Hello, Samsung Tab S8!

When you buy online, you get a free slim book keyboard worth PHP 7k. Free delivery via LBC. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I think I finally achieved a happy compromise. Portability with bigger screen compared to iPad mini 6 that I had been initially planning to get. I checked my sister-in-law’s iPad mini 6 that was newly purchased by my bro—it was losing charge quickly and it heats up. They had to bring it to the Apple store/reseller for possible repair. Aside from that, the screen was so small, even for watching Netflix. I want something that I could chuck in my handbag, but it should not be that small.

It was hard to satisfy my requirements. 🫥

I can hold it with one hand, like when I read daily news in bed. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Now I can read all my newspaper/magazine subscriptions away from my desktop. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It has an 11″ screen, but it’s narrower and easier to handle than my old 10.2″ iPad 9. It’s also lighter.

It can easily be shoved into my medium-sized handbag. This is great for when I leave the house, like for a coverage or a meeting, but I’m not expecting heavy editing work in between. Or when I go out of town for leisure but I need to bring a machine for “work emergencies” without lugging my Lenovo laptop.

I have installed this with all the apps that I usually use for work like MS Outlook, Office, Teams, Zoom, etc. It can do multi-tasking without freezing (unlike my old hybrid tablet Lenovo Miix 3) or slowing down. It also has DeX, which is a special feature of Samsung tablets that can change the tab’s UI into desktop mode.

The keyboard is a little tight but serviceble and tactile.

I can use my Logitech mouse for this but it’s more cumbersone to shift machines with one mouse. Just use the damn pen! What’s the use of a touchscreen if you don’t use it?

I can draft an article here on the fly if needed. Well, I used to work a lot on the first netbook, Asus Eee PC 701 (with a 7″ screen), and used it as my main word processing machine in the field, therefore, I can live with this Samsung Tab S8 tablet/keyboard combo.

I guess some gadget reviewers were right; this is how Chromebooks should have been. Google could have just stuck with Android and optimize it for tablet/hybrid laptop instead of going for the Chromebook OS where everything is done via browser. I mean, where’s the versatility in that?

I’ve always been chasing the holy grail for journalists everywhere: a word processing machine powerful enough for our daily tasks in the field but can fit into our handbags so we can be free to literally chase people for interviews.

I remember way back in 2006, one journo pulled out her Palm (or a Handspring?) with a stand and a folding keyboard and started typing away during a press conference. I turned green with envy then because I was lugging everywhere with me my 15.4″ Toshiba laptop that weighed a ton. Anything that would help me reduce the size of my bag was welcome. Since then, I had been looking for a word processing machine that can send emails that I can bring everywhere with me.

This brought me to investigate HP’s iPaQ and Handspring Visor. I had wanted those things so badly because that meant I could leave my humongous laptop behind and just carry with me that handheld device and just connect it via infrared to a small keyboard. Of course, I couldn’t afford those things at that time (early 2000s).

So when the Eee PC came to Manila, I grabbed one (PHP 18,000 retail price in 2007) and left my Toshiba at home and turned it into a “desktop”. I finally was able to carry one bag with me in the field for the first time. 😉 The other business journos followed suit.

But the tiny keyboard caused my carpal tunnel syndrome. I had to go to an orthopedic surgeon because my hands and wrist were in so much pain. When the doctor asked how I worked, I pulled out my netbook and showed him how I typed. Bingo, he said. He told me to change my machine and prescribed to me a nerve pain medicine (Pregabalin) and a combo of Vit B complex. And oh, wrist supports when I slept. I think I did that for several months until it no longer hurt.

So my remedy for my tiny keyboard? I upgraded to a bigger netbook. I can’t go back to huge-ass laptops! Then netbooks went out of favor (they were so underpowered), so I had to search again for a middle ground: thin laptops/ultrabooks then hybrid tablet-laptops. The last one was the super underpowered Lenovo Miix 3 that eventually Twin I destroyed. I had to go back to the traditional heavy laptops.

Let’s see how this Tab S8 would fare in the field.

