Eternal Verities and telephones

This morning we were down to the Starbucks (to use the WIFI in order to be able to make a couple of phone calls - more on that later) and my wife was in the restroom.  There was a young family in the courtyard with two boys about 3 and 5 and a girl who was probably in between.

There was a small puddle in the void between four bricks that had less than a shoe full of water.  The two boys were immediately drawn to it and their sister looked at them as if they were crazy.  But there they went stomping it until the water was all splashed about.  No cultural nuances here - just gender ones.

I have tried three ways to phone in Mexico - Google, Skype and Ooma.  All three use WIFI to connect and then depending on the connection are quite inexpensive.  For example, the Skype for a call to a Mexico City cellphone was 8¢ per minute.   The Google was about 15¢.   I have only used the Ooma service to call US numbers and there the service is free.  But their Mexico rates are about 9¢ per minute.    AT&T on a cellular call is 60¢ per minute.   All three of the nontraditional providers have superb voice quality.

The Mexican phone system continues to confuse me.   In some places you are required to put a prefix in and in others not.  Cellular calls (to and from) require another prefix (usually 44).   So the addition of the WIFI services has been a great boon.