Home Appliances Hassles - Part 6

Malaysia - Chapter of "Belkin, anyone?"

My 2 years old BenQ FP71G did it again and it happened in front of my own eyes. No sound, no warning, just a direct flashing into the white screen of death. O well, at least better than previous malfunction where the screen is totally black out. Luckily the unit got a 3 years warranty that will expires next year August. What to do, got no spare money to get of those 32"in LCD TV as computer monitor, I gotta send it for repair.

I decided to get some "protection" for my new electronic appliances since I pretty sure that their lifespan will definitely cut short by frequent voltage surges in the residential area (or perhaps any area) if I opted not to do anything about it.

2 brands imprinted in my head when hunting for such utilities, namely Belkin and APC. I chose Belkin over APC because it got a lifetime warranty on their protectors and insurance on connected devices up to predetermined monetary amount.

Most computer shops in Plaza Lowyat, KL doesn't offer much variety of Belkin protectors series. ALL IT Hypermart looks like a good place to shop, even though they are selling their commodities at a more pricey tag.

At the end, I bought the following Belkin stuffs:

2 unit of Belkin MasterCube Surge Protector, Home Series (Insured amount: RM5K)
- For fridge and washing machine
1 unit of Belkin SurgeMaster Surge Protector, Gold Series (Insured amount: RM25K)
- For computer and things
1 unit of Belkin SurgeMaster Surge Protector, Superior Series (Insured amount: RM10K)
- For TV, AV sets.

Spent: Around RM600.
In return: A hope for peace of mind

Home Appliance Hassles - Part 5

Malaysia - Chapter of the Spinning Joke

Not surprisingly, lots of big home appliances' brands are in fact OEM end product of local manufacturers. Take few examples, York air conditioners are actually from Acson, Rubine cooker hoods are actually produced by the same manufacturer as Elba and some branded LCD TV too following this kind of OEM process.

You might be familiar with the saying that when buying ceiling fan better stick with KDK or Panasonic. Other brands such as Alpha, Euro UNO, Khind and etc are not within my consideration, even though some of their designs are quite appealing.

So what's the big deal with KDK or Panasonic's ceiling fan. Well, nothing much since
they are in fact manufactured by the same people. You might opt to buy Panasonic one for their after sales support and services, which are managed by Panasonic themselves. On the other hand, you can spend less with KDK to entitle for the same features and quality.

Check out this cool 7 speed ceiling fan when you plan to get a ceiling fan. Try to max out the speed when you test out one in the store. :p

KDK version:


Panasonic version:



Technical specs (Regardless of KDK or Panasonic)

1/f Yuragi is irregularity and a phenomenon that widely exists in nature. It has a natural rhythm that makes a person feel relax.
3D Aero Curve Design delivers smooth and strong air flow.
Distinctive Blade Material
Quadruple Safety Features- thermal safety fuse, current fuse, safety fuse & cut-off safety switch.
Easy Installation
LCD Screen Remote Control
7 speed Control Sleep, 2-8 hours Sleep Mode and 1-8 hours Off Timer

RPM : Low - 90 High - 200
Air Delivery (m3/min) : 245
Motor W : Low - 25 High - 91
Motor HP : 0.13
Motor Type : Condenser Motor
Noise Level (dB) : 49
Nett Weight (kg) : 9.7

I googled about Yuragi

• A japanese word means Fluctuations


• It is difficult to find phenomena without fluctuations in the real world. In fact, most social, economic, and political phenomena are considered to be always fluctuating in contrast to our pursuit of order and causal relation. In addition, our day-to-day physical and mental activities have fluctuations about which we are often unaware. An understanding of the nature of such fluctuations would have important practical and research value. This is our goal.
  Our original interest was in 1/f fluctuations in electronic devices. For such devices, there are four kinds of fluctuations or noise: thermal noise, shot noise, generation-recombination noise, and 1/f noise. The physical mechanisms of the first three, from which their names are derived, are well known. On the other hand, the mechanism behind 1/f noise, which was first observed in vacuum tubes, in 1925, remains unknown. This type of fluctuation is not restricted to electronic devices but is ubiquitous in nature. The international symposium on noise in physical systems has been held every two years since 1977, but still this problem remains a mystery.
  In 1982, 1/f fluctuations were discovered in human heart rates. This discovery was followed by similar findings in rhythms of various parts of biological systems such as central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, etc. and even in human behavior such as clapping. Although the mechanism of these special fluctuations is not fully understood, scientists are considering the hypothesis that fluctuations generally play crucial roles in maintaining biological functions.
  Thus, we now understand that fluctuating states are more fundamental than steady states not only in physics and electronics but also in biological systems and even in human behavior and social events. This is one of the reasons why we are especially interested in 1/f fluctuations. The word "fluctuations", or "yuragi" in Japanese, is often used in daily life.
  In Japan, a research group on fluctuation phenomena, consisting of physicists, electronic engineers and mathematicians was organized in 1980. The group's activity has been expanded since 1987 to various fields of science including physics, electronics, astronomy, biology, statistical mathematics, medicine, economics, and anthropology. In 1989 the group organized Associations for Science, Art and Technology of Fluctuations and since then it had annual meetings in which speakers of various fields gave many outstanding and up-to-date invited talks. Morikita Publishing Co has been publishing the contents of these invited talks in ten volumes of "Science of Fluctuations" in Japanese. The group now intends to expand this activity in a different form.
  Besides the regular activity of research the group will open a window through our internet website, to allow exchange of scientific ideas with scientists all over the world. Anyone who has new topics on fluctuations is welcome to join. When certain topics attract the interest of many participants in the forum, an international symposium will be organized for exchanging ideas on these topics.
  

