MANILA, Philippines — Hello, 2012!

It is so nice to see you. Your predecessor was quite a year, filled with thrills and excitement, I thought would never end.

It is, I believe, a miracle that we were able to survive 2011. After all, we could all have just as easily been felled by stray bullets, mistaken for a common criminal and given the Dirty Harry treatment, mistaken for a law enforcement or military agent and promptly disposed of by enemies of the state, or hit by a wayward bus driven by a drug addict.

We could have been mashed up by an ill-maintained flying coffin masquerading as a hauler’s truck on Edsa, or sliced by one of those sleek, shiny automobiles driven by an inebriated son of a powerful man, or surprised by a motorcycle-riding hothead or speed addict weaving his way through traffic jams.

Or we could have perished, killed by any of the too-many-to-recall catastrophes that visited our shores the past year. Too long is the list of disasters, both of man-made and naturally occurring varieties, dropping by to say hello.

Consider ourselves lucky, then. We have outlived that rather quite dangerous year. This year, we can instead look forward to dying gradually courtesy of the air we breathe and the food we eat.

Windows Phone

By almost all accounts and purposes, it is a wonderful and highly capable mobile OS. Even those who are self-confessed fanatics of the iOS and Android platforms admit to being hooked (most of the time) by its trailblazing yet very much user-friendly design and features.

Why then do Windows Phone smartphones remain getting stuck miserably and so alone? How come those praises and accolades have yet to turn into concrete sales?

If it’s so pretty, why then no one wants to marry it? Or at least, date?

Is it a case of marketing efforts failing to match a product’s strengths or consumers too happy and satisfied with their iPhone and Android smartphones they cannot be bothered checking out another mobile platform?

Flight Mode Fail

There is an Alec Baldwin inside each of us.

Although most of us would not admit it, we all hate it when flight attendants call our attention and demand that we turn off our devices during takeoff and landing. We sometimes wish we could ignore calls to put our gadgets on hibernation.

Sometimes, we want to be like Baldwin, who days before last Christmas had a much reported altercation with the crew of an American Airlines flight over the actor’s refusal to turn off his mobile phone.

Latest data, however, show that indeed those pretty smartphones, tablets, and other electronic devices do send out some radio signals that can potentially interfere with the plane’s onboard electronics. So, until Boeing and Airbus and their suppliers can come up with signal-interference-immune flight controls, we have no choice but to be law-abiding lovers of gadgets and devices.

Turn off that smartphone, honey. OK?

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