Changing phones

I'm growing bored with my Motorola razer phone, and am considering upgrading. I don't have the money to upgrade now, so in the mean time it looks like I'll just be window shopping.

Anyway, I plan on getting either a Nokia N70, N73, or N80. The reason I'm tempted by Nokia phones is that my favorite phone of all time was my 6600 (pictured here).

I don't know what it was about that phone, but I loved it. It stored all the info I needed, it was easy to assign ring tones to different people and have their pictures pop up when they called. You could do all sorts of cool things with the camera, it recorded video, and it even had neat special effects, including one of my favorites called night vision. And it was heavy, or better description was solid. If you were an adult, particularly an adult male, you didn't feel stupid with this phone, or feel you needed to handle it with kid gloves for fear of breaking it. In short, it was perfect...

Well what happened to such a perfect phone you may ask? Unfortunately, software happened. One day, the phone would just not boot up, the power would come on, nothing would happen on the screen. I was leaving that day on a trip to visit the gf, so I was forced to run down to the local t-mobile store and buy a new phone.

Nokia had made newer versions of this phone (they claim), but nothing has triggered the same response that I had with the 6600. The are nice phones, but the 6682 and the like are just not the same.

More Philippines photos

Here are some more pictures from the Philippines! On the left is the coastline very early in the morning. It was our first day in Siquijor, and I was having trouble sleeping.

Below and on the right is a picture of me goofing around at Coconut Grove on the island. One of the best things about this resort is that it has A/C! I also noticed that it did not have as much in the way of breeze. The other side of the island was much breezier. Of course, this could have had something to do with the season, weather, etc., and Coconut Grove may be much breezier other times.

Finally, there is a picture of the good ship Osa, racing us to Apoo (sp?) island. It was while diving here that I saw the barracuda. We took two boats because there were so many of us, 13 guests and a crew of 8 maybe?

Only 4 weeks

There are only 4 more weeks until I'm done with school! It's getting very difficult to concentrate, anxious to be done. I hope I can pay enough attention to at least escape with somewhat decent grades. Good news is that even with 2 B's, I'll probably still have a high enough GPA to graduate with honors, though no top honors.
Normally, what I'd do is try and travel for awhile after I'm done. Instead, with no money and no job, I'm going to be stuck at home, looking for work. That's no where near as fun, as I'm sure you know.

Back from the Philippines

The gf and I are back from the Philippines. It was a lot of fun, though a little shady/dirty. A lot of people tried to take advantage of us because we were Americans (i.e. what should have cost 20 pesos they charged 100). There were also heavily armed guards at all the banks in Dumaguete and Manila, suggesting that bank robbers are really aggressive there. However, Siquijor was really nice and laid back. No problems at all on the island.

December 31st was a REALLY BAD DAY to be a pig in Siquijor! They probably killed more pigs that one day then live in the town were I grew up. Seriously, the screaming was so bad! If Clarice thought the lambs were bad, this island definitely would have thrown her over the edge...


I also managed to get open water scuba certified. During some of my dives, I saw 2 sea turtles, a sea snake, and a HUGE barracuda! It must have weighed something like 30 kilos!! Very glad it didn't try and take a bite out of me....

I posted a tons more pictures on my flickr account, so make sure to check them all out there. The Philippines were great, I'm surprised that more people don't go there. I suspect that it's because most people don't get far enough off the beaten path, and are turned off by the people trying to take advantage of them. The obvious sexpats are probably a turn off too.

However, that should not discourage people. The scenery is wonderful, and the people, at least on Siquijor, are incredibly nice!