Eye-Opener: Memo

Cellphone

5. Cellphone
Make sure your cellphone can have an open line. Cellphones are great especially if you get lost in a country you're not familiar with. I didn't get lost thank goodness. My aunts gave me great directions so I always found my way.

5. Cellphone
Make sure your cellphone can have an open line. Cellphones are great especially if you get lost in a country you're not familiar with. I didn't get lost thank goodness. My aunts gave me great directions so I always found my way.

Philippine people are in the top 10 when it comes to fast texting and all those text lingos and shortcuts. My cousins and aunts can text a short short story using slang and text lingos.

Since my cell phone wasn't an open line, I ended up borrowing one of my cousin's cellphone (for emergency if I'm really really lost).

Cultural tidbit: The cellphone system is different there. For example, here in America most of us pay monthly for the phone bills (family plan and share minutes). Most of the cellphone industry in the Philippines engendered the carpe diem adage. They mostly provide prepaid services, for example, unlimited texting for two days. They call this "loads" which can come in different peso values (P25- P150 etc.). Texting is cheaper than calling (one text can equal 1 peso while one three minute phone call can amount to 7 pesos). This is why most people in the Philippines use texting for economical reasons.

a Filipino person can have 1 to 3 sim cards each with its own numbers (if you don't frequently use these sim cards, they can expire). The sim cards work like this-- any sim card can receive any incoming calls or messages but you can only respond if you share the same network as the receivng person. For example people with Globe sim cards can only have outgoing calls to Globe members.

It's complicated, I'm just glad that I didn't have to resort to using cellphones as much.