An Update

Five months have passed since I let myself loose in the confines of this webspace. I thought I would be able to live up to my pledge of religiously and diligently updating my blog with what life is for me living and working thousands of miles away from home. Sure the experiences that transpired in those blogless months were worthy to be remembered and written about; I have kept tabs and archived some unfinished journals I hope would see fruition. It’s not that we don’t have internet connection where I’m staying, albeit the neighborhood cybercafe is quite a distance. (I have also hooked up my laptop with my 3.5G-enabled phone, but it’s a far cry from a DSL connection). With this lack of option, I have been accessing the worldwide web through wap, but it has not enabled me to write and post entries on the blogs I manage, this one especially. Imagine typing with just your thumb a page or two worth of texts.

Microblogging, I would have to say, became a means for me to be, even in the small amount of text allotted for one message, the (micro)blogger that I am. Plurk has been my writing proxy in the five months that I was off Blogspot. With its sync features, I also get to update both my Friendster and Twitter, thus sharing my status messages to people I personally know and beyond. However, nothing beats the well-spent mental exercise like a blog. I don’t consider myself a good writer, but it’s something I strive to be. I may know when to put commas and periods, colons and semi-colons, but it’s the modjo I’ve been missing. Maybe that’s one reason I never got to finish most of my journals after the last one I wrote in June. Maybe this time around, the tables will be turned.

Will Be Back Soon

A glimpse at what (some of) the blogless months were...

Taken before a colleague's vacay back to the Phils

Goofing around in the rehab

The Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca
Taken during the Umrah my brother and I performed in September

Garbed in the Pilgrim's Ihram

Me, after the HAIRCUT

Al-Haram Mosque in Madinah

After Eid Prayers in Al-Haram Mosque in Madinah, Islam's 2nd Holiest Site

The New Nokia Touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic is… (Part II)

More...
…my new toy. Heehee.

About eight months ago, I wrote that I wanted to have the first of the touchscreens of the Nokia brand. I was so egged on to get one back then that I frequented the malls back home just to see if the phone was already available to the public. Early first quarter of this year, it reached the shores of the Philippines, but as I was preparing my documents to work abroad, which involved shelling out money from my own pocket, this was put on hold. My birthday, by the way, just passed a few days back (a belated greeting is fine hehe), and I usually get myself something to toy with during this special day. I was torn between an iPod 120 GB classic (with the Genius feature) and a new phone. I was mulling over the latter because I needed a spare for my two roaming numbers, SIM cards which I only get to open once in a blue moon. The XpressMusic comes with a so-so 8 GB, still enough for playing music on the road, and had a wider screen weighed against the iPod Classic (it’s comparable to the iPod Touch). Plus, this was bagsak presyo in the Middle East, so getting one was like hitting three birds with one stone (music, video, and a phone) and I also got to save P3,000 compared to having bought one back home.

I must say the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic lived up to my expectations on being a beefed-up media phone. The video feature is fantabulous, 3.2-inch wide screen with zoom and stretch options. This, however, only plays formats in MP4, so unless you have a converter for your favorite desktop movies you would not really unleash the optimal feature of this one. The music player is comparable to other phones, like the N95, which I now have as my roaming phone (heehee), but I am still not quite satisfied with the sound. I have a Samsung MP3 player with the DNSe technology and the XpressMusic pales in comparison to the audio it produces. I was hoping that they tweaked with the equalizer, because this changes the quality by a mile, but no new changes there. One other thing that I’m drooling over the Nokia 5800 is how fast and good its Internet is. Unlike my N95 where it takes quite a time for a particular page to upload, this one can do so in seconds and in PC-like quality. Literally, the same page you see in a computer pops up right before your very eyes. You can also zoom in on a page by tapping on the monitor or by pressing the control on the lower leftmost part of the screen. A slider then appears where you can zoom in and out as you like. But having the whole page on a mobile phone has its foibles, money foibles that is. It eats more kilobytes thus eating more of your celphone credits. It’s good for wi-fi, but for surfing within the network it’s best to get one of those mobile browsers.


I have been using Opera Mini for my N95 since time immemorial. I had it installed on my Nokia 5800, because of its webpage compression, but to no avail. I learned from visiting the Opera site that it had a bug and they are fixing it. They recently released an updated version solely for the XpressMusic and Blackberry, 4.2.1337. I had it downloaded and installed a number of times but it still doesn’t work. This left me with no other option but to surf via the Web browser installed on the Nokia 5800, the one that displays the whole page at a higher cost, so I just do away with the images at times. I also frequently visit a page via a wap-based mobile browser that displays Websites like Opera does, Mowser in particular, and this also helps save on celphone loads.

After having exhausted this phone from my meticulous scrutiny, I still say this gets your money’s worth. It’s not THE iPhone killer as Nokia would like you believe, but it will be the first for this brand to dip its feet on a market of touchscreens firmly held by Jobs and company. For a first-timer, not bad. The XpressMusic is flashy and techie, what with those icons that you just press with your finger, stylus, or the plectrum. This is especially good for watching movies on the road, all the more convenient for me where I spend about two hours daily on the bus from work to my accommodation. It provides the entertainment that you need, when you need it the most, right at the palm of your hands, all in just a touch of a fingertip. Blah, blah, blah, but I’m still getting the iPod. (lol)

The Accommodation (Part I)

It was another 30-minute ride to get to my accommodation, my home for the next year, or two years if I feel like finishing my contract (up until this point I am still having thoughts). If you have been following this blog, you would have agreed with me in saying “Alas! Sleep!” Well, I did finally get some minutes’ rest (not sleep sadly), but a displeasing dilemma would be facing me once I get to the camp, and it would go on for at least two weeks.

We got to a building situated in a fairly new strip of Jubail City. I was told that the land where our accommodation now stood was once part of the sea. They just covered it with earth, much like what the Arab Emirates did with their exclusive Palm Islands or The World, albeit this pales in comparison. Because the area is fairly new, there were numerous vacant lots that littered the place and those that happened to be occupied had ongoing construction on them. This is a problem that I see up until this day because we have difficulty buying foodstuff and other things we need on a daily basis. God, how you just miss the luxury you have with the sari-sari stores back home. The location of our accommodation is as yet unheard of that taxis do not even ply the area. But this is not the "displeasing dilemma" I was talking about.

I was brought to my room, on the second level, only to find the door locked. What a way to welcome me to my first day in the Middle East, huh? The security guard did not even have a spare key so they just left me staring blankly at the door. I was to share this room with two nurses, one assigned in the hospital’s ER department and another subcontracted by those massive oil refinery plants as a company nurse. These roommates were currently in their respective shifts so there was nothing to do but wait. Good thing another nurse had the heart to offer his room for the time being so I could have my lunch, change my now sweat-dried clothes, and take a few minutes of rest. The next shift would be starting at 4:00pm with the coaster leaving for the hospital at 3:30pm. So even if I wanted to sleep, I was pressed for time. I laid down on his bed, had the thought of finally working in a foreign country sink in, looked back at my experiences so far, and tried closing my eyes. After a few minutes, it would be off to the hospital to meet new colleagues (who would soon become friends) in the PT department and the I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you roommate whom I would be seeing in the days to come.

To be continued…