My blog , this blog, Touched by an Angel… Winning last year’s Best website award for Blogs Category in the 9th Philippine Web Awards was enough recognition. Tonight, I told my husband that I was attending the [tag]10th Philippine Web Awards[/tag] to give support to my friends who were in the Finalists. I told him to stay home because I wasn’t winning it this year.
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Are you curious about the lifestyle of 7 to 14 year old Filipino children? Sure, we know they have the inherent ability to assimilate new technology and adapt to change at such phenomenal rates but how much? Today, I attended the presentation of Cartoon Networks’ New Generations Philippines results of the first fully-localized study dedicated to Filipino kids with previous studies done in 2003 and 2005. Cartoon Network believes that such study is an integral part of its on-going quest to learn about kids, their lifestyle , opinions and behavior. The approach in conducting the study was based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 child and parent pairs, surveying Filipino kids aged 7-14 years and their parents from socio-economics classes A to D in three metropolitan areas of Cebu, Davao and Manila in September and October 2007. Synovate Philippines was commissioned to conduct the survey.
The results are quite disappointing. TV is the number one choice for kids among various forms of media consumption.
- 46% are internet users of which three quarters have their own homepage.
- More than 75% go to malls with their parents at least once a month.
- They’ve got PHP 37 billion to spend annually.
The walking and the shopping took a toll on our poor tired feet. My husband gave up on the Funan Digital Mall while I gave up walking through history lane at the National Museum. I thought of calling it a day but… my thoughtful sister-in-law suggested we visit Dr. Fish. Uh-oh, the first time I saw Dr. Fish was at an Ugly Betty episode chomping Betty’s feet. Dr. Fish eating away my feet seemed such a squeamish idea at first. Then again, pampering our feet at the latest spa place in Singapore called the Kampong Fish Therapy piqued my curiousity more than my feelings of ickiness. If you haven’t met Dr. Fish, it’s a fun, natural, painless skin exfoliating treatment. How?
I just realized that it’s the first time Butch and I are travelling without the kids. The last time we were by ourselves was our honeymoon twenty-two years ago. Since then, our children have always been the number 1 priority in our lives next to us. We have been planning for a family vacation for some time now but our schedules never match. Either one kid is busy with school activities or the other has work obligations. Butch and I just decided to travel on our own without them. He didn’t want the kids to be home alone even when I assure him that my aunt is just a block away for emergency. After all security precautions, we took the weekend off to burn our devalued dollars for Christmas shopping in Singapore. The plane fare alone will be paid from the savings of the gadgets we intend to buy for the two girls. Of course, the most important thing of all is Butch and I will have a lot of romantic moments together getting lost in Singapore.
Stay-at-home-moms (SAHM) are so lucky these days. Online job and income opportunities such as a virtual assistant, researcher , problogger or web content writer now transforms them to work-at-home moms (WAHM). Moms get to balance family time, work and personal satisfaction. Now what is the main resource that online users need? A reliable, fast broadband connection, right? Slow connection means low productivity. High productivity means one is able to balance work load and mommy work. Mom’s work gets done fast. No connection at all might even cost loss of opportunities or risk getting replaced. I know of a web content writer working on rush job but missed a deadline because the internet connection died on her. That cost her to lose an income opportunity and reliability as a web content writer. That’s how bad our internet connection is in the Philippines.
Over six months ago, I wrote about my three new Broadband internet providers (Globelines Broadband, Smart Bro and PLDT Mydsl) for which I pay around 4,000 pesos (or $95.00) a month. Am I happy with my three internet providers? I wrote a brief review about these providers a month ago. The ratings I gave those three providers are as follows:
1. Globe Broadband (best)
2. Smart Bro
3. PLDT MyDSL (Worst)
I’m about to file a complaint at the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) for PLDT’s mydsl intermittent connection every 10 minutes or so. Come on, can you do better than that? I pay 1,520 pesos a month and I deserve a seamless connection at least 99% of the time. But what do they give me? Dropped connections every 10 minutes?
Smart Bro has really been so good to me ever since I threatened to report them to NTC for non-existent connection for 2 months. Since then, connection has been excellent for over two months now. (knock on wood)
Even if I rated Globelines Broadband as the best among the three, I am not quite happy with their up to 1 mbps connection speed since half the time, it’s 60% of 1mbps. I feel cheated that these three providers con us into :
1. believing that “up to” is substantial. “Up to” is the maximum possible bandwidth promised.
Why can’t you just say that your connection is 600kbps? You want us to believe that we can attain 1Mbps most of the time when in fact, it’s 20% of the time.
