Monday, January 11, 2010

Daily Report: Speed Up Time and Speedy Returns

I got ripped off with my electric timer. I know exactly what happened because I took the time to research buying a timer when I originally had a tough time finding one here in The Philippines, and pondered in several online forums the possibility of ordering from Australia: Won't work because Australia electricity runs on a different number of cycles per second than Filipino electricity. Electric timers count cycles in order to tell time. Too many or too few cycles per day and your timer won't count out 24 hours properly.

So, when I came down from my office this afternoon and found that my air conditioner was on, and my timer was reading "21:00" at 16:00, I knew immediately what was wrong.

(The timer is still partly good because it will turn off the aircon after 6 hours or so, thus cutting my electric bill substantially; it is just that I have to reset the timer every single day to the correct time... which is just inconvenient.)

Everybody is leaving The Philippines now that the holidays are over, leaving me here alone. Steve left yesterday. Jans left New Year's Day. Don left last week. Warren is leaving tomorrow. Bird leaves this coming Friday. Well... actually it's a blessing that I don't have to join the post-holiday exodus back to work: I'm the lucky one who gets to just keep on plodding up to his jungle perch every day. I'm sure as hell not arguing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, in the Philippines it's 60hz unlike 50hz in Europe and Australia.

Also the tv standard is different. The Philippines has the NTSC standard. Europe and Australia has PAL.

Anonymous said...

When will you be seeing your friends again? You had a good time with everyone. I agree it's nice to be there, and not have to travel from there to get to work!