Apple’s iPod Touch : the Z review
Note: These two successive posts on the iPod Touch are part of my Blog-O-rama column last Monday entitled “She Says, He says on the iPod Touch .”
MR. Z SAYS : Given a choice between an Asus EEE and an iPod Touch, the iPod had to win – love Apple’s products, and couldn’t bear to support Windoze 
The fact that I REALLY wanted to see one myself had nothing to do with my choice, I assure you. The hardest part in selecting an iPod Touch was choosing a size, and an inscription. Some selfish part of me couldn’t let you have an iPod with double the storage of my iPhone, but I broke down and bought the most iPod I could afford. Lucky you.
The inscription was more difficult. Had to be memorable, and personal, yet something you could show others, as well. I obsessed over it, a bit. Mostly because it was free, and this one little detail made it impossible to resist. Who can resist free, after all? Damn Apple and their free engraving.
When the iPod arrived, it was already in gift packaging from Apple – clever origami folds in white, surrounding the black iPod package itself. Reminiscent of Chinese take-out cartons, a nice touch of whimsy. Glad the ribbon was elastic, so evidence of my tampering (”personalizing”) wouldn’t show too obviously.
After handling an iPod Touch, where the entire glass is your interface, it’s difficult to return to the click wheel. I’ve actually come to appreciate the iPod Touch more than my iPhone, at this point. I get all that screen real estate to play with – YouTube, internet, maps, without anyone INTERRUPTING me with their prosaic texts and inane phone calls. Who needs the outside world? Let it be invisible, like my wi-fi tether to whatever I want on the interwebz.
So loving… the iPod Touch…from My Sweet!
(Adapted from Blog-O-Rama)
The last iPod I had was the Mini, so you can just imagine the excitement I had when I got the 16 GB iPod Touch from my Sweetheart for a gift last New Year’s. It was an elegant black box with the picture of John Lennon in it. Inside was one of the most beautiful machines I’ve held in a long time, black with chrome glass in front and a mirror-like silver at the back. Most of all, My Sweet had the words “Please keep me close to you..” especially inscribed at the back which all the more took my breath away.
I had a feeling The Boyfriend winced when I told him I wanted a gadget for a Christmas gift, something like the Asus Eee (and yes) the Touch! He probably expected me to ask for a Kate Spade bag or a Shu Uemura eyelash curler or a simple email that read “please just go home in one piece!” I most wanted the last, but I have to admit it was even more captivating to see him and his handsome frame holding the beribboned Touch box.
I think that there’s nothing more romantic than this iPod gift. A music player is a gift for all seasons, and he can even now even save himself the trouble of getting me a rose for Valentine’s Day.I am crazy about the Touch, as I am about him. I like the fact that this has even made us closer in the sense that we get to share our favorite songs or choose those which are perfect for us. Thank God for iTunes!
Only in Batanes…. the Honesty Coffee Shop
This is one coffee shop where no one mans the store.
Softdrinks, instant coffee, candies, biscuits, noodles, chips and other snacks on sale. Write what you bought on a notebook and deposit your payment in a makeshift drop box. No change allowed.
It is so-called because this place expects your total honesty. I was tempted to pay for more than what I got. I felt like Papa Jesus was behind me 
Nice tourism pitch actually. If the government put up more stores like this, then the Philippines would be known as Asia’s ‘most honest’ place.
Love letters from Batanes: “Of This And That” Store
I wonder what other people mean when they say “Batanes makes you feel like you’re in a foreign country.” This is part of our country, the way it should have been before neon lights and rowdy karaoke bars took over.
Mr. Z calls it “the place that time forgot.” I thought so too. Once sybaritic spas and swanky resorts take over, Batanes will never be the same.
There was no Jollibee in Batanes. We were craving for pizza and saw a place that had an Italian-sounding name but it never opened the whole time. Strange! No credit cards are accepted and they only had government-run banks. There was no LBC branch, Mercury Drug or National Bookstore. In the one week we were stranded there, we must have memorized all the shops, particularly the laundry service and the air-conditioned, reliable internet cafe that stayed open (’Smart Link.’) Basco is such a small town, you can tour it in a day.
