Sunday, September 28, 2008

[開箱] Banana Republic BLACK WALNUT Eau De Toilette

Banana Republic 這個週末很低調的全店30% off, 都沒有貼廣告喔!

平時它們的東西都貴到爆,除了T-shirt以外,大約都是$50以上,大致來說就是我可以接受的範圍的2~3倍以上。昨天給我好不容易翻到一件清倉又好看又size合的襯衫(清倉貨通常80%以上都是L以上那種太大的),結帳時才知道可以額外30% off,很爽,所以今天又去敗家啦!(其實是paper念到悶了,囧)

結果全店唯一低於$20的襯衫昨天被我收走之後,剩下的都是30%off之後還是太貴的東西T_T 乾脆來玩玩小包裝古龍水好了。

買兩個就打七五折了,然後再另外30%off, 最後一罐約$5,還不錯^^ 包裝還滿有質感的說。

外層玻璃紙很好拆
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喂!這包裝未免太誇張了吧?

玻璃罐很有質感啦,加點分回去好了... 可是,沒有噴霧嘴,瓶蓋打開是個洞,再扣分!

原來紙箱上很小的照片是真實比例阿 = =|||
上半金屬質感部份跟玻璃的間隙好大...... 瓶子組裝品質還真有點糟糕,Made in USA果真老美隨性作風


跟原來在用的比較一下,老GAP 15毫升,右邊心買的只有7.5毫升,價格差不多orz
好吧,Banana Republic的香味的確成熟了點,看來以後出門要看場合換味道了,畢竟價格有差XD 那像Guess、CK 之類的高級品牌咧?等有緣帶女伴參加高級酒會再考慮入手吧,區區一個窮酸研究生大概不會有那種機會吧,哈哈(目前只要有Seminar with free pizza就很高興了...)。

等等,古龍水開箱怎麼沒有形容一下香味?很抱歉,敝人大學指考國文不及格,不會形容啦!

Barszcz czerwony (Polish red Brosh soup/波蘭甜菜湯)

On a visit to the Polish town just north of the Olde city part of Philly last week, a Polish friend introduced me to a lot of Polish foods. I thought, hmm..., interesting stuff, so I brought home a soup pack that she told me is "closest to authentic Polish taste". Well, here it is, looks like some funky red soup to me, mmmmm... weird looks are what make it interesting. Feeling adventurous? Here we go!

My friend said it's made of red beat roots (甜菜), called brosh, I guess. She said it's slightly... spicy. That kind of red looks more sweet then spicy to me, but unexpected looks are all the more intriguing to me. Cool, I don't understand a word on the package, except that I know the soup is of a popular global brand (Knorr), commonly known as 康寶 in Taiwan. But it's made in Poland, and it should taste Polish, and that's all that matters.

To avoid the soup being nothing but flavored H2O, I chopped up some onions and green onions. Some how my instinct tells me that onions would be just the right addition to European soups :P

Hmm... it's really, really red... (自言自語:「是色素嗎?不,一定是花青素!哎呀,都一樣是一堆苯環啦!......越想越可怕,不管了,煮了它!XDD 」)

Ooooo... that is one bloody pot :D

However...

It tastes... amazing, it's sweet (I guess I threw in so much onions that it's turning into sweet onion soup), tangy, and slightly sour. It feels a little creamy in the mouth, too. Should have got some bread to go with this, this is so nice ^^

Now I am a believer, this thing is awesome! ほん〜どうまい!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Trip to Atlantic city

Well, I'm a little lazy right now, but have typed parts of the story in each photo info at Flickr, so you are welcome to move on there to see it.

[開箱] Cateye HL-EL210 5x LED bike light


In a strange mood this afternoon, didn't feel like doing anything serious, so wondered off 2 miles away to Performance bikes at Penn's landing. I walked in without intending to buy anything in particular, but I sure do need some gear (like brake pads, spear innertubes, headlight, tool pouch, gloves......) that I didn't bring over from home. To my pleasant surprise, they had a midrange Cateye LED light on sell, 50% off an original price of 30 bucks! That's even cheeper then the cheepest low-end light in the store! Never saw this good of a deal, and so good it was, it seemed to be all sold out, and the rack was empty. But luckily someone took one and missplaced it one the gloves rack, where I fetched it up.

Surprise, there is still stuff made in Japan.

The main light, looks pretty sleek. There's 5 white light LEDs in there.

Let's open the lower compartment, and other then the handle bar attachment, there's batteries in the package, cool!

Here's a close up of the additional stuff.

Hay, the free Toshiba batteries are alkaline! Cateye really is packing some good value in that small package.

The battery compartment. Once you inserted the batteries, getting the batteries out once again is as easy as praying open an oyster.

It's fairly bright, not the best, but a nice balance between brightness, battery life and price. As with most LED lights, the light color is some where between white and blue.

Now I'm better equipped for night riding.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Understanding the toxic Chinese baby formula incident from a scientific view

While the Sanlu (三鹿) baby formula incident is all the rage in the news, Taiwanese news reports are very superficial in that they only report the reaction of horror of the people and government to the incidents. After reading the in-depth reports in the New Yorks Times, I think I'd like to share some scientific facts of the incident here with friends, and try to give a better understanding for people who had only read superficial reports.

So what surprised me is that the toxic contaminant in the baby formula is melamine, which is the same contaminant as in the toxic Chinese pet food incident sometime ago that happened here in the US. Interestingly, after the pet food incident, a lot of vet papers showed up exploring the effects of melamine on animals, as this is a contaminant that previously wasn't expected to show up in foods. It's said to be used mainly in plastic manufacturing and fertilizers. And as in the reference paper I found, adding melamine can fool conventional tests of food protein levels, boosting it's nutrient content read levels.

Thus, it seems that someone has added melamine as a way to boost up fake nutrition levels, making the food products seem "more nutritious", while it forms crystals in the kidney of pets, babies, or who/whatever is the victim. Interestingly, according to the paper, melamine has to form crystals with cyanuric acid, and cyanuric acid was also present in the pet food incident; while they could not find major crystal forming in their experimental animals administered with melamine or cyanuric acid alone (which they used as a negative control). However, I could not find reports that state cyanuric acid also present in the baby formulas. FDA even had a report that melamine is non-toxic to humans unless in extremely high levels, although babies may have a way lower susceptable threshold and it is possible that the formulas were highly contaminated. Are the kidney precipitate crystals melamine-cyanuric acid complexes? Or some other complex with melamine? This is yet to be clear until farther scientific reports come up.