Cherry Mobile Q5i: A review

I forgot to tell everybody about my new phone, the Cherry Mobile Q5i. I just bought it a week and a half ago and forgot to write a review for it because I lost track of time and I was having too much fun (aka procrastinating). Read long and find out why I prefer to call this phone the “poor man’s smartphone”.

The Phone

Overview

The Cherry Mobile Q5i is a Philippine phone with Filipinos in mind, but apparently has borrowed ideas from the big mobile phone players in the world. To keep up with today’s trends, it is equipped with a smooth physical QWERTY keyboard, similar to those of a Blackberry’s. It comes in four colors: Solid yellow w/black back, solid red w/black back, black w/blue back and trim (this is what I got) and black w/white back and trim.

Model

The Q5i is part of the Q series, which is, a bunch of phones who share a common trait – QWERTY keyboards. The Q5i is not really one of the newest and state of the art releases in its family, but it is one of the most reliable. Its successors include the Trident (triple SIM capability), and various other Q series phones.

Features

The phone itself is very feature packed. Here are some of them:

• Dual SIM capabilities. Every local phone has to have this, since most Filipinos are part of at least two cellular networks.
• Mobile Web Browsing. The Q5i handles true websites very poorly, because it can only use a GPRS connection and it has a very basic browser built mainly for mobile websites. However, it does its job pretty well.
• Touchpad control. The phone uses a touchpad instead of buttons to navigate through the interface. Touchpads are similar to those used in iPods other than the iPod touch.
• Java support. Not all local phones are capable of basic Java programs, but the Q5i is different. There are three Java applications installed by default – a mobile browser, a Yahoo! Messenger app, a MSN Messenger app, plus a couple of games.
• Improved audio. The Wolfson audio chipset used in the Q5i is similar to those found in the previous generation of iPods. It allows for clearer audio and support for a 3.5mm audio jack, instead of some proprietary jack.
• Dual MicroSD slots. The phone has two slots for MicroSD flash memory cards. Currently I’m using two 2GB MicroSD cards, however, I have no idea if the phone supports MicroSDHC (MSD High Capacity) cards (4GB and higher).
• Other features such as FM radio, a 2MP camera, a video camera, video playback support, image viewing, and no TV (whew).

Interface

The interface is speedier and prettier than my previous Cherry Mobile D15. It has simple transitions that makes you feel that the phone isn’t slowing down on you. Also, the colors are smooth and easy to the eyes.

Portability

The phone is wider than my previous D15, due to the fact that it possesses a QWERTY keybaord, but the Q5i is very lightweight for its size. It fits in most pockets, and can be easily fished out if needed.

Its battery capacity is quite high, a natural trait for local phones. The battery stays alive for at least five days with constant audio playback using headphones. I’m guessing it should last a week if its just on standby and you’re using it just for texting and calling.

Durability

The phone’s exterior is very durable, as, contrary to popular belief, it can resist falls and shock without much permanent damage. The pins and sockets of the phone however, are susceptible to damage under pressure, I’ll explain more of that later.

My phone (no, I meant the Q5i I have, not the other Pinoy phone brand)

My Q5i has been in my possession and care for about one and a half weeks, and so far the only problem I had with it is that the 3.5mm jack socket got busted, and all the time the phone thinks that a headset is connected to my phone.

This problem is not a nuisance. It has very huge implications on the phone’s capablities. Since it thinks that there is a headset attached to the phone even though there wasn’t, it will always rely on its imaginary headset to transmit audio from the handset whenever you make or receive calls, which sucks, since you won’t hear the other person on the line unless you have earphones connected and using the loudspeaker is just too awkward in public.

How I fixed the problem

I would have sent my phone to a Cherry Mobile technician, but the place is too far away and I’m too lazy to go there. So, I sent it to the numerous cellphone repair “technicians” (read: people who think they can fix things because they can handle opening up stuff and soldering shit) who refuses to touch my phone because all they touch are Nokias, Sony-Ericssons, Motorolas, etc. Thankfully there’s a guy who managed to man up and tried to fix my problem, but to no avail. So we simply just cut off the connection between the port and the system board of the phone. Sometimes amputation of a certain part is just the only way to cure another.