Deed is done

Traffic jam everywhere! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I braved the horrible traffic today. First, I needed to fix my bank accounts because the bank has frozen them. Apparently, I didn’t do an update of my personal and professional info for xxx period… So I couldn’t withdraw from the ATM and couldn’t do online banking 🤦‍♀️. I have five accounts with them that needed updating so it took a while. But at least it’s done now. 😑

Then I braved Greenhills to sell my iPad. Finally, it’s done. I’m not really maximizing it anyway.

While I was waiting for them to finish testing the unit and for cash to be paid to me, I was flicking furiously on my phone and doing something sinister…

I finally pulled the trigger. 🫠

Now I’m waiting for it to get cleared… Hopefully by Dec 27 it’s on its way to me. Why did I do it instead of reinvesting almost 40k back to my house?

Because I’m a fucking tech junkie 🤦‍♀️ I need saving from myself.

Ok, I promise myself this is the last big-ticket item I will buy that is not for the house.

Gyoza for hunger pangs. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

After having a very late lunch (almost 3 pm), I drove back home via the maze that Waze has directed me to use because freaking EDSA was not moving.

To come home to this:

Kimchi playing with a rubber band. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Sushi watching me watching over them. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

These cats are the crazy reasons why I’m spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day alone. Because of the cats that cannot feed themselves and clean up their poop.

I will be leaving early 26th because my family will be checking into this resort.

Hot springs in December!

The ponds become a lagoon from October (typhoon season) as these converge with Laguna Lake. Then these will go back to being ponds when the dry season sets in by Feb.

I will try sketching here but on Monday I’m on editing duty 😭

Torture

I found forever on EDSA. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I spent half of my day yesterday just driving. 🤦‍♀️ Only 14km roundtrip but it felt like 120km.

I went to Greenhills to have my daughter’s phone repaired (cracked LCD) and to buy a door knob for my room here in the apartment. OMG! It’s horrific out there!

It was so exhausting that I fell asleep on my bed with my lights on. 🫠

Meanwhile, I’m trying to sell my iPad 9 with 256GB ROM to my bro since I want to shift to Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. Ipad 9’s screen is too big for me whereas Samsung’s Tab S8 can be held by one hand. Plus iPad’s RAM is 3GB vs Samsung’s 8GB RAM.

I just lightly used this because it was just too big. I didn’t use the power brick and cord because I knew eventually I would have to sell this. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Can be a semi-laptop replacement. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I told my bro that all the accessories are included like the pen and two covers, one of the covers is a keyboard combo that makes it more viable for him to be a laptop replacement when he has meetings and so on.

I tried using it as a laptop replacement but it just doesn’t cut it. The only time I was able to use it as such was when I tweaked (at my mom’s house) and read my speech during last August’s graduation rites of my undergrad college.

I could barely use it for work because it was too big to chuck in my handbag. Might as well bring my full-powered laptop with me if I still need to bring another bag.

When I travel, I find myself still reaching for my phone to scroll through IG and watch Youtube videos. It takes two hands to be able to watch anything on this iPad.

OS upgrades until 2026, security updates until 2027 or 2028.

But I’m still on a fence here since parts for iPads are easier to get here (albeit the generic ones from some Shenzen factory) than for Samsung Tabs. Resale value also lower for Android tablets.

But if I buy it now, S8 comes with a free slim case with keyboard.

I’ll visit a Samsung store to check it out before I let go of the iPad.


Hmmm so it seems like the world is conspiring against me. The Tab S8 in brick and mortar stores no longer offer the bundled keyboard case because it was a promo until supplies last. 😵‍💫

In other domestic developments, I finally have a door knob after destroying my door when my kitties were locked inside.

The carpenters had to put body fillers to repair the door. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The workers have to sand this down tomorrow so to make the surface smooth and for the new coat of paint to stick.

I now have a functional door lock after months of making do with a barrel lock and a duct taped hole. 🥴

So it starts

Just like during Marcos Sr’s martial law. This has a chilling effect on us in the industry–except of course this doesn’t affect media workers who are Marcos supporters. 🤬 Asshats!

