that.
What I find nightmarish about this phone however is the software that comes with it contained in a cd disc. I have been using this phone for a number of months now and my impression is that the software is either “not” very user friendly (as it took me quite sometime to figure out how to create a new text message on my laptop using the software) or that the software is lacking certain features that are common with other cell phone software (pc suites).
You see, when I’m in the office and I’m doing some office chores I prefer not to be distracted by phones. So, I answer phone calls to my mobile by pressing the hands free bluetooth attached to my ear (I answer the landline by pressing a hands free button too) and I answer text messages using the message editor of my mobile’s pc suite.
I do that all the time with my other mobile phone. It was easier. It shows me the senders name, the message, and with a click of the mouse on the reply button I can rattle off a few words and the message is sent with another click of the mouse.
The problem comes when the message is sent to my Samsung U800. It has a pc suite, alright. It has a message editor, a reply button, just like the other pc suites and I can do almost practically everything with it, except tell who the messages I am receiving are from!
Can you imagine that? You are deep into something and, suddenly, you received a text message that tells you something else and you cannot tell who it is from! Dang! Sure, it tells you the number of the sender’s mobile phone, but I have close to a thousand names in my phonebook. Come, on!
Hey, a U800 is supposed to be a business phone. You put the phone numbers of your business contacts in there. You want a lot of them and you want them all in one place. It would help if your unit can tell you who it is that is calling your attention while you are lost in some documents that some demigod wanted to have yesterday - but just told you about it now!
And while we’re at it, an inbox that can only accommodate 150 messages seems rather puny if you have phonebook entries that are close to a thousand.
I mean, when did you have a contact that sent you only one important message that you want to keep for a while in your inbox?
And please, allow me to write and read a text message that is as long as I, or my senders, wanted to write or send.
It’s like, why tell me that the message I just received is an image that needed to be viewed on the phone (which means, I have to close the software and disconnect the phone so I can view the image manually on the phone) when it is just a text message that is longer than 160 characters?
Uhhh, it sucks!
An expression of gratitude, especially when heartfelt, should not be qualified. It is either you are thankful - or you are not. I am thankful for all the outpouring of support from other countries for the victims of Typhoons Ketsana and Parma here in the Philippines, but...
Well, let me put it this way: I have just been recalled by my office to do another one of those telco promotions that I always talk about in this blog. So, off I went to Nueva Vizcaya in Northern Luzon.
That is where Typhoon Pepeng (Parma) has decided to persist the past few days – and it is still there as of this writing.
If one would care to look at the path taken by that typhoon (illustration below), one would notice the number of times it went back and forth (3x already) and lingered in the northern provinces of this country – dumping rains on everything all the time.
Tracks of Typhoon Pepeng (Parma)
The other day, a co-worker that I brought along with me started to receive text messages from members of his family about how heavy the rain has been pouring in their town (San Fernando, La Union) and how strong the wind has been blowing.
He began to express concern on how his kids would go to and come from school.
Yesterday, he received text messages from the same members of his family informing him that classes has been suspended in the elementary level in their town. His worries eased up a bit but the messages on how heavy the rain was falling and how strong the wind was blowing in their town continued to come.
I knew, he felt like going back home to look after his family but he cannot tell me directly what he feels since he knows we have work to do where we are (somewhere in the Eastern side of Northern Luzon. La Union is in the Western side)
In a dinner meeting last night, a guy in attendance mentioned that Dalton Pass, a mountainuos area that one has to pass to get to where we are closed to traffic due to landslides. There's no way my co-worker can leave now even if he wanted to. The only other way out is too far. Riskier. And it will bring him right smack into the eye of the storm.
By Eight o clock, those messages came again telling him that his parent's house, where his daughter is staying is now flooded. Water is already waist high. My co-worker began to panic.