So my Q5i has lost its main feature that’s very rare among China and local phones. I guess I’m going back to my shitty iPod.

Conclusion

Pros

• Dual SIM capability
• QWERTYY keyboard
• You can attach any standard pair of head/ear phones to it
• Mobile web browsing
• Facebook capabilities

Cons

• Ports can break if you’re not careful
• Touchpad can be a pain in the ass to use for maneuvering the interface
• QWERTY keyboard has a slightly steep learning curve for those who are not familiar with them.

Overall, the Q5i is a great phone, hands down. For Php3,499.00 (US$79.00), you can get a sweet QWERTY phone that can fit any lifestyle. Just please don’t mess up its audio port, as it’s quite fragile.

How the Philippine National Police took the title “World’s Slowest” from Slowpoke.

It’s official guys, the Philippine National Police has officially taken the title of “World’s Slowest Retard(s)” from its previous title holder (who managed to hold it from, say, the beginning of time, I might add), Slowpoke.

This guy.

You see, there happened to be a recent hostage taking that took place somewhere in the Philippines, as you can read here, here, and here. If you’re too lazy to click on those authentic links to real news sites, see the full coverage of the “event” and you just lazily wrote “TL;DR” in the comments, let me narrate the sequence of events to you, in my perspective.

The Crime

Apparently, some pissed-off cop who was recently kicked off-duty from the police force a year ago got tired of not being a cop and all, despite all his friends and family telling him that everybody hates cops. So instead of going into therapy session with other ex-cops and transforming himself into a metrosexual (as most of the squeamish would do), he stood up, put on some massive balls of steel, grabbed an M-16 assault rifle, three magazines, maybe a grenade or two, then went outside.

Everybody ignored him and all his gear because everybody assumed he was a cop, stolling around the streets more armed to the teeth than Duke Nukem. He stopped and thought what would he do to “impress” the folks at the camp and get them to get him back. A tour bus carrying Chinese nationals arose from the distance, and he thought, “Oh well, might as well take this bus, there’s a lot of cover inside plus, I fucking hate Chinamen.”

So he tried to pull the bus over, and it did. The bus driver looked at the cop before him and thought, “Oh great! A cop! Just what I needed! Now I can mindlessly drive around while masturbating and those MMDA folks won’t give me a ticket because I have someone with an automatic rifle on board!” They cruised through a little bit. The people on board noticed that someone who took a time machine to the present from the Vietnam War have boarded the bus, and seeing how much Vietnam war-machines hate people with slanted eyes, the tourists on board immediately shit their pants and put their asses on Guantanamo Bay mode.

Some folks outside saw the bus stopping all of the sudden and some guy with a powerful assault rifle inside, so after a little bit of hesitation deciding whether they were seeing some simulated airsoft match or a real hostage taking, they called the police, who happened to arrive in just a nick of time.

No, not really! The hostage taker actually had time to take a nap before the cops arrived.

They had time for a little bedtime story, too.

The “Negotiation”

When the cops did arrive, they barricaded the place and in a 1970’s Munich Olympics scenario revival, they let the press flood in. You know, people with cameras and crap who tell other people that someone just hijacked a fucking bus.

The hostage taker demanded a lot of things from the negotiators before he lets the hostages free. First he asked for some coffee, because he feels groggy after a long nap waiting for the cops to arrive. Secondly, he asks them to clear his criminal records, the same records that kicked him out of the force in the first place. Lastly, he wants some real policemen to come and get him, because those who came to apprehend him appears to be geeky cosplayers trying to look like Counter-Terrorists from Counter-Strike.

The cops just hanged around a bit, because they were waiting for their “superiors” to make the call. While they were having a pretty quiet excursion in the park in front of the Quirino Grandstand (it’s a nice place by the way), the hostage taker’s brother, who’s also a cop, appeared on scene and tried to approach the bus, where he was promptly taken down and got a nice dosage of ass-kicking.

