Buying Cellphone Batteries

When I bought my second-hand Nokia 5610, I discovered that its battery is bloated and it can’t recognize any microSD card. I went to Nokia Customer Care Center in SM City Manila and they said that the cause of my microSD card problem is the bloated cellphone battery that prevents the memory card from being locked to the phone. The technician said that the bloated cellphone battery is a sign that it is over-charged and may explode if not replaced soon. He suggested that I hut a new battery to fix my problems.

The price of the original battery for Nokia 5610 is about 1,200 pesos. That is too expensive for my budget so I tried to find some alternatives. I discovered that there many batteries for Nokia phones that are not original Nokia batteries but at a cheaper price.

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1. Ask Around or Do Some Canvass

I discovered about the alternative battery for my Nokia 5610 by doing a price a canvass. I asked visited different shops and asked for available cellphone batteries. They usually offer the original cellphone battery, the “class A” cellphone battery, and the Lim Hong cellphone battery. I asked about the warranties and the prices for each battery so I know what is the best deal for me.

2. Investigate Through the Internet

Before buying, I do some little investigation using the Internet so that I will what is the reaction of some people on the battery that I am choosing to buy. Reactions of other buyers are valuable in knowing if the cellphone battery that you will buy for your is reliable.

3. Buy from Legitimate Shops

There are street vendors who sell cellphone batteries. Avoid buying batteries from them because they do not give warranty to the products that you bought. If the battery is defective, then you will find it hard press them for a replacement. I bought my batteries from a shop inside the mall so that I could easily visit them if the battery for my Nokia 5610 is defective.

4.  Ask for Discounts

Buying from a shop inside a mall does not mean that you could not strike any discount. Ask for discount. I bought my Lim Hong cellphone battery with a discount of 100 pesos from the original price.

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Image of BP-5M cellphone battery from After Market Cellular.

How to Keep Your Home Dengue Free

The cases of dengue already reached 7,000 last week and about 500 people died. According to the news, most of the dengue victims are children and infants. As of the moment, wards of government hospitals are filled with patients waiting to be healed. Because of this, the government stepped up its campaign to stop the dengue outbreak. We should also do something to prevent the outbreak of dengue and protect our family.

Here are some steps that you could do to stop dengue:

Dengue Mosquito.

1. Remove Stagnant Water

It is known fact that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the carrier of dengue, breeds on stagnant water. Be sure to remove all stagnant water in your home to deny mosquitoes their breeding places.

2. Spray Insecticide before Nighttime

Dengue mosquitoes usually bite at dusk, so it is good to spray insecticide inside your house during these time to shoo away dengue carrying mosquitoes. Dengue mosquitoes may also bite during the day, but usually in the shady areas. However, be careful using insecticides because there are research that too much inhalation of insecticide is bad for the health.

3. Protect Your Skin from Insect Bites

School principals allowed their students to wear jogging pants in school so as to protect them from mosquito bites. You could also do that when you are at home. Also, you could also apply mosquito repellants on your skin so as to keep mosquitoes at bay.

It is also recommended to use mosquito nets when you are sleeping to keep mosquitoes away from you and your family while you are sleeping. Just make sure that mosquitoes can’t pass through your mosquito net.

4. Kill Mosquitoes with Bug Zapper

Electric bug zappers are available in the supermarket for a low price. This gadget can kill mosquitoes better than the regular fly swatter. I also recommend buying Imarflex Electric Mosquito Killer.

5. Rouse Your Neighbors in Making Your Community Dengue Free

Making your home dengue free does not mean that your family will be safe from dengue. If your neighbors have stagnant water inside their homes, then you efforts will be put to waste since mosquitoes coming from your neighbors houses will also visit your home. Thus, to ensure that every home will be safe from dengue, the whole must act collectively to make the whole community free from dengue.

Finally, if you notice that any of your family is having fever or showing symptoms of Dengue, then don’t hesitate to bring them to the nearest hospital. Always remember every moment matters when you have a case of Dengue.

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Picture of Aedes Aegypti mosquito from WikiCommon.
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How to Haggle

I always admire people who have the ability to get the price that they want for the products they are buying in the market. Haggling is a great skill and that is one of the talent that I wanted to have. My father is expert in haggling and many times he is able to buy fish and meat from the wet market at half the price. At People's Park, Tagaytay City, my girlfriend showed how good she is in haggling (or pagtawad in Tagalog) and that is one of the things at admire about her.

