tropicalpenpals.com

We bought two as an experiment to see how people took to them over the Xbox’s and other machines problem is people have taken to them too well resulting in a need now to get rid of some of our P4s and replace with dual cores. Its a fine balance between what you need and what you would like. Some people just want to go on Facebook and browse the internet where the P4s are more than capable, even for games like Counter-Strike which is still a big thing here in the Philippines. Problems arise when people want to play things like CrossFire which is an online game and the Philippines has a franchise it seems the code is badly written as it resembles Counter-strike in many ways except it needs an excessive amount of processing and graphics power which I can only say is down to poor coding getting the machine to compensate. Result being it takes too long to load on the P4s as it loads different levels etc. and simply is just a buggy game. The kids currently trend it so can be here for up to 4hrs each at a time. So out with the old in with the new another 2 P4s will be going to be replaced with 2 Dual Core machines. I am doing it in twos until I hit a balance as a lot of the kids simply don’t need/want the dual cores and I don’t want to spend any more than I need to.

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Asia’s Destination for Green Jewellery
9:00AM – 6:00PM

Featuring:
Launching of Green Waters, Green Community and Green for Good Projects
Celebrity Green Ambassadors
Green Icons: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water Spring-Summer 2010-2011 Collections
Green Jewelry Competition
Organic Dye and Crafts Demo
Philippine Shell Exhibitions
Green Icons World Premier, Daily and Gala
Fashion Shows
Green Forums and Forecast Boards
Cash & Carry Bazaar (open to the public)

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Got a band with a Reggae sound? this upcoming competition could be for you. Submit a sample CD with one cover song (studio recorded) together with the group name and contact details to Waterfront Airport Hotel and Casino Sales and Marketing department or email your song in MP3 format to j.zamora@waterfronthotels.net

DEADLINE of submission is on or before October 2nd.

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 One of the gripes people complain about mostly is food quality although I think a lot of it is down to not being creative enough especially if the people are from the TV dinner generation of microwave foods. Here is a simple dish my wife put together this morning which isn’t just filling its full of calories and tasty. I have a thing for spicy foods which is why you can see not only is the tuna a spicy variety but also the green in the omelette are actually diced peppers. Throw in a few onions and a little tomato with the eggs its great on the taste buds and leaves you full until the evening meal.

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The bizarre thing of late is the fact that we never seem to have any spare time. I spent up until 2am updating PC’s yesterday to find on arriving this morning some of the games had a new patch release this morning. So back to updating again, problem is the internet cafe is never empty as a constant flow of kids appear.

What has this got to do with rustic furniture? well basically I don’t have the time to do what I want to be. I was a cabinet maker, carpenter and joiner for years in the UK before eventually becoming a surveyor. I moved away from the timbers as most companies have adopted factory techniques over craftsmanship even down to setting the machines up as you may have one guy who sets up the entire factory instead of a factory of skilled workers. So it sort of took the shine out of it for me although I do love making my own stuff when I have the time. We had some wood left from some trees that were felled last year and I know Aprils father likes projects as much as I do when it comes to actually creating something. So while he has been busy making benches for outside I have been working out the layout of what will become apartment 2 which has involved getting round a water pipe problem as I don’t want it buried in concrete. So an easy removable plinth will be added to hide it but also allow easy access for maintenance. Getting back to what Aprils father has been upto I am pleased with the end result and no doubt a few people out there will be saying “I want one of those” because I know the Chinese furniture that fills most of the stores here isn’t fit for purpose especially when it comes to Western guys due to not only our weight but our actual body frame shape.

As you can see the first bench is wider not only in length but in depth compared to anything I have seen here. I am hoping we can make several of these from our available wood as we are often having visitors so some badly needed extra seating would be a great help on top of the fact its appealing to the eye.

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Since our internet cafe opened its become apparent that a mix of PC’s are needed and I would recommend buying second hand initially as they have already reached their “bottom” value and may already have a windows license if it came from a corporation. But how far back do you go? Well the minimum spec for a chat/browsing machine I would recommend is a Pentium 4 with at least 2000 processor, with SATA drives (get good ones you can always move them to other machines if you upgrade) and a minimum of 512k of memory. The reason you need the SATA drives is that the older drives are slow even if defragged, Windows is a chunky operating system to start with so adding older drives can take over a minute to boot up. A way round it if you have a busy internet cafe though is hibernating the machines rather than shutting them down, this way they are running at a minimum level but have Windows primed to go.

For a gaming machine with the demand of the people wanting to play it appears that our minimum of 2700 dual core processor, 1gb fast graphics card and 2gb (recommend 4gb we will be upgrading soon) are pretty much able to run anything on the market currently. With a 250gb fast SATA drive it takes a few seconds to load aswell. Problem we are having is it makes it look like a Porsche sat next to a horse and cart when people see the difference from the chatter machines which is why we are going to up the price on the hourly rate slightly to justify the difference.