Seeing on the bus television that his brother was having a bad case forced nightstick sodomy, the hostage taker flipped out, and began to empty his entire magazine into any motherfucker he sees inside the bus.

He must have called them cock-a-roaches too while he was at it.

After that, the cops called in the big guys, and began to barge in and kill the asshole who tried to do a Tony Montana on the Chinese tourists. Just joking! They just lied around the park watching the action.

 

The “Action”

The Philippine National Police must have big love for nighttime rescue missions, because they actually waited for night to fall before they send in the big boys, or, in other words, men with tiny balls wielding guns too big for them to even carry.

Armed with bulletproof vest, kevlar helmets, flashbang and teargas grenades that would make a COD or CS player cry in joy, these guys surrounded the bus to do – you guessed it – absolutely nothing, if you think posing for the cameras while in full gear is doing nothing.

Philippine SWAT team: We may as well look cool for the cameras while we make complete fools of ourselves.

They had a problem though: they had to get inside the bus, but the wise-ass hydraulic door would not break down, even when they tried tying an end of a rope on it, the other on a truck, then pulling it with machine force. They found an emergency door at the back which they could break into, but realizing that they left their tiny balls in the freezer again, they didn’t go in, and decided that chucking in flashbang grenades and tear gas was the only way to go.

The hostage taker then got bored of having his senses consistently disoriented by the endless barrage of flashbangs and teargas being thrown at him, so he stood up, and decided to do the Tony Montana again, this time with shit in his eyes and ears. He did manage to hit some random passerby outside, though.

After all the fun whirling around in circles relieving the scratch on his trigger finger, some wiseguy sniper, who probably earned his job by playing endless hours on Special Force, shot the hostage taker square in the head. That’s right kids. All those hours killing each other with AWPs in Counter-Strike will land you a good job as one of the Philippine’s greatest snipers.

Where sniping legends are born.

The Aftermath

So far, about 13 passengers in the bus made it out alive, but the remaining ones were dead, along with the hostage taker who attempted to play Grand Theft Auto: Philippines Real Life.

Also, the Philippine National Police earned two titles. The first is “World’s Slowest Retard(s)”, where, as mentioned previously, was previously owned by the Pokemon, Slowpoke. The other title they achieved was “World’s Shittiest Police Force”, where they beat the Nigerian Police Force out of number 195.

As for the Philippines, International tourism marked the entire country as “The Best Place to go to when you have a death wish”, and “The Best Country to experience a full hostage experience”. The country earned itself a sweet spot in the trending topics of Twitter, and the front pages of the biggest news sources in the world. Great job, guys!

A good phone is a useful one: the Cherry Mobile D15

Right now good chances are, your phone is made by one of the big players in the mobile phone industry. It could be a Nokia if you don’t mind a slow UI, a Motorola if you’re a hipster, or even an iPhone if you’re an Apple fanboy or just easily drawn into buying shiny things that lose their usability when you hold them the wrong way. You take much pride in your phone because you nearly sold one of your kidneys by buying it.

Meet my new phone, the Cherry Mobile D15.

A new local player in the Philippine mobile phone industry (an industry, which, I must say, is so freaking huge), Cherry Mobile is the kind of company wherein a bunch of Chinese guys who got tired of imitating countless Nokia phones started incorporating creativity in their works. Cherry Mobile, much like the earlier and slightly similar phone manufacturer MyPhone, is evidently from China.

But don’t let its Chinese etymology make you think that the phone is shit. Yes, it is sort of shitty, but at least it’s a lot more reliable than typing horrendously on a virtual keyboard.

I’m going to go through my phone’s features, and rate them according to how good they are.

Size

My D15 isn’t big – it’s area is about the same as my Nokia 1208, but the D15 is much slimmer and lighter than the 1208. This is probably due to the fact that the D15 carries a much lighter battery by default (it can, however, use the batteries of my Nokia 1208, I’ll talk about that one later on). The phone is easy to chuck around in my pockets, and it doesn’t feel obstructive to my thigh movement, unlike my Nokia N95.

