The Philippines is the texting capital of the world. So little money and so many text messages: how can it be?  Romance, the answer, friendship, love, homesickness, love and romance, yes, even sex. At the moment cyber sex it not limited to the Net, but forishes in-country and maybe to extent  internationally, on the cell  network.

Filipinos love to interact socially, part of the culture. Yet because the telephone company was monopolized by one major company, PLDT, and still is to some extent because that company is to powerful, prices and availability of telephones has always been limited to the very few. Thought after some deregulation of the telephone companies, some new companies have entered the market making telephone access to quite a few more. Sill, for the average tao, an in home phone, land line, is not am option, requires credit, steady job, and other things a lot of especially younger Filipinos don’t have.

If you are coming here, want to learn about the people, want to interact with Filipinas, better to learn about texting after you get here as soon as you can. Romances bloom as much on the text phone as they do on the Internet. In the future I do believe the cell phone will put the Internet to shame. But the technology to text overseas at a low rate will include the Internet. The state of the art Cheap international texting can and probably will be made available. Some of you may be texting your Filipina friends and wives now. But for the Filipina who texts about 30 wpm and has little else do, now it can be a very expensive process. The phone companies see no reason to make it cheaper even though they can.

Like they handled the telephone service distribution and use over the years, they always want to charge more. They tried in vein to get telephones metered when everyone was using dial up here.  The failed only because it hurt some of the wealthy, the ones with the telephones. The really squealed. I was one of the loudest.  (See Word file Final to Philippine Star, diatribe I wrote when I was upset about metering. (Something similar was published in the Star. No link is now available on the Net, now, or at least I could not find one in a recent Goggle search.)

Romance politics and movies have always been called the Filipino passion. Of course, music is in the middle this mix. And as cell phone become cheaper, you can have it all on the go, not limited to your home phone connection. The Filipinas are addicted to cell phones as it is. I remember one I knew. She was about to run away from home because of a dispute with her money about money. Her mother wanted her sell her very expensive, cell phone to play for her tuition. She said, no way. She bought the cell on payment terms, paid more than three times its inflated value, P22, 000. She would have given up her right arm before she would that phone. 

"Buy me a cell," if you are involved with Filipina's is something you will hear often. It is not so much the cost of the cell that is a problem. Decent units are available for $40 here, used ones $20. But it is the cost of the usage. If you are involved with Filipinas, text mates, etc, it will be "pas lod, pls. (Pass a load, please)" Passing loads, P2/5/10/30/60 pesos a shot, can get expensive. No mater is you send a thousand loads a day. When I first got mine someone who was close to asked me for a load. I did not know you could send a few pesos so just texted them the number on a P300 card. That was the only load I knew. And she claimed she never got it. I think she did, just did know expect or know what that kind of load passing was all about. Few were as dumb about texting as I want then. There is a lot I don't know or want to now. But in romance, texting is important both before and after the relationship, if you want to grow and last.

 And in the future it will expand the dating pool and activity exponentially, certainly in the Philippines where so many pretty text addicted girls are, wanting for foreigner husbands, maybe like you, though some of you may find that hare to believe.