On an evening stroll with My Sweet, I got a kick stumbling upon this store named ‘Of This and That.” It was owned by Lily Garcia, a retired radio announcer who spent her time drafting a Filipino-Ivatan dictionary, translating missals and making home-made cards that were gathering dust on her shelves – because the tourists never minded them. I scoop up a few. I can never ignore a writer when I see one, especially one who must have sat up for hours by her window just to compose them, holding in her heart the place that will cradle her for eternity, the Batanes she loves.
Beautiful Camp John Hay and other Baguio landmarks
One of my earliest visits to Baguio was not a pleasant one. I was a young cub reporter covering the aftermath of the disastrous July 1990 earthquake where more than 400 people died. I remembered that it took forever to reach the city because the major highways were closed. Session Road looked like a picture of devastation and most pitiful of all was the Hyatt Hotel ( also the site of a casino) which crumbled like dominoes and buried scores of people. The stench of death was clearly palpable above ground where we were and heard stories of who tried to escape, who died and who lived. I did have a picture but I was too sad to keep it.
It’s now nearly 20 years and there’s no longer a sign of that tragedy in Baguio, except horrific memories perhaps. Visiting Baguio this first week of January with my loved ones, I felt safe in the arms of Mother Nature. The Baguio climate in January is just lovely. Erase that: it is the best. For those of us who are tired of the humidity in Manila, the cool weather (below 20 degrees Celsius) provides a welcome respite.
We devoted a full day in the lovely confines of Camp John Hay with its tall pine trees and greenery. A portion of it is absolutely posh (because the rich have vacation houses inside the camp). However, Camp John Hay is also one great public park and you could while your time away here having a picnic and renting a table for just P100, going for bikes and games at the arcade, outlet shopping, hiking, eating and doing a sundry other things.
Chocolate de Batirol is a nature-inspired coffeeshop inside Camp John Hay’s Scout Hill Area. A must-try is of course their native cups of hot chocolate in different flavors. Mr. Z and I had the traditional blend and the Baguio blend which tastes more like strawberry. Too bad we had a full lunch so we weren’t able to try their native desserts like the bibingka, turron de langka and suman sa lihia. Still, Chocolate Batirol proved to be a cozy chill out place even though it is small, with plants, vines and artworks all over. Other hang outs in John Hay include Cantinetta, the House of Waffles, Mile Hi Diner, Starbucks, Carlo’s Pizza, Dencio’s, Hotshots, Brothers Burger and the outstanding Le Chef at the Manor.
Mines View Park : One of the best places to have a (cheap) photo-op in Baguio
Back to the city groove after a mercy flight from Asian Spirit that got us out of rustic Batanes.
Now it’s time to continue with snippets of my neglected travelogue on Baguio City.
I wish I can say am tired of Baguio but it certainly was a changed city when I got there this time around. The change was evident in Mines View Park, a famous tourist landmark near Hotel Elizabeth which has this splendid view deck for admiring the city landscape. Mines View Park was so called because it was here where one can see the gold mines of Abra and Benguet from a distance. It is like being on the Tagaytay ridge (sans the volcano), except that Baguio weather is cooler and much more perfect in January.
Gone are the kids who hustled you for alms.My impression of Mines View now is that of a well-organized tourist landmark with clean comfort rooms and nice quaint shops displaying the best of Baguio handicraft. The best thing about it I guess are the photo ops you can have for ten pesos per shot. No “commercial” photographers to hustle you either…. we were just too happy to have our pics taken with my Sony Ericsson camera phone.
Photo above shows my twins riding a pretty pink pony. Same-colored ponies can be found in the Baguio’s public horse riding site Wright Park.
One week and 5 flight cancellations later, we can’t get out of Batanes… what is going on Asian Spirit?