Score: 9/10

Durability

Chinese phones have an accepted stereotype of being one of the least durable on the planet. Still, I’ve seen Chinese phones last for two or more years, despite the ongoing belief of many folks that these phones break the minute you hold them in your hand. I just got this new so I can’t rate its durability just yet.

Score: Unknown

Reliability

The CM D15 carries a trademark feature that most Chinaphones share – multi SIM capacity. My D15 can handle two SIMs at once, which eliminates the need for me to bring a second phone along just to be connected to one network and another. Still, having two phones is intuitively better because if one of your phones gets lost or died, you can use the other.

Score: 8/10

Speed

Chinese phones are never known to be fast, because their operating systems work like they were written by an eight year old kid. But some lucky Chinese phones which make use of popular operating systems like Android and Windows Mobile are much faster than their lower quality counterparts. Too bad my phone belongs to the latter group.

Score: 4/10

Features

My phone is capable of listening to FM radio stations, play .mp3 songs stored on its memory, watch .3gp movies, take pictures with its camera, and even read e-books, but it’s never good at any of these. It’s a jack of all trades, but a master of none. It can’t browse the web and/or connect to wireless networks, but why would I even need those?

Score: 6/10

Accessories

The CM D15, unfortunately, comes with its own set of earphones that connects to the phone’s special audio jack. This means I won’t be able to use my own earphones with my phone. I’ll have to settle for its shitty set of earbuds where the bass sounds like cockroaches having an orgy.

Score: 2/10

Customization

I can customize plenty of stuff on my phone, like its wallpaper (it stretches the image all the way unlike the way Nokia does wallpapers), turning on/off screens, and basically almost its entire sound scheme. Transferring your own files to it is a pain though, because I have to take out the Micro SD card inside and plug it in to an adapter and to my PC.

Score: 7/10

Battery

My phone’s battery is generous – it allows up to 72 hours of standby time, and at least an hour and a half of playing music. Its charging adaptor fills up the battery with juice fairly fast. Also, if my battery dies permanently (that is, being unable to store any more charges), I can use some specified batteries of certain Nokia phones, like the one in my Nokia 1208.

Score: 8/10

Price

You get this feature-filled, dual SIM, shiny phone for Php 1,999.00, or less than US$45. That’s a steal, if you ask me.

Score: 10/10

Overall

The Cherry Mobile D15 is a great phone for those who are not easily drawn to shiny phones that brag about being able to get you on the Internet so you can watch porn on your phone. This is a phone that is able to do what you want it to do, unless what you’re thinking of doing is getting your phone to get you on the Internet so you can watch porn on your phone. For the basic Joe who like a basic phone that has plenty of basic features at a low price, the Cherry Mobile D15 is a good phone to start with. Sadly, it appears to be only available for sale in the Philippines.

Overall Score: 6/10

The joys (and pains) of public transportation

I am now officially enrolled and studying in De La Salle University – Manila, following a successful entrance exam, payment of my tuition for my first term and attendance of the recent LaSalle Personal Effectiveness Program (LPEP), a two-day program focused on getting the “froshies” (their fancy term for freshmen) on the right track. I just finished the LPEP earlier this day, after plenty of tiring activities, lectures and performances.

DLSU Manila is not located in a convenient distance from my home. I have to cross borders of two regions, since I live in CALABARZON and DLSU is in Manila.

To get there, I have to rely on public transportation. I don’t want my parents getting me to school, I’m old enough to go out myself. So it is public transit or nothing.

The Bus

The major form of public transportation that I will have to take is the bus. Sure, to reach the bus routes I will have to get to the highways they travel onto through a tricycle ride, but the bus is one of the most important modes of transportation for me to get to DLSU. Buses offer trips from provinces to Buendia Ave., where most provincial buses now stay and turn around because apparently they aren’t allowed to roam around Metro Manila anymore except from there to the Baclaran area.

A standard bus fare costs an average of Php25.00. If I find a bus at Gahak rather than the Aguinaldo Highway, the costs goes up to Php30.00. Obviously, I’m put at some sort of disadvantage, since it’s more expensive and the bus does not go inside Buendia Avenue. At least I have a larger chance to sit down on this bus line.