So what would I recommend for your internet cafe? I would recommend you find out who your users will be we have kids as young as 5 – 6 upto adults using our cafe and for completely different things. The younger kids like things such as Barbie, 7 – 10 prefer things like simple online games mainly FPS (First Person Shooter). From 10 onwards you get a mix of students wanting to game and others wanting to do homework and printing. This is where we are working around our clients as we need around 50% gaming and 50% for study, printing and chat. The noise level of the gamers isn’t good for the chatters etc so advise splitting the two sections up which is something we are currently not doing as we are in the middle of refurbishing the building before moving the whole cafe to a purpose built area which will be sub-divided on top of that removing games from the “chat/student” machines to reduce the likeliness of gamers wanting to play on them.

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An idea that originally started with flip flops that moved into hand bags and currently now adding women’s and gents underwear to it as well as scope to developing soap products and cosmetics is pretty well showing you can make money here. My wife originally took the idea on as a sideline project but has quickly found that others are interested in selling the goods as well and so the network has expanded and cross selling has occurred as people trade suppliers as well to get a wider variety of stock available. We are still looking to expand the ventures out and looking for people that are like minded. Either people wanting to develop a new venture or could be something an Expat could encourage their partner to get into as this will also make them semi or fully independent depending how hard they work the business. Only thing I will say I am surprised how quickly its expanded and our first orders are being received for people in Europe who are wanting to network. So if you want to network or goods for personal use as well as see the fully available stocks drop me an email at matt_wilkie@hotmail.co.uk

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Today was “escape day” as recently I have been mainly eating local foods which is fine but at some point you start to crave dishes you haven’t had in a while. For me its hot and spicy and its the reason we headed over to a restaurant that is more quiet than it should be as generally the inside downstairs is completely vacant when we have been there although Pinoy’s seem to congregate on the upstairs area with balcony and tourists etc sit outside.

While waiting for food the battle began with me trying to log in to Blue Square online as April took a tour and a few photos for this article. Yet another day of unsuccessfully being able to login with my location and I noticed Google has a new “places” button so tried that as well “currently not available in your country” so I must be in the middle of nowhere according to the web. Today may also seem a bit bizarre to others as my wife was paying for us to go out for lunch as Aprils business ventures have taken off well and it was good to get a break. The biggest problem seems to be growth as the business has grown week on week needing more investment to cover demand but we are about to put a bit of a lid on it for a short time to allow some recouping before any further expansion. So I would like to thank my wife for a great meal in one of the best restaurants in Cebu food wise. Caution on the next few photos as they may cause drooling.

The Kofta looks a bit light its because we were hungry and had half eaten it before we realised we hadn’t taken a photo. So if it looks a bit small its because its on two plates and already at least half gone..lol

Chicken Biryani with Poppadums not the most exciting of dishes but I miss it from the UK used to have this once a week for years. Although when April was asked if she liked it mild or hot a request quickly followed with extra hot if they could do it. Wasn’t the hottest of dishes but was still spicy on Aprils Pallet which the Poppadums with a fruity sauce soon soothes the tongue.

Polished the meal off with a nice Ginger Tea and would recommend it to anyone as it seemed an ideal finish to a great afternoons eating. Yes it may appear we were pigging out a bit but my wife is in the late stages of pregnancy and I haven’t eaten curry for months. We love food either eating, cooking or discussing so the recent starvation of our hobby obviously had a little side affect as we made up for it today.

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Recently I came across a group of Pinoy’s who are struggling to compete with other countries down to the mail costs of the Philippines Mail Service (Phil-Post). I have been trying to work out a solution for this issue as its likely to cause many of them to simply give up the businesses as it simply doesn’t become viable due to the high charges. The only two reasonable ways round it seems to be going via Hong Kong and using a “drop ship” method into Hong Kong and then things are redistributed from there or where the companies know they sell more goods we look to form up Drop Shippers in other countries. Basically what would happen is the goods leave the Philippines via shipping freight instead of Air but in larger quantities. Its then redistributed from a mini post office (drop ship host) which could be simply an OFW or people with connections abroad which is where the Expat community could also be involved as they no doubt have some relatives who are looking to make a side line income. This could beat the problems within the mail service as well as speed up the delivery system. Works for the Chinese who are pushing the drop ship idea for things like Ebay and no doubt it can work for us but it really does need people to work together.

While working on the idea I also thought that its important that people start networking up together to help reduce costs. E.g. instead of buying your packaging from a company why doesn’t a group of small businesses import/buy together reducing overheads for all? Or maybe someone is manufacturing wooden items but they could cross sell with someone who makes wood carvings to the benefit of each other? Forming up these sort of ideas and getting people to work together can only benefit everybody.

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Every month there seems to be a major bus accident and here today is another a passenger bus plunged into a creek in a mountain region southeast of Manila killing 5 and injuring 49.

Police and fire fighters struggled during darkness to pull the injured and dead from the overturned wreckage at the bottom of the creek in Quezon province Pagbilao township.

The bus appears to have lost its brakes before plummeting into the creek whilst most of its passengers slept half way through their journey between Central Tacloban to Quezon city according to Quezon provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Erickson Velasquez.

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