So how to haggle (paano tumawad)? Here are some tips:

1. Study the Vendors

If you go to the market regularly, then it is good that you study the traits of the vendors whom you are buying goods from. There are vendors who are very stingy and will not allow you to get discounts. There are some vendors who are generous and give their customers discounted prices. Always buy from vendors who give good discounts (as long as the quality is not sacrificed) so that you will build a good relationship with them. Buying from them regularly will make you as their friend and you will easily get discounts from them without much negotiation.

My father style is this. He has a mental list of generous vendors and he always buy from them whenever he goes to the market. He befriends them so that he could not be forgotten by the vendors. Aside from getting discounted prices, vendors also give him the best of their goods.

2. Act as if You are not Buying

When you are buying, never show to the vendor that you have decided to buy his/her products. Always make them feel that you are hesitant to buy their goods and your mind will change at any moment and you will go to other stores. By making them feel that way, the vendors will voluntarily offer you discounted prices to buy their products.

3. Buy Things in Bulk

The more items you buy, the higher the possibility that you will get a discount. This is what my friends did when we are buying souvenir shirts during the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban. We are 8 in the group and instead of one person buying on his own, we buy as group. We bought more than 20 shirts and the vendor allowed us to get a large discount.

4. Never Forget to Compute

Most of the vendors stick to the deal after you settled the discounted price. Some, however, will trick you and make you believe that you are paying in the settled discounted price, when you are actually paying for the undiscounted price. Be aware of this scheme and compute your purchases first before buying.

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So that’s my tips when haggling in the local markets in the Philippines. Hope my tips helps, happy haggling!


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How to Protect Yourself from the Heat of the Sun

The summer heat is on! And this summer heat is not the ordinary ones that we experience every year because of the El Nino that hit the country. Because of the El Nino, the country is experiencing a dry spell and many farms were ruined because of the drought. The extreme heat ushered in many health problems like heatstroke, sunburn, and other skin diseases.

The Department of Health warned the public to avoid being under the direct heat of the sun. There also studies saying that being exposed to the sunlight from 10 AM to 3 PM causes skin cancer. However, there are those times when we have to work under the sun. Here are some of the things that you could do to protect yourself when you have no choice but to stay under the sun.

Tip # 1: Cover Yourself

The best protection is to avoid being directly exposed to sunlight. This could be done by covering yourself up with umbrella and hats. It is recommended that you use umbrellas with thick cloth because the thicker the cloth is, the better it is in protecting you from the sun. Umbrella gives you the best protection because it covers not only your head but also your arms and nape.

If you prefer using headgears, then I recommend wide brimmed hats than baseball caps. Wide brimmed hats will protect your face and nape. It is also better to wear light colored clothes because these kinds of clothes are better in reflecting away radiation from the sun as compared to dark colored clothes. The more radiation are reflected, the lesser the heat absorbed by the clothes, thus the lesser the heat experienced by your body. White is the best reflector of radiation while black is the poorest since it absorbs most of the sun’s radiation.

Remember that Ultraviolet rays, sun’s radiation that causes skin cancer, can pass through clouds. So, even in a cloudy day, it is recommended that you cover yourself up.

Tip # 2: Use Sunblock

Sunblock is good to use in protecting exposed parts of your skin and will block the UV rays if properly applied. Sunblock lotions could be bought at the groceries or your local drugstores. Choose sunblock lotion that is SPF 30 and above. SPF is the rating used to show how strong the sunblock lotion is in protecting the skin. The higher the SPF value, the better the sunblock lotion in protecting your skin.

Tip # 3: Drinks Lots of Fluids

Sweat is usually produced when your body is exposed to heat. Sweat cools off the skin by absorbing the heat in the skin. The drawback of sweating is that we lose fluids that are inside our body. Dehydration is experienced when the body has less amount of fluid than what is required. The signs of dehydration are when we feel thirsty and when the color of our urine is yellowish.