The Light Rail Transit (LRT)

The Light Rail Transit, more popularly known as the LRT, is an elevated train network that travels around various parts of Metro Manila. The first and often used line is the one that travels along Taft Ave., but there are also other rail lines that travel along other parts of Metro Manila such as Quezon City. The first line is, obviously, what I take to get to DLSU.

A LRT ticket costs only Php12.00 since I only travel no farther than Vito Cruz to Libertad. Sure, the jeepneys offer a cheaper fare of Php7.50 from Gil Puyat to DLSU, but jeepneys are usually more crowded, slower, and, more importantly, much more dangerous. They do not have security personnel on watch, unlike the LRT.

Verdict

Public transportation in the Philippines is risky, crowded, and at most times slow and congested, but it is a must to learn and experience if you plan to stay in the country for a long time. There will be times when private transportation is unavailable, and you will have to commute. As I have learned through my past experiences, mastering the ways of Philippine public transportation requires trial and error. There are no updated and regulated transit maps in the country, as transit routes are regularly changing and inconsistent. The only information you can rely on is from others, your research of the area, and your experiences where you struggle to find a PUJ that goes through that place you really don’t know where.

A strong piece of advice, if you do not have the courage to ride with strangers in packed conditions as if you’re inside a can of sardines with wheels, don’t use public transportation. Get someone to pick you up, or hail a cab, instead.

The countless incompetent people of the 2010 Philippine National Elections

There are incompetent people everywhere. They could be your friends, your boss, or even yourself. Incompetence is born out of nowhere, and attacks without consent, and leaves quite some damage and angry people pumping their fists up in the air.

Yet in something as important and groundbreaking as the first automated Philippine elections, incompetent people are around, and they are as numerous as ever. People like…

The PCOS machines

The little counting machines that resemble small printers are used in the 2010 RP elections in order to accurately tally up the ballots fed into it. It works with such accuracy that it nullifies the 90% chance of a failed election through manual counting because 90% of Filipinos could not count well (even I couldn’t).

Like most other machines created by man, these PCOS machines have one flaw: they fragile, and will bitch you endlessly to either fix or replace it once it starts to break.

The thing is, the voters are too astonished with the primitive 20 year old technology of the PCOS machines, that they step up and, shall I say, touch it indefinitely. This includes inserting their ballots wrong, placing their index finger instead of their thumb when prompted with the thumb scanning process (mostly because they do not know what the thumb is), or just plain bashing the machine because they believe it’s a devilish contraption of Satan. Which brings us to…

The voters

It’s 11 o’clock in the morning, and you’re in a line chock full of people who’d like to either pleasure themselves by touching the PCOS machines or destroy it. Temperatures soon reach ape-shit insanely-high, and the tension is getting worse. What’s the best thing to do? If you thought, beating the shit of everyone you see, then you are truly a Filipino.

You see, heat has been scientifically proven by a bunch of old people in white suits living in sterile places to be quite a downturn for many a person’s mood. That’s why when cartoons want to portray someone being pissed, they draw the character fuming.

But hell, that’s probably natural, considering the long heat wave that’s terrorizing the country longer than the NPA or the Abu-Sayyaf. Speaking of terrorists, let’s go to…

The Security Personnel

Boom! Did you hear that? It sounds like a, wait a minute, an improvised explosive device! What do you do? If you decided just sitting back and watch people chunks flying all over the place from massive explosions, welcome to the Philippine Armed Forces!

As of the Philippine election day, all active military staff are reques…no, ordered to stand guard and make sure that the elections moves smoothly. Reserve forces are also deployed to make sure (almost) nothing goes wrong. But they’re doing a shitty job. Rivalries between political clans block the voters from doing their duties, while some freaks circumvent the delivery of the ballots and tries to take them away and burn them because, well, you guessed it, they think they’re the papers of the Devil.

Now there are these uniformed people with guns they call soldiers. They’re supposed to keep the situation safe by any means possible, just to make sure that the elections don’t get derailed faster than an coke-obsessed generic celebrity from Hollywood. Some dicks decided to sabotage the elections by blocking the voters. What do you do? Stand by and watch? What the hell is wrong with you soldier? You have a weapon, go and use it, shoot the bastards.

