Holidays: No present for me

It's the Holidays. I'm looking forward to spending it with the family, which would be my mother, my brother and his wife, and my four nephews. My father would have to stay at our house here in the city because we don't want to leave the house unattended, what with all our dogs. We have four now, did I mention that? There's my baby, of course, Boris, a shi tzu/japanese chin or maybe japanese spitz mutant creature lol. There's Barack, whose breed I'm still trying to figure out. He's our biggest dog and the quietest (although he can be loud when he's in one of his watchdog moods). Then there's Humay, previously called "Judge," who is the basic irong bisaya. And finally, there's Boris' own baby, Crystal, the only girl and so acts like one of the boys. A dyed-in-the-blue tomboy. If Dad lets me drive my car home to Moalboal for the Christmas, maybe I can bring Boris with me, but that's a long shot because the last time I drove down there, I ended up in a ditch.

So anyway, I expect to do a lot of the Christmas cooking. I also pre-ordered some sky lanterns from Liv, who delivered them a couple of weeks ago. I already bought Mom and Dad their presents: two brand-new cellphones for them both, wifi but I think this feature is pretty much useless seeing as how my mother initially pronounced it as "wee-fee."

I also bought myself a simple phone, second-hand, and sold my nicer one because I needed the money. I have my eye on the Samsung P1000 or maybe a Blackberry Bold. But I don't really need or want an android phone. On the other hand, I think a tab would be a nice alternative for my laptop but I don't want to get an iPad, unless it's iPad 2, which I can't afford anyway. Apple has cool products but for some reason I never got on the bandwagon and maybe I never will. I like the idea of the Samsung P1000 because its like having my old phone back but with extra screen real estate. I did love my Samsung B3410w but for its small screen.

A few months ago, I bought the aPad, which is a cheap, China-made android tab. It's pretty okay but it's not a good portable device because it's battery life is too low: barely two hours. Some of the classes I teach can go for four straight hours so I need something that has enough juice to last that long without my needing to plug on to a socket somewhere. It was very cheap. I bought it second-hand and it shows on its appearance but the previous user installed a lot of apps on the device which made me a happy customer for a while, until I decided to really try it as a laptop alternative and it was disappointing. Since then, I don't think I picked up the gadget again.

See, this is the reason I'm a little apprehensive about the Archos 7 home tablet, which is also a cheap tab. It's being promoted as a media device, which, no. I won't be using a tab primarily for media entertainment. I need it for work. What I really need is a tab that would be reliable for surfing the web and editing documents. I need a tab that would sync with my PC and laptop without hitches. And since I'm the sort of person who wants only one device to do many things, then I'd sure like a tab that can triple as a camera and a phone. Way to simplify my cluttered life.

Or, I could just ditch the tab idea and just buy a new windshield and new tires for my car, which I really need. At this rate, I can probably look forward to a tab next year at the soonest and by then a new crop of products would have been launched and I'd be in consumer hell again, confused over what to buy.

Back to the present, my cousin's baby is going to be christened this Sunday and I have the honor of being chosen as a godmother. This means, of course, that I have to buy a gift for the baby. My mother tells me I can get baby clothes, rattles, milk or Gerber. Hm. And speaking of which, I made the unfortunate promise of buying my nephew (who is also my godson) an RC helicopter this Christmas.

Le sigh.

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