MANILA, Philippines -- I bought my first mobile phone in 1998. It was a Mitsubishi Trium Galaxy, a no-frills handset quite capable of doing what it was designed to do.

I opted for the prepaid mobile telephony path. I remember the first time I loaded the phone with air time credits. Until now, I still can recall how thrilled I was by the mere act of scratching the protective film off the card's code number.

Since then, I chose to remain a prepaid subscriber for reasons I can no longer recall. After my first phone, I bought a Nokia 3210, which I will always consider as the embodiment of what a mobile phone should be — minimalist design and maximum user-friendliness.

Anyway, a long list of mobile phones came into my life and left — some brought happy times, while others came with sad tidings — but one thing remained constant. For the past decade and two years, I have remained a prepaid subscriber.

And I have had no desire to move to the other side of the prepaid-postpaid divide.

Until last week — when I sent my application for a postpaid plan, with the required documents, to one of the country's mobile operators.

It has been quite an adventure. The process, I mean.

Apple Guffaws

Apple's financial report for its fiscal 2011 third quarter has broken a lot of hearts, those of senior executives from its rivals.

The Cupertino consumer electronics company grabbed some $28 billion in revenue, with net profit bursting at $7.31 billion. Some people who have family names, such as Gates, Ballmer, Ellison, and Zuckerberg, must be having some sleepless nights.

To make this much money, Steve Jobs and company sold some 20 million iPhones in the third quarter, a 142-percent increase from the same period last year. Let us see you, Steve Ballmer, sell that much Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

Apple also had to sell more than 9 million iPads, or 183 percent more. Sales of Mac computers grew 14 percent to 3.95 million. Apple is selling more computers while almost all PC vendors are seeing their sales plummet.

Bill Gates, I think investing in Apple was your best move yet.

Big Apple vs. Silicon Valley

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed that his city's efforts to attract a science and engineering university is part of the city's efforts to surpass California's Silicon Valley as a haven for technology-enabled businesses.

NYC plans to offer almost free real estate and as much as $100 million worth of infrastructure upgrades to a university or institution that will build a campus on the city's Governors Island, Brooklyn Navy Yard, or Roosevelt Island.

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.