It is recommended that you always have bottled water or fluid replenishing drinks like Gatorade at hand. Keep on drinking water so as to replenish your body’s lost fluids and prevent dehydration. Drinking water refreshes your throat and gives you a steady supply of sweat so as to keep your body feel cool.

Tip # 4: Protect Your Eyes

Extreme heat and sunlight is harmful to your eyes. Our eyes are also susceptible to the harmful effect of the UV rays. Thus, it is recommended that you protect your eyes by wearing sunglasses. Also avoid looking directly at the sun.

Tip # 5: Don’t Go Out Between 10 AM and 3 PM

Sun’s heat is the greatest between 10 AM and 3 PM. Because of this, it is recommended that you avoid going out, as much as possible, during these times.

These are the some of the tips that you could follow to protect yourself from the harmful effect of the summer heat. Follow these tips and you will be fine.

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How to Prevent Identity Theft When Surfing in an Internet Cafe

Identity theft is one of the major e-crimes. There many stories wherein hackers took over e-mail accounts and other accounts in Facebook, Friendster, and Twitter. When these intruders take over, they usually bar the real owner of the account from accessing their accounts. Many people had been tricked in giving money to the people that purports as the real owner of accounts that they took over.

The risk of identity theft is high in internet café because many people go inside such establishments. Some computer users are negligent and forget to sign out from their accounts. Thankfully, the latest browsers of Firefox and Internet Explorers have tools to ensure that you are protected.

Be Vigilant

This is the foremost and the best tip to prevent identity theft. You should be aware of the people around you when you are online. Make sure that no one is looking when you are typing your username and password to access your accounts. Also be aware of the other computer users that are always looking at you when you are online. It is likely that this people is eyeing you and planning to do something about your account.

Always Log-out

The “Log out” or “Sign out” buttons were placed on your account for a reason, that is to terminate your access to your account after you are done visiting it. Never leave the internet café with your accounts not logged out. Many people forget to do this simple thing and run the risk of their accounts being stolen from them. It is easy to steal an account that was left logged on by its owner.

There are websites that do not automatically log-out if the browser was closed. Friendster is an example of websites that are like this. Logging out of your account is one of the simplest ways to protect yourself from identity theft.

Create Strong and Multiple Passwords

A strong password is a password that has a combination of letters and numbers. However, internet users have a hard time remembering such combinations so they resort to passwords that are composed of phrases. So, if you intend to create a password composed of phrase, then make sure that that password is not easily guessed.

Multiple passwords is also important so to ensure that if one of your accounts was hacked, then other accounts will not be affected. Thus, you should have a different password for your personal accounts like Facebook, Friendster, or Twitter, then a different password for e-mail, and so on.

Don’t Auto-save

Popular browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox have the capability to save your username and passwords automatically. This capability depends on the settings placed by the internet café administrator. There are internet cafes that have browsers that ask permission before saving your username and passwords, but others auto-save without asking for permission. If you are surfing in an internet café, never let the browser to auto-save either your username or password. An auto-saved username will have a higher risk of its password being guessed by hackers.

Clear All Private Data

Thankfully, Internet Explorer and Firefox (and even Google Chrome) already have a tool that allows the user to clear all the private data collected while the browser is on. Customers of internet café are advised to use this tool before going out of the café. This tool allows you to clear you browsing history, auto-saved username and passwords, and cookies.

For Firefox, you should click Tools >> Clear Private Data. A window, like the one shown below, will pop up. You should place a check on all fields and then click Clear Private Data Now button.

For Internet Explorer, you should click Tools >> Delete Browsing History. A window, like the one shown below, will pop out. You should click on the Delete All button so as to delete all of your browsing history and private data.

If the browser is of old version and does not have these tools, then I suggest that you press Ctrl+h to access the Browser History and delete all its contents.

One of my friends claimed that another person accessed his Friendster account even if already logged out from Friendster. He claimed that the hacker gained access through the Browsing History stored in Internet Explorer. I am not sure if what he claimed was the truth, but deleting your private data after surfing does not do any harm to you. Availing of the said tool is highly suggested to prevent identity theft.

Protecting your internet accounts should always be on the top of your mind when surfing in an internet café. Stories of hacking are true and many have became victim, including their family and friends who were tricked to giving some money. Follow all of my simple tips and everything will be just fine. Happy surfing!

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