I’d be too happy to continue with my Baguio posts except that I can no longer mask the reality that we’ve been stranded in the paradise-island of Batanes for almost a week now. We are still lovestruck but now more dumbstruck at the prospect of starring in our own edition of Gilligan’s Island . We have the real world to go back to – Mr. Z already missed his international flight and I should be reporting back to work in less than 48 hours. Same goes for the rest of the passengers who have commitments to meet and families to go home to. Unfortunately, the travel brochures do not say there is “no way out” if ever you get stuck in Batanes. No way out by ship or by bus and you are literally at the mercy of the sole airline that flies from Manila to Basco, Asian Spirit.
I wish I can commend Asian Spirit for serving Philippine tourism by making flights to the country’s northernmost part. It now looks like they did so out of the desire to be a monopoly than serve the public. “Bad weather” seems to be the oft-repeated reason whenever this airline can’t ferry passengers to, and from Basco. There certainly wasn’t bad weather when they started canceling flights Thursday of last week just because management decided to limit their flights from five times a week to MWF, without sufficiently informing passengers they booked for a Th flight.
On Friday, an Asian Spirit aircraft was already hovering over the island before it decided not to land and fly back to Manila because of poor visibility. The weather cleared later during the day but it seems Asian Spirit is committed to flying at only one designated time of the day with their old, limited number of aircraft. If you miss their time frame, good luck to you because they are not going to refund your ticket or shoulder the additional expenses for board and lodging for the extended vacation you didn’t want in the first place (in our case, five days and who knows how many more!.) All in the name of “bad weather.”
Hotel Elizabeth in Baguio was p-r-e-t-t-y
We arrived in dark and chilly Baguio City at night, and when we saw the bright, elegantly-lit facade of the Hotel Elizabeth, Mr. Z knew we simply had to be there.
..truth is, we had to be anywhere BUT our first stop – I would’ve settled for a port-o-john with a locking door, after that – Mr. Z
We must admit we judged a book by its cover on this one, and we were not disappointed. The cover, or the facade, we mean. Hotel Elizabeth happens to be the summer capital’s newest hotel – barely two years old. Going to the lobby, I was immediately attracted to the interiors, done in colorful fashion by society lady Tessa Prieto. This hotel has many lovely Mediterranean touches all over which reminds me of my family’s favorite hotel in Alabang, the Vivere Suites.
The great road trip to Baguio City
It is a long way to Baguio City. Five to six hours by land at the most. This is the reason why I’ve resisted going here since being part of a media junket three years ago. I just have this thing about visiting places and revisiting them once again. I’d rather go elsewhere I’ve never been.
This time was different though. I was about to show the sights to my twins, and Mr. Z, for the first time. He was a driver in a foreign land, all right, and I tried futilely acting as the navigator. The instructions my brother barked over the phone seemed simple: go straight through the North Luzon Expressway and exit through this and that. Except that we tried the countless alternate routes along the way and we ended up not being sure whether we saved time by doing so or took the longer route.It was night time when we reached the great zigzagged road that was Kennon.
A snake bites in the Ark of Avilon Zoo!
Pardon the touch of sensationalism. I am supposed to be on the last leg of my vacation in the romantic chilly North a I write this! However, I just couldn’t believe what my fellow Bulletin tech columnist Jerry Liao emailed me today, about the albino snake in the Ark Avilon Zoo biting his daughter a few days back. Me and my kids were one of the first visitors to the zoo, having been there during the second day after it opened. Saw the white snake ourselves, and it’s just good that we didn’t keep too close, me being deathly afraid of this reptile.
Okay, so we learn from Jerry that the albino snake is the “non-venomous type. ” Still, that doesn’t excuse the seemingly indifferent attitude of the zoo management on the matter. A snake bite is a snake bite and being bitten by a snake, no matter how innocuous, is still there on one of the top horrific experiences in my book. A zoo handler even had the gall to say to a shocked Jerry afterwards: “Baka masarap ang daliri ng anak mo kaya kinagat.” (Maybe the finger of your child is yummy enough that’s why it was bitten).
The least I would like to happen is to have this matter blown out of proportion. After all, the Avilon zoos in Pasig and Montalban are doing a great job of educating the children. Changes should be implemented after this incident and the proper apologies/explanation made.
Here’ s the full text of Jerry Liao’s story:
Blogging since 2004 and recently married to Mr Z. I can't live without coffee....and brown sugar.