2. Their connection is faster than dial up.
Really now? Are we supposed to believe that we should continue to live in the dark ages of dial up? Stop using the byline line faster than dial-up when you promote your broadband ads . You can’t fool someone like me who has been using cable internet for 8 years now. Yes, you can fool the dialup users but how long can you fool them?
So let’s see, when a new internet provider will dispel all the above marketing gimmicks of our current internet service providers, what will happen now? These unhappy internet users will definitely move to the new reliable internet provider who will make them happy broadband users.
Who is this possible internet provider?
Ever since I could remember, dad often brought me and my siblings to any [tag]real estate investment[/tag] he acquired. Trudging by the tall weeds and mud, I wrinkled my nose and retort “But there is nothing here. No houses. ” Dad would often chuckle and remind me “Think of the future. what will it be like in 30 years?”. Twirling around the grasses and looking up at the sky, I could not think far ahead to the future. After all, I was just 8 years old. God bless my dad. His [tag]investment[/tag] paved the way for my own [tag]real estate[/tag] investments together with the rest of my siblings. I felt my girls should know how to prioritize their paycheck. Lauren even as a fresh graduate seems to be earning quite well. I thought I’d show her to invest her money wisely. So off we went for a brief stop in our country home somewhere in Sta. Rosa before heading off to Ayala Land’s latest development, the Nuvali.
On the way to Nuvali, we got so engrossed with the landscape that we missed the turn to the entrance. The sign “Poke Your Eyes” alerted us that Hey you are lost. We had a good laugh as we made a u-turn back to Nuvali.
The [tag]Photo Hunt[/tag] theme for this saturday is anything on Classic. What does “classic” mean?
“of or characteristic of a form or system felt to be of first significance before modern times” As an adjective, classic means ““belonging to the highest rank or class” as well as ““having lasting significance or worth.” As a noun, classic means ““a superior or unusual example of its kind”
Mine is a classic [tag]1940s photo[/tag] of my mom as a teenager. She must have been sixteen here in this photo, roughly taken sometime in 1947. I found this photo as my sister Belen (who happens to look like my mom) and I packed up our things from our ancestral home in Cebu. Though a bit worn, we were able to capture the photo with our digital camera.
I like gazing at [tag]retro photos[/tag]. A glimpse of the past is captured forever. I get to see the fashion trends during the good old days. One thing I notice about this old photo is the way she positioned their upper torso. It’s like mom is leaning to one side and her eyes aren’t focused on the camera as if gazing to someone behind the photographer. It’s great that she beamed a stunning smile though.
I had no plans to attend the Thank You Day concert not because I feared a repeat of the Glorietta 2 Explosion but because I felt too old for a live “rock” concert. The last time I attended a concert, my heartbeat was racing like crazy but I’ve been supporting the National Thank You Day since day 1 so I just had to be there. I told my daughters to go ahead to the concert as I was still busy with a grief support meeting. My meeting ended earlier than usual and fortunately, I was still able to catch up with the Toblerone Press Conference with my two daughters at the Highlands Restaurant together with JM Tuazon, Karla, Anton with Rach and Aidan and Juned, Annalyn with her adorable twins.
Unlike Annalyn, I wasn’t starstruck. I barely knew the bands, celebrities and even the hosts. Sure I knew who Lucky Manzano, Mo Twister, Francis M and Jay-R but the rest? I had to tap on Juned’s shoulder and ask “Who is he/she?”. haha.
Today is Blog Action Day. On October 15, bloggers around the web unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the [tag]environment[/tag] in their own way and relating to their own topic. I chose to talk about my recycled old home furniture in our environmentally friendly home. Building an [tag]Environmentally-Friendly[/tag] Home meant discussing big ideas behind even the smallest details.
When my husband and I discussed the theme of our furnishings, we decided on eclectic design so we had a reason to utilize our antique furniture which have been passed on to us by our great grandparents. Butch said “wood adds warmth to a home. How would I know? I am not an interior designer. Butch had been researching for the past year on the look of our new home. I wanted contemporary furniture because well, I wanted something new. We compromised by blending old and new furniture in our cozy home.
Allow me to show 2 furniture pieces crafted by using old discarded wood for new “old-look” furniture. These pieces of wood were taken from the junk yard. So anyway, let’s start with the this lowly carabao cart used by farmers in the rice fields.
Photo Hunters theme this week is Smelly. I chose our family’s Shoe Cabinet which is nestled in the far corner of the second floor. Some of the shoes in there are smelly whenever I pass by. It’s one reason I place a deodorizer inside the cabinet. I know when it’s time to replace the deodorizer when I smell the stink again. The solution really is to eliminate the shoe odor from the source. Other than deodorizer, there are other ways of eliminating shoe odors: