Cyberware. Cyberwar.

I watched Manny Pacquiao's last fight with Margarito at my sister's house via the computer. Now that another Pacquiao bout is coming, I'm thinking I'd like to see it in my house.

Problem: I want to see the fight via big screen. One of the Phases in the subdivision where I live offers free viewing but you've got to live in their area. The SM Cinema doesn't offer the ambiance I wanted ( I need to go the bathroom several times during a boxing bout, I need to stretch my legs and this is not permitted inside the cinema, I want to raid the refrigerator a few times during the match, I want to switch channels in between the fight, etc).

Another problem: The two laptops at home are not big enough to really see the punches being thrown by the boxers. You can't see the sweat nor blood flying from the noses and faces of the adversaries.

So I set on a saga to connect the MacBook to the Sony High Def. Problem: cables.

The MacBook's video connection is the mini display port, and the audio is the earplug.

I went to St. Francis Square near Megamall the other day, and yesterday at the Cyberzone, where I found the right cable at CDR and also at the MacBook store. Cost: the one at CDR (a mini display port-video only- to HDMI - for 1,800 PHP, and 900 PHP for a mini display to VGA). MacBook store offers both video-audio connection to HDMI for 2,800 PHP.

At home, I searched for similar cables sold on-line and found several items for much lower prices.

I can only go for the video connection cable because the residence-MAC Book is a mid-2009 model and doesn't support the audio-video mdp-to-HDMI Kanex cable which is available at the Mac store, Megamall.

Now, I need to get a Toslink and a Toslink adapter for the audio to come in; it's getting complicated.

If I were in TO, the task would have been much simpler as there are many products and sellers to choose from at affordable prices. Here in Manila, the selections are fewer, and the costs, steeper.

Which reminds me, I should have gotten one while I was still in Singapore. Electronics, computers and accessories are way cheaper and more varied over there. Well.

Today I go back to work and figure out the connection. If after all the trouble I end up not seeing the Pacquiao-Mosley match, I'd content myself to watching free old movies on-line in the big screen high def Sony LCD.

I'm salivating for the 3D Sony Bravia, the cost of which is ceiling-high. I miss my 61-inch Samsung in TO which I purposely bought for its 3D capabiity. There, Manny and Mosley would look great with their counter punches - saliva, blood and snout, included.

Party Line

For those who grew up in the 60's and early '70s in the Philippines, having a direct (single) telephone line was a luxury. Back then, if you had a landline ( it was the only type), chances are, you shared it with a party line.

Our family got its first telephone line back in the late 60's; it was provided by the lone Philippine telephone company, PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company). The machine was colored black and it was a rotary telephone. Me, my brother and sisters were all in heaven when the technician installed it in the living room.

But like most people we knew, we had a party line. This meant we could only make calls when the party line was off the hook. And it also meant having some of your conversations listened to.

In our case, we knew who our party line was; they lived a block away from our house. This made telephoning a little bit uncomfortable because you could not really be sure who was listening : your mother or your neighbour.

Even in the United States, having a party line was common in the 50's and 60's. I remember watching recently on the TBS channel, a movie that starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson, in which they were party line to each other.

Having a telephone when you are an adolescent also meant having phone pals (today this is known as having text mates). So me and my siblings used to have all sorts of phone pals, some funny and some weird characters of our teenage years.

In a household of eight children and a father who was a busy lawyer, the phrase "umuusok ang telepono" (the phone is never off the hook, the phone is "burning") was an understatement. On summer mornings or vacation time, before nine, my father was the principal user of the phone, but once he got out of the house, me, my siblings and the party line ruled the airwaves.

So these days that almost every household has access to a landline and additionally to several cell phones, how do I react to the telephone? I only use it for very important calls.

I am not thrilled with it at all. I suspect, more and more people react to the telephone the way I do. If not, why then do we have countless telephone features such as the "call display" and even the answering machine, which basically answers first, before the human owner. This goes to show that we only want to have a conversation if we really needed to, and of course, to shield us from the telemarketers which are the modern door-to-door salesmen of the 50's and 60's.

The telephone of my youth has long been dead. I could no longer feel my finger circling its way into the dial, sometimes deliberately prolonging the dialling time while one thought of a good opening line to tell a secret phone pal. In place now is the smallish cell phone, cold and square.