My mom always reminds me to be careful and keep safe. She lived through the killings of the first Marcos era. Now I’m living it now.

I no longer know what’s or who’s next. 😔

We’re so fucked.


While we were in the boat going to the spot where I can dive last Sunday, Twin A accidentally dipped her sling bag that contains her mobile phone into the water. She wanted to take pictures, she said. It got wet and she kept on turning the phone on and off. Expect that some short circuiting will ensue.

They would be going to Cebu by the end of the month so I need them to be accessible via phone ALL THE TIME because I do not trust their dad. I had to have that phone fixed.

I went to Greenhills yesterday to have the LCD replaced.

Painful to watch. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is how a wet LCD panel looks like. It still has some salt deposits on it. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It hurt my wallet. PHP 2,000, including a screen protector.

I will have that kid hung upside down to teach her a lesson.

Noise on Twitter gives birth to a TV interview

With my reporter friend who interviewed me this morning.

So yesterday was so exhausting. It took me several days before I finished my car registration with the Land Transportation Office, at its headquarters.

I spent x number of hours queuing at LTO Main but a lot of people got stuck there and some had been going back and forth there for days (just like me, albeit at a different LTO satellite branch), which ate up productivity. In some cases these people lost income for the day/s.

Why is it taking so long?

It’s because the IT system had been going down for days. The entire LTO system has been going offline—nationwide—for several days now.

Because of this, people that had been applying for their car registration are getting stranded. The process has been/is still crawling.

This is how chaotic the LTO office had been yesterday. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Some applicants had left after spending the entire day at the LTO but I refused to budge. I didn’t leave LTO until somebody attended to my application because DAMN IT, I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A WEEK NOW!

I was told that the inspection and stenciling of the serial number of my car had to be redone because it was done in another LTO office. I was like, “WTF!!! It’s not even my fault that LTO @20th Ave Cubao just packed up and left without warning to the public!”

I didn’t budge, I didn’t leave the premises until an inspector did the entire bullshit again. And I began tweeting the process, the issues, and the instances of people leaving their posts at 4 pm.

It was 4:01 pm and no one was around anymore to help us just because they couldn’t encode our papers because the “system was down”. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

One inspector said, he couldn’t do his job of doing the stenciling—his reason for being—because the people in the cubicle above didn’t say I can proceed. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! Those guys just didn’t want to do their work and left their posts!

I continued to tweet and tag the Twitter account of LTO central office about my very public ordeal.

Long story short, I finished it because I was adamant at pushing for my right as a citizen.

I was so frustrated with the entire thing that I posted a video monologue of my ordeal on Instagram.

So the next day, this reporter-friend messaged me on Viber about my tweets that were forwarded to her by some LTO people because they said whatever I tweeted were true.

We chatted and agreed that she will drop by and have the interview outside my apartment—along the avenue where we’re at. I was still in my sleepwear and my reporter-friend said that I should put on makeup because this will be an on-cam thing. HAHAHA, talk about pressure.

So to sum it up:

As I said in the interview with ABS-CBN, the problem is the entire system. It was a grave problem—the issue is about the service provider. Apparently STRADCOM is no longer the IT service provider for quite some time and shouldn’t even be there (but wait, STRADCOM still has a window there!) because they were already replaced by a German IT company. But LTO says they *couldn’t* turn over the database to the new IT provider, saying it was *difficult*. So this tug-of-war between the very old IT provider and the new, no non-sense Germans is causing outages in the IT system. Which affected the whole nation because the system outages are all over the Philippines. Every LTO branch is OFFLINE!

And to us reporters, we already know why.

Of course, I couldn’t say it outright that this is caused by corruption. The very inefficient STRADCOM leaves a lot of room for fixers and cash-related items that can fall through the cracks. The rank-and-file up to the high officials get their cuts from the fixers. This is also the reason why there are a lot of dumbass drivers on the road—even those who couldn’t drive can get registered or get their licenses because of fixers.

