I Love

School (or in some cases, like mine, work). Sleep. Social Life. You can only have two at any given time.

It is virtually impossible to juggle all three at once. If you’re one of those superhuman people who have managed to enjoy all three with no trouble, I think I say this for the rest of us who have tried and failed miserably: Go to hell.

If you’re a responsible individual, the first of your two choices will be school or work. Money is not about to come falling from the sky into your open hands. If you want to eat, you have to work. If you want to work someday (doing a job you might actually enjoy), you have to do well in school. Unless you’re a trust fund baby, this is the obvious, necessary choice.

The choice between getting some sleep and having a social life is a matter of personality and priorities. Some will choose to subsist on caffeine and clubbing (or whatever it is you like to do when you go out). Some will set up quiet little hermitages in the comfort of their homes and will never see their friends again. Except maybe in dreams.

I don’t see my friends anymore. I don’t get any sleep, either. Why? I got an iPhone and I just can’t put it down. I’ve had it since September of last year, and it only gets more fun as the days go by.

I didn’t really understand all the hype surrounding smart phones at first. I hated how QWERTY keyboards made it so much more difficult for me to discreetly text people under the table when I got caught in dull situations. I thought all the non-phone functions were pointless. Who needs a music player in a phone when everyone has an iPod or a separate MP3 player (or if you’re really retro, a Discman)? Who needs a camera with a pathetically small resolution when everyone owns an SLR? Do I really need a compass in my phone?

No, I don’t. The Compass, and other built-in iPhone apps like Weather, Maps, and Stocks are still useless to me. If I got lost in the woods, I’d be trying to use the phone to call somebody to find me, not to point my way out. Manila has two types of weather: hot as hell and ridiculously rainy, with both usually happening within a 24-hour time period. I don’t need to know what the weather’s like; I’ve got a folding fan and an umbrella at the ready. And digital mapping of labyrinthine Manila is still mostly unreliable.

But it’s the entertainment factor that has made the iPhone absolutely essential to my day-to-day life. It’s rendered all my other gadgetry unnecessary. Now, I only use my iPod for really long trips because my “Best Of” collection is in my iPhone. I don’t keep my Nintendo DS in my bag anymore because I’ve got a page full of really fun games on my menu. (Including the original Final Fantasy, which just popped up in the iTunes App Store last week. Final Fantasy II is also available, and FFIII is on its way. If they make it up to FFVII, geeks the world over will cry tears of joy.)

I even have a library of classics at the tips of my fingers, with books like Pride and Prejudice, Dracula and The Metamorphosis on the virtual shelf. So if I don’t have enough space in my purse for a book, I still have options.

All that, on top of the wide variety of applications specific to all the online social networking sites I enjoy, a built-in YouTube app, and the ability to view websites as they would appear on my computer screen.

The iPhone, for me, has been 10 percent practicality, 90 percent fun, and I like it like that. I might miss being able to secretly text people (made even harder by the lack of keys, since the iPhone is one huge touch screen), but the tradeoff has been worth it.

Now I just have to figure out how to get some sleep. Friends? What friends?

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iPhones are distributed exclusively in the Philippines by Globe Telecom. You can e-mail me at vivat.regina@yahoo.com; let me know what apps I should get!