After my last unsuccessful attempt to build a Flashing LED Sweetheart, i was really upset that two and a half hours of hard work was wasted because of a silly mistake - creating a short circuit while soldering the pieces of the kit on the copper board. However i’m finding the excitement to build another of these electronic circuitry again today. I usually get the kits from Maplin store (http://www.maplin.co.uk) as they cost between £5 to £15 each. I’ve actually set my eyes on two starter kits. The first one (pictured above) is a Roulette kit and the second interesting one i’ve come across is the Running MicroBug kit. The roulette is fairly straightforward ie it picks a number at random. But the Running MicroBug is quite appealing as it crawls towards a light source. With two open chassis sub-miniature motors and a light sensitive device attached to its body, it is a very nice little gadjet to play with.
We all got family all over the world (umm i think so!). And International Calling Cards are a cheap way to keep in touch with them. Is it really though? Not long ago - about 5 months back - i was using Sonic calling card to call my family in Mauritius and if i was to dial the local number, i would get about 240 mins. I’m not kidding, 4 hrs talking for just 5 pounds (£5).
Too good to be true? Well nowadays, Lycatel Ltd, company that supplies these calling cards, has decided to be even more generous. You buy a five-pounds Sonic calling card and you get either 6 or 7.5 pounds worth of calls. Huray!!! Not really - there’s always a catch in all too-good-to-be-true deals. What happens now is that when you buy a £5 calling card, you can actually make £6/7.5 worth of calls but the cost per minute has significantly increased. On the one that i usually buy, i get 120 minutes now which means that the call rates have doubled.
And that’s not just it, each time you call a destination number, you get charged a connection fee, a post call fee which is dependent on the duration of the call and on top of that a maintenance fee which is applicable daily from the first time you use the card. So if you had £2 left on your card and havent used it for a while, dont be surprised to see that you aint got any credits when you try to call.
Bottom line: Which international calling card is the best to use for Mauritius?