beach tomorrow! beach tomorrow!

01. piano man.

does anyone have a copy of billy joel's piano man on MP3? i would really appreciate it if you could email me the file, or a URL i could download it from. email me at jade.tamboon @ gmail.com

if you'e a multiply user and your file is in a multiply playlist, that's perfectly alright. i know a workaround to allow music downloads from multiply; pity i haven't found a good workaround to searching other users' playlists.

02. french manicure.

marcy noticed my nails were given french manicures (the so-called "french tip"). actually, she noticed my toe nails had french tips but i pointed out that both my toes and fingers were given french manicures by the manikurista.

i haven't had my nails done in a while and i figured that since i'm going to a beach tomorrow, i might as well have my nails professionally cleaned. when the manikurista asked me what color of nail polish i wanted, i said "black"; then i said "itim" (black in the local language) because it seemed like she didn't hear me.

apparently she didn't because for some reason "black" was translated to "french tip" - i was half dozing while she applied the nail polish to my toes, so i realized what she was doing after she already finished applying nail polish to 3 toenails. french manicures seem like more work but she seemed like she's enjoying it so i let her finish. when it was my fingernails' turn i said she do the same thing so my toenails and fingernails match.

i will post photos of my really faggy looking fingers later.

03. jade searches for the perfect phone.

i've spent a good amount of my browsing time reading reviews of current phone models that could replace my cheap-ass nokia 1110. i used to have a sony ericsson w810i which i really, really loved (good music player, good 2MP camera, plus i could also use its LED photolight as a flashlight ), but i lost it sometime back. the w810i contained my globe SIM, the 1110 was an alternate phone for my older smart SIM. i guess it's a good thing i didn't lose my smart number as more people have it compared to the globe one.

phones with better specs have become available since then but it took me a long time to have enough money to actually buy a new phone.

initially i was lusting after an SE P990i. but the phone was bulky, the camera mediocre and the processing power wasn't really up to par. SE P1i wasn't really a phone i considered since i didn't think i'll like the really weird half-qwerty, half-torture keypad. i believe qwerty keypads are best left to computers and machines that allow you to type using multiple fingers.

then there was SE w960i, which became recently available in the philippines. it's got a great music player, touchscreen and a 3.1MP camera. but the camera isn't that good, the processing power isn't too great according to most reviews, there is no card slot (nevermind the 8GB internal memory - i still prefer an external memory card), and the phone just seemed to fall short of my expectations.

i have been anti-nokia for a long time and am partial to sony ericsson, but i've been disappointed how SE's recent phones have been inadequate for my needs. the company decision to stop producing "all-in-one" phones but creating dedicated music, camera or business solutions wasn't a great idea. nokia, on the other hand, have created some really good multimedia phones and despite myself, i've started drooling over N95 8GB.

except that N95 8GB still has an internal memory that could become problematic if the memory becomes corrupted. file transfers using SD/microSD cards is easier and one could find an easy replacement if one's card becomes busted. still N95 8GB probably has one of the best camera among phones right now (even though i have some minor issues how its file compression works). music player's okay but not great - i don't really have problems with that. the all-in-one solution is really attractive but an N95 8GB still costs around PhP 28K. that's a lot of money.

in terms of looks and camera specs (on paper, at least), i was side-tracked by LG's viewty (a phone with a really awkward name). i'm okay with a purely touchscreen phone (i have a palm TX, so i'm used to similar devices), and the video capturing capabilty of viewty is really amazing in description. but real world photography shows the camera is only great at macro shots and the images show a really noticeable red tinge. not cool.

the  N95 8GB is still in my mind, despite its price tag but another nokia model caught my attention: the N82. simply put, N82 is like  N95 8GB in a candybar phone minus the 8GB internal memory but with a xenon flash added to the camera - sweet! sure the phone is fugly and the number keys are no bigger than grains of rice, but i think i could live with that.

man, i never thought that i'll be joining the horde of nokia owners. that i use a nokia right now doesn't count as i never really thought of the thing as a nokia phone, just some phone that does its job, calls and texting-wise. and i wish sony ericsson gets out of their lame phone phase soon.