By Nine, everoyne in his parents' house along with some of their neighbors have taken refuge in the second floor of his parent's house. The water below has reached more than five feet high. It is rising fast and the current is strong! My co-worker started making frantic calls to everyone he knows in their town whom he thought could help rescue his daughter and his parents.
A number of them came, but couldn't go near the house because of the onrushing water. I helped send SOS messages but in the news we heard that a rubber boat somewhere in the area was punctured and can no longer be used.
Fortunately, help finally came in the form of an inflated tire interior tied to one end of a rope! His daughter, his parents and their neighbors were rescued and brought to an evacuation center. But they are not the only victims of this new round of flooding in the Philippines.
Words reaching local and national radio stations (TV will come in later) say that there are people in Naguillan Town in La Union that are already perched on their roofs. A big portion of the Province of Pangasinan is already flooded and the main road artery connecting the towns and provinces in the western side of Northern Luzon is no longer passable.
Landslides at Dalton Pass and flooding in the Pangasinan area would practically cut-off the whole. North Luzon from the rest of the country by land...
Anyway, the call for help that I made here was a call for OFWs to extend help to their relatives affected by Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) in Metro Manila as relief organizations may take a while before reaching them.
This one is for those who have relatives in the areas affected by Typhoon Pepeng (Parma). Hardest hit are the Provinces of Pangasinan (where a number of people where trapped inside a mall), La Union, and Benguet – where many of the casualties, 150 by last count came from and the number can still climb.
September 28th 2009 09:10
If you are a Filipino, you have probably heard about it by now. Typhoon Ondoy (International codename: Ketsana) has flooded most of Metro Manila over the weekend (Sept. 25, 26, 27) and it wasnt “picky”. It affected all strata of society whether they live in plush subdivisions, slum areas or anywhere in between.
In fact, many of those who live in two storey houses in expensive real states with two or more cars in their garages found themselves perched on top of their roofs just like their poorer brothers and sisters
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Sen. Benigno Noynoy Aquino, jr. pic source: Wikipedia
His father was the senator who was assassinated by people believed to be associated with then Philippine strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos. His father's assassination resulted to the world's first bloodless People's Power Revolution. The revolt that brought down the 20 year rule of Marcos dictatorship.
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Ok, so I am involved in the promotion of this telco business here in the Philippines. To promote the business of the company, we are holding events almost practically everywhere in this country. To draw large crowds we are bringing popular bands, actors, actresses, etc. We bring them to radio stations for interviews, we air mech plugs, we parade (motorcade) them around. The works!
I was so involved in this thing lately that every time I post something here at Orble, I was either going to or coming from one of these events
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Nope, sorry. I'm not talking about Hawaii and neither am I referring to the froth in your beer mugs. I'm talking about miniature bubbles as opposed to the gigantic housing bubble (otherwise known as the subprime mess) that brought about current world economic crisis.
And, yes, I am addressing my fellow newbies again
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You know how it works right? Best performances, best bands, best actors and actresses, best anything… if you see it everyday, or at least three times a week, for months on end (and you are in the thick of all the preparations for those performances), to you they become ordinary – so ordinary you begin to think they are even boring.
This telco promotion I am involved with right now, sort of did that to me. Add to them the stresses that I had to go through and the hassles that I had to solve while I was laying down the ground works for those performances – and you’ll have a good idea why I'd want to get away from it all - at least for a while
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This post is coming up without a plan, just a heads up. I must have been really busy I didn't notice more than two months have passed since my last post here in Orble.
I was thinking of writing about a festival somewhere in northern Philippines where I happened to help organize a promotional event for that telco that has me scurrying about in this country (which was mentioned in my earlier posts), but I guess that will have to wait for a bit more
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Illustration pic. Planes on queue for take off
This post is not really about flying planes or landing them, this is about newbie investing. But for you to better appreciate the discussion here (in case you are interested) please refer to the post immediately preceding this. I guess, I just can't get away too long from airplanes these days (there are two roundtrip tickets in my hand carry bag at the moment and I just deplaned yesterday) thus the title.
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