Once the German company takes a complete hold of the IT system, the entire LTO process will be efficient and accurate. NO room for grease money. Payment system can expand beyond the cashiers of LTO offices and they can tap other payment gateways like what SSS and other government agencies do. Imagine, they couldn’t even process credit card/debit card payments; everything has to be cash basis. If the German company has settled everything, the car registration and drivers license renewal can be done under an hour. No need for long lines, no need for fixers.

DAMN IT.

In the interview, I said this process shouldn’t even take a couple of hours and this shouldn’t even be done every year. In other countries, these are done every xxx number of years and only the old vehicles should inspected regularly for road worthiness. But everything should be done online.

UNFORTUNATELY, the LTO story did not air tonight. Probably it was bumped off by more time-sensitive and mass-oriented matters like the senate hearing on rice shortage/prices and the impending increase in rice prices. I understand that it is beyond the reporter’s control since I am also in the news business and I had been with a TV network too.


My desk and new keyboard before the keycap change yesterday. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Good thing I had some distraction because I was so angry. Because my newish mechanical keyboard is so tactile and cute, I was inspired to finish my job even though I was already boiling and ready to kill.

New keycaps arrived. Something that cheered me up yesterday. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

And today, I was on a Thursday chill mode to drive away the bad jujus of the previous day.

The latest Chromecast. Photo by CallMeCreayion.com

I chose to be happy while being reasonable. This thing is only PHP 2,800 and it transformed my decade-old TV into a smart TV with all the streaming apps you can install on that pebble-like thing you call Chromecast. I upgraded my second-generation Chromecast to this one instead of buying a new smart TV that costs PHP20,000, if I’m lucky. My LG TV still works perfectly fine and I have no reason to dump it. When we transfer to my new home, I will just mount the TV on the wall and dress it up like a picture frame and have artworks stream via this device (you can choose the kind of artworks you can display). I will have a gallery wall around the old TV so it won’t be obtrusive.

The old Chromecast will be given to my mom so she’s not limited to her laptop anymore when binge-watching Netflix. She has a TV that swivels so she can watch on her bed.

Ah tomorrow, we will be chasing a lot of executives in a hotel where a conference is now ongoing. Good luck to Friday driving madness.

We are populated by idiots

Dateline Philippines: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino issues an internal memorandum calling on schools and public libraries to pull out books that contain ‘anti-government’ text.

Who the hell does the Commission on the Filipino Language think it is? We must resist all this historical revisionism and dumbing down of Filipino students.

We must expose these assholes and bring them down. Public torching should be the SOP for such things.

OMG I’m so incensed today.

An asshole editor, who is trying to be relevant, is looking to pick a fight today. Just because he no longer has any reporter left since they all quit and could no longer stomach him, he intrudes into my turf when he clearly doesn’t have any basis and grabs stories from my own backyard. We had a long email thread about his arresting stories on the backend/CMS because I stood my ground and told him that next time he should inform ME first if he is going to poach and mess with a story that I painstakingly edited for four days. I did not back down and told him I will not tolerate such discourtesy and I made sure I cc’d relevant people. Even the reporter who wrote the story couldn’t understand why he was dipping into this story that doesn’t concern him. It’s not even his turf.

He could not even understand how joint ventures work.

What a way to end the week.

I should really pick my battles but damn, this dude really is public enemy number one. And as I promised myself, I will not let anyone disrespect me anymore. Ever.

Ice cream to calm me down. It’s the weekend! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I was too exhausted, too agitated to relax on the last working hours of Friday. I should have been happy because I had so many scoops this week, especially today. But nhooooo, this asshat idiotor had to rain on my parade.

Ghad, I’m working too hard.

Meanwhile, my mom is super happy that my older sister gave her this:

And I was just thinking about having my own massage chair. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I think I will be a frequent customer of this thing next weekend. Hohoho!

Lemme see, tomorrow we need to pickup the girls’ school uniforms, new PE shoes for Twin I (she already outgrew *again* her PE shoes that we just bought from Decathlon), pick up their Kumon sheets, and let’s see where else we can go to…