October 24th, 2009 admin
 Knot the way to do it Now every so often I complain about my job. No, really. I do. But then something happens to make me realise how lucky I really am. And one of those moments happened just yesterday.
I’ll set the scene. Its just after two major typhoons have torn apart the Philippines. Its wet and rainy and the residual wind occasionally rattles the windows. I’m slogging away in front of my computer on a fairly mundane task, and having a bit of a hard time concentrating. I look out of the window. And I see some rope going past. Rope with a knot in it.
This particular rope doesn’t look very safe to me, but then again what do I know. I’m not a sailor, and this could be some kind of special frayed knot type thing which is actually very safe. Interested by now, I take a look out of the window.
Read the rest of this entry » |
Posted in Life, Philippines | No Comments »
October 3rd, 2009 admin
So I was working from home the other day, around mid-morning, when I heard a mighty crunch from outside. I looked out my window and was confronted with the scene to the left.
I snapped a picture, and watched as a crowd started to gather, and then after about 5 minutes, the driver emerged from the car, shaking his head. He made a great show of examining the lamppost and chatted happily with the assembled crowd.
Two things disturb me about this photo. The first is that I can’t figure out how he managed to crash. There was no traffic around. Traffic on that road only goes about 15km/h. The lamppost was clearly visible and easy to avoid. I can only conclude he lost control of the car, or suffered some kind of seizure.
The second thing is … the lampost is in the middle of the road! I’ve been looking at that for the past year and it never struck me as odd until now. I am clearly innured to this sort of general strangeness.
Anyway, the conclusion to this story is that a couple of hours later a policeman wandered by and took notes. Then a guy arrived with a tin of yellow paint and painted the base of the lamppost yellow. Apparently then, the guy just hadn’t seen it.
Posted in Life, Philippines | No Comments »
June 2nd, 2009 admin
Man this is the best kept secret in the entire telecoms industry … I’ve been trying to send email through PLDT’s SMTP servers as I’m a broadband customer of theirs, and my normal SMTP server wasn’t working. I needed to get an email out, and I was getting a little desperate.
So apparently the published SMTP servers don’t actually work. Yay! If you try looking on the PLDT website, where you might expect to see this kind of useful information … well just don’t bother. You get seasick pretty quickly from all the flash whoopiness, and the dead ends and 404 start to piss you off after a while. So then you do a few google searches and come up with a couple of published servers, which basically don’t work: smtp.info.com.ph and smtp.pldtdsl.net
So, eventually I cracked and went to the Customer Hotline. After re-phrasing my question several thousand times until I was understood, the answer was … smtpdsl4.pldtdsl.net , using port 587. Which actually works.
Port 587, yes of course, why didn’t I guess that one.
Posted in General IT, Philippines | 2 Comments »
September 14th, 2008 admin
I’m at a loss to explain this unless SmartBro’s DNS or proxy servers have been taken over. Here’s the deal. I’m surfing normally, and then suddenly I try to go to a normal site (economist.com, yahoo.com, facebook.com, google. com, iptools.com etc) and instead of getting the correct page, I get a weird spammy advertising page, even though the URL in the Address bar looks correct.
The image to the right is an example. Click on the image to get a full sized view. I have more examples saved if anyone is interested. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Philippines, Security | No Comments »
September 12th, 2008 admin
Don't do it ...
I’m continually startled by the way people use email in the Philippines. Using a Yahoo address is phenomenally popular, even for business. I could forgive a mom and pop company from using momandpop@yahoo.com.ph, but when you get top management handing you cards saying ceo_888@yahoo.com.ph there is something clearly very wrong.
In no particular order, here are a few reasons why you should NOT use yahoo for your business email address. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Life, Philippines, Security | 1 Comment »
September 9th, 2008 admin
This is the ultimate breakage: a breakage in the beer chain! In a country where cheap beer is a lifeline out of the inefficiency and brokenness, the danger of an interruption in the beer supply cannot be overestimated. Nevertheless I’ve been noticing dwindling supplies of bottled San Miguel Beer in Manila over the last few weeks, and now virtually every supermarket I visit has empty shelves. A national disaster. No San Miguel Pale Pilsen, no SMB Light, and …. no Super Dry <whimper>.
That’s not to say there’s no beer at all, mind. There is canned beer, which has always been inexplicably more expensive than bottled beer — around an extra 30%. And of course because of this, its the only beer left on the shelves. And there is foreign beer of course, but who in their right mind would pay 120 pesos for a can of Heineken, when the local brew is a sixth of the price and tastes much better.
I’ll investigate further. Questions will be asked. Hang in there fellow Manilans.
Posted in Life, Philippines | 1 Comment »
July 18th, 2008 admin
Not sure if I’ve ranted about ID cards in the Philippines yet. Seems like every building you go into, you have to leave a photo ID and sign in. I hate leaving my passport with them, but that’s the only photo ID I have. I normally try and argue my way in. Once I left a calling card which seemed to satisfy them. Once I left a credit card, to my amazement and astonishment — just testing the boundaries of stupidity you understand. Several times I’ve had to call whoever it was I was meeting and get them to collect me from the lobby.
No more. I think I’ll just make my own ID card now — no one said they had to be official. Enter … auto badge generator page … http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/badge.php
Love it.
Posted in Life, Philippines | 1 Comment »
June 2nd, 2008 admin
The more astute readers will notice that its been over a month since I posted anything. Clearly the blogging apathy has hit, which any blogger will recognise as something which happens once the lustre of your shiny new blog begins to dull. But there are more sinister forces at work. I fear I may have been infected by the Philippines Treacle Syndrome.
This deadly wasting disease is most prominent on a Friday afternoon. It causes ordinary tasks to take several times longer than they usually should. Here are some examples:
Buying Ibuprofen in Mercury Drug:
You walk into the store. There are 6 staff in the shop, and 2 customers. You stride to the counter, behind which are 4 of the staff. They instantly stare intently at pieces of paper in front of them. Some try to run out the back door. Some duck under the counter. Eventually one will have to talk to you …
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Life, Philippines | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2008 admin
Last week I had to go to immigration to renew my visa. I’d been there a couple of months ago, and although the process was long-winded and expensive, it didn’t cause me too much pain. Therefore when I revisited the office last week, in the Intramuros district of Manila, I was entirely unprepared for the seven circles of hell which awaited.
Last time I’d got there at around 11, and had to wait until 3.30 for my visa, which had effectively taken up a whole day. This time I hopped into a taxi at 7.30, before the inevitable traffic jams had a chance to build up, and was there at 8am when they opened. My first surprise was that I wasn’t allowed in the building. At all. Two months ago I’d had no problems when I turned up wearing shorts, but since then they’d put up a cheaply photocopied notice saying “No shorts or sandals”, and were refusing to let anyone thusly attired in the building. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Life, Philippines | No Comments »
March 8th, 2008 admin
The Philippines is not blessed with the best electricity system in the world, and its certainly not the cheapest, so it makes sense in some ways that they’re a little careful with it. But how that manifests itself is sometimes broken, sometimes scary, and sometimes a little of both.
Take for example the number of cars driving around without lights on at night. These are primarily taxis, jeepneys and buses, and its not in an “Oh its just past 6pm and I forgot to turn on the lights” sense that they do it, its in a “This electricity stuff costs money, so by driving around without lights on I will save up to 10 Pesos a day of gasoline.” sense. Way to go. Read the rest of this entry »
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