Verdict

The Philippine 2010 National Elections resembles what it seems to be some sort of city where you try to get to work to feed the mouths of your hungry children when some dick decides to steal your money in exchange for not getting stabbed in the gut. In the elections, you do your best to perform your duties as a member of a democratic nation, but there are just these people who, voluntarily or not, make the job more difficult than usual.

Possible worst-case scenarios that could happen this May 2010 Philippine elections

The overhyped 2010 Philippine national elections are drawing nearer. It’s probably the most overhyped election ever in the Philippine democratic history, because, for the first time ever, the country will now rely on optical scanning machines to tally the ballots, because we’ve lost all our faith on our counting skills. A Chinese baby could count these votes better than a hundred Filipino mathematicians and in turn give us more appropriate leaders.

 

Even better.

But we shouldn’t lose our faith in machines. They’re machines, right? Powerful, emotionless beings that do what they are supposed to do, unless something goes wrong or some dick decides to mess up its work. But even with this ancient technology hitting the Philippine’s election shelves in a few days, there are still relatively good chances of bad scenarios occurring this election season, scenarios like…

Discontinuation of automated tallying'

Despite all the hype and assurances that nothing would go wrong with machines taking over the whole “counting up the votes” thing with the elections, many people, particularly those who are looking to get a little upper hand in the elections through giving everyone the finger and kicking them in the balls, are still against it. They disagree with letting robots count our valuable, valuable votes. For them, a manual counting is needed.
They already signed a manifesto (fancy name for an actually serious petition). However, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) already trashed the idea of having a manual count alongside the machines, calling it “highly unnecessary and would require accountants and mathematicians high on crack to perform”.

Why this would happen

Obviously, the Philippines relied on optical scanning machines primarily for one reason: to avoid mistakes in counting and to negate the possibility of people cheating the tallying of votes. When people ask to have the dirty, inaccurate, and easily-hackable method of counting back, you can only think of one reason why they would think of such an idea.
They just wanted to cheat the elections, yet again.

Election Rioting

The machines can be impervious to hacking, provided that the hackers the dirty-minded politicians hire couldn’t even be competent enough to keep viruses off their computers. So what would be the solution to this?
They would have to resort to the old-time age of vote diverting: beating the shit out of everything.
And they don’t have to hire a team of thugs, either. They could just hire one guy with a death wish to falsely announce a bomb threat while he’s in line to vote, or just say that the elections are rigged. People would go instantly nuts and grab their pitchforks and torches, where they’ll engage in a free-for-all 9,000,000+ man MMA-style deathmatch.
The Philippine society would collapse in the course of a few days.

Why this would happen

This is the election equivalent of nuking another country because they just won’t quit or their defenses are just too impervious to any sort of penetration (dick joke there, sort of). If you can’t beat them, might as well nuke them, they say.

Hell yeah!

Another People Power

This one is quite similar to the previous one above, but much, much less violent. “People Power” is the process of brainwashing the people with special false propaganda to precisely get them to riot, without the violence part, that is.

Why this would happen

How people start People Power Revolutions.

A peaceful rendition of the previous two stated above would be more acceptable to the world, and probably let a few tears stream from the eyes of the people outside the country. It would raise the particular person who called “hacks” status into a hero, and probably his whole family as a whole, and set of a chain reaction where members of his family would step up as leaders and mess the whole scenario even worse.
But I doubt if someone has the balls to do it. You have to kill yourself and falsely tell the world somebody did it, then get somebody close to you (preferably one of your parents) to take your position for you. The rest would be history.
The world has seen enough People Power Revolutions. The next one would be oh-so-boring, unacceptable, and more repetitive than the plots of Philippine soap operas.

3 things that are just plain useless (in the Philippines)

After refurbishing our old Lenovo Thinkpad x60s for (my) use in college, I'm happy to say that I have spent just enough to keep this computer running smoothly. To give an estimate, I've spent only $235 for the Windows 7 Home Premium DVDs, a new 250GB HDD and 2GBs of RAM. I didn't really want to go overboard. If I wanted to I would have just bought myself a new laptop, and not refurbish one.

