BACK IN BUSINESS!

Well, if you read of my internet ordeals yesterday, you may know that they are all over! Having finally figured out how things work with this SMART BRO wireless modem, since they weren't exactly explained in the documentation, I was able to get everything worked out and I am finally online. The solution, as I mentioned yesterday, had me returning to Ayala Mall, which I confirmed is, in fact, five levels of shopping goodness. I learned yesterday that a company called Junrex was an authorized reseller of SMART products and that they would be able to put the load on my SIM card. Turns out it was an amazingly easy process. Almost a shame that I let something so simple and so small stand in the way of my being online earlier.

I walked into Junrex and, at first, decided to be amazed for a while by the many different cell phones available. I will talk about that at length in a moment. After browsing the phones for a while, I finally went up to the front desk to ask about loading my SIM. She simply asked for my number which, even though I had it memorized, I had on the card that came with the SIM. She took my card and punched a few numbers on her phone and then turned the phone to me to show me the confirmation of my 1500 minute load. I paid my P500 and it was done. It was that easy, and will be for all future loads.



At that point I could have come home, but I remembered that there was this place I wanted to eat at. The night before, I saw a commercial on TV in the downstairs restaurant, during some type of karaoke game show, for a Chinese food joint called Chow King. The commercial was really cool showing a super skilled chef throwing rice around with lots of fire everywhere. So, in Ayala Mall, I walked past the huge dine-in KFC and the nearby Pizza Hut to enter Chow King. On the wall was a large poster for Chow Fan (fried rice) including spicy chicken and beef and, my favorite, Yang Chow. I ate Yang Chow fried rice the other night so I walked up to the counter, like in a fast food joint, and ordered the spicy chicken and beef. They said it wasn't available. I went with regular beef fried rice. For a mere 20 pesos you can add what they call a topping. I chose something called Lumpiang Shanghai, which looks like egg rolls, but are filled with pork like a pot sticker. Altogether the meal as about $2.00 with a bottled water, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't China by any means, but still pretty good.

Satisfied with my meal, it was now time to find my way out of this maze. As I searched for an end to the bright and busy corridors, I ran across something I had completely forgotten about. It was the Ayala Mall Mac Store. I remembered finding their webpage just a couple of days before going to the Philippines. I went in and was surprised to see it was no different than the many Apple stores in Los Angeles. They had everything I might want should I need to expand my Mac gear. I got a price sheet from them just to see how things compared. Now, while most things are incredibly cheap in the Philippines, imported, western technology, especially from America, seems to be very expensive, more so than buying it at home. Now I knew about this from the forums I have read about the Philippines, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't nearly as bad as some made it out to be. Even though I have read claims of things being as much as double the price of their American counterparts, most items were only $200 - $500 more than the Apple store list price. When you're talking about a $2000 or $3000 item, thats not an outrageous price increase. It does, however, bring to mind a serious question.

What will become of the iPhone in the Philippines, or Asia in general? I can now totally understand why Apple lowered the price of the new 3G iPhone, but because of the import taxes that appear when these items go to Asia, it will go up in price on this end. The problem is, when I looked at phones in the many mobile stores, I was surprised to find that, while the iPhone may be a top contender in the U.S., in Asia, it's just another phone. Sadly, there are phones that cost less than half that price that have the same features, not counting the innovative touch screen. What may spell trouble for the iPhone, though, are what the higher caliber phones can do. Phones in the iPhone price range come with, not a mere 2 megapixel camera like Apple's flagship mobile product, but a 5 megapixel camera, and many can shoot full video. They have the same internet and web features with the advantage that 3G networks are actually available all over Asia. Many phones are clearly made to watch TV and pick up radio, aside from having storage enough for music and video on board. They have real GPS in their map systems and many boast some pretty big and high resolution screens. I think Apple will be given a run for their money by companies like Nokia, Samsung and Sony in the far east.

Anyway, now that I am back online, it is time to get down to some serious writing. I got a few freelance writing gigs while offline during my trip, and so there's work to do. It's time to make some money to keep the adventure going!


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