On a side note, I thought up about a new list. This one is a little short, because I'm running out of ideas and I'm afraid that making things up won't be healthy for my current track record. There are just things that are plain useless if you bring it to the Philippines. Things like...

3. An HDTV

A High-Defenition TV (or HDTV) is a television screen that is capable of displaying and receiving high definition signal, which is butt-ton crisp picture and sound, or in layman's terms, either 720p or 1080p.

Much like gun and muscle size, the size of your HDTV is inversely proportional to your dick size.

Like in the USA, HDTVs are very popular in the Philippines. Go to any well-known consumer electronics store and there's a high chance that you'll see a huge-ass LED TV that you can't afford behind the glass displays. After using your child's college savings and a loan from the mafia (which you pay in blood a month later), you buy the HDTV, bring it to your home, and find out that yes, it does display HD signals, but can it receive them?

As of now, there are no HD signal providers in the Philippines. Those who claim that they have HD signal are false. Why is this so? Because for every 250 or so people with TVs, only 10 of them have HDTVs.

So why would cable providers deliver digital HD signals when almost everybody is using the century-old technology of CRT? And remember "bunny-ear" antennas? That shit is popular in the Philippines.

This shit is popular!

2. A sports car

Cars can deliver hints about your personality to other people. Driving an old Beetle around marks you as a hobo, a Prius means you're a tree-hugging mom, and a sports car of any make marks you as a douche. And what is a more better way to let people know that you're a douche by running down the streets at eighty miles and hour and watching the streetchildren playing in the asphalt jump away Die Hard style to narrowly escape death?

Much like this, but with kids.

It's hilarious. If you can get your sports car to run that fast in Philippine roads that is.

Most foreigners and speed demons come to the Philippines for the country has a pretty shitty traffic enforcement system. By spending the money that could have been used for radar and speed cameras to take down speeders for something else, most people are running down the streets at full speed, only slowing down everytime the stereotypical eighty year old lady crosses the street at a snail's pace. Then everything would go like Fast and the Furious again, minus good looking cars.

This could be yours!

Why minus good looking cars? Aren't we driving in sports cars, you know, the Lambos, and Ferraris that make you look like an Italian douchebag? Well, just so you know that the Philippines has one of the shittiest roads to drive your car into, and travelling in countryside roads that are covered in fresh, well-made carabao shit. And they bake their freshly harvested rice under the sun, presumably to kill off any dirty stuff clinging to the grain. Of course you'd enjoy running that over, but when you do, think about the children who could have eaten that pile of rice.

But then again, you don't have to.

Oh, and don't forget about this:

Yep, that pretty much sums it all up.

1. A really fast computer

The Philippines is not really known for blazing fast computers. Sure, thanks to Intel desperately trying to stay in the Philippines like Rambo trying to survive in Vietnam, we have the latest in processor technology here, mainly the new Intel Core i7, i5, and i3 series. But go to a common computer shop down the street and you'll notice that these computers still use processors older than the fourth generation of Pentium processors. That's right, computers in the Philippines are stuck in the late 90's.

Technology!

While not all computers in the country are shit, you can still buy or build yourself a pretty awesome machine. i7s are on sale on the Philippine computer market, and so does new graphics cards and the like for your custom gaming machine. If you don't like to build one yourself, Dell can sell you Alienware computers that equal as beastly gaming machines.

But what if you just bought or built yourself a powerful computer? What are you going to do with it? If you're going for gaming, what game are you going to play? Prepare to be nostalgic, because you'll find out that the most popular game in the Philippines is the infamous Defense of the Ancients, or DoTa as it is more commonly known.

An average DoTA player, in his prime state of concentration.

DoTa, in case you do not know (which is good), runs on the particularly old Warcraft III engine. And the Warcraft III engine runs on the twelve year old DirectX 7 technology. Now imagine yourself that you bought a computer like this:

Technology.

In hopes that you and your friends can play something like this:

Technology!

But be disappointed to find out that they play only this:

Technology?

You get the picture.