We ended up paying RM440 for KDK version of this fan. If you insists on Panasonic, then you gotta top up extra RM30 bucks for it (RM470).

No fancy decoration nor colors, just purely strong flows of air. Definitely worth my money in the long run. No offense, but I don't think I will get those with light fittings or wooden blades, nice looking spinning jokes :p.

P/S: The fan comes with Polypropylene Fibre Glass blades. No more rusts.

Rinnai Cooker Hood and Hob Promotion (Until 31-October-2007)

It is a good deal if considering the price of both the items bundled in the package. However I personally doesn't recommend you to use the cooker hood in the package, the reasons being the suction power is too weak for asian style cooking and no auto cleaning available.

If your cooking doesn't incur lots of oil spills and more concerns on getting rid the smells, then perhaps this package is suitable for you. My 2 cents.

Home Appliance Hassles - Part 4

Malaysia - Chapter of the Whirlpool Queen

The Mighty Fridge freezes your supplies with frozen spells and pathetic you await salvation need to confront with another hurdle imposed by the cruelty Whirlpool Queen. Behold dirty clothes.

My barracks of armies has another new recruit, THE washing machine.

Ok, straight to the point.

Points to concern when getting a new washing machine:

1. Loading Type
Front Loading (You put in clothes from the front panel) and Top Loading (You flip open the top cover and put your clothes in)

2. Workload
It defines as the weight of clothes and water that the machine is able to handle easily. In other words, you can actually overload the machine by putting in heavier garments but this will definitely reduces its lifespan.

3. Motor rotation mechanism
See whether the rotation of motor is driven by a belt or direct drive mechanism (No belt involved)

4. Warranty
Make sure the warranty is actually endorsed by the original manufacturer and not from the shop themselves.

I've shortlisted a few of the candidates and one of it is the following babe:

Toshiba AW D950SM

General Feature
Direct Drive (DD) Inverter
Zero Standby Power
Triple Air Super Spin Dry
Hybrid Screw Pulsator
Less Noise & Vibration
Fuzzy Logic
Condensed Bubble Wash




8.5KG workload, Direct Drive (Non-Belt) and 2 Years General Warranty
with 5 Years Motor Warranty.

Initial call price was RM1045 (Promotional price). I didn't manage to push for lower price due to obvious reason: Mrs. Nerdy don't like it. She found out that the diameter of the loader are actually relatively smaller than one of the Panasonic 8KG model and also abit shallow.

Then we looked at Panasonic NA-F80G6 model.



Slightly smaller workload (Only 8KG) than the Toshiba model, BUT with larger loader.

G6 comes with AquaBeat feature (No idea what is that, read below) and A6 model without AquaBeat.

AquaBeat
Powerful Water Flow Blasts Off Dirt
More powerful water flow than ever before penetrates deep into fibers to beat out ingrained dirt. Working together with Panasonic's innovative Foam Wash, this removes stubborn stains for fresh, clean washing every time.


Starting price @RM1399. Hitting and knocking that pity salesman again. Finally arrived @RM1100. Even better, we paid only RM1099 when checking out. Extra RM1 discount courtesy of a lady in the shop (No idea who is she).

Home Appliance Hassles - Part 3

Malaysia - Chapter of the Mighty Fridge

Tell me the truth, is a 200+ liters capacity refrigerator enough to pile up snacks and junk foods for a family of 2 or perhaps 4 in the next 5 years (:p)?

And what you will do then if your need towards higher storage capacity increase in the future? Throw away the old fridge or maintain multiple fridges?

Again, the conclusion leads to extra dollars when deciding which fridge to buy.

Brands under consideration includes Sharp, Panasonic, Toshiba and Hitachi. You must have notice the homogenous selection of brands, they are all japs stuffs. LG and Samsung's fridges has yet to get my trust.

Toshiba and Hitachi sounds good, but we decided to get Panasonic one because the brand name got 4 (FOUR) syllables. Hehehe, what a factor to determine the purchase!

At the end of the day, it boiled down to Panasonic NR-B362M with net capacity of 355 liters (102L for the freezer and 253 for the rest).

We went to one of the retail appliances shop to check out the good. Not bad, can fit plenty of stuffs inside. After an hour of hitting and knocking the salesman, we managed to get away with RM1568 (Goooood number) with delivery and standard panasonic gifts.



More Information on this product

Home Appliance Hassles - Part 2

Malaysia - Chapter of the Burning Hob.

Most chinese believes that a house stove (hob) determines how well that family capability to create fortune. For me, I'm not saying that this kind of superstition was not in my mind, but I prefer to use other "modern superstition" to convince a buy. Better burning, gas saving, lower maintenance cost, durability and etc are all usually marketing hypes, because when you stemming down till the end, making a good meal is the ultimate end.

Stamped and signed. Finally bought a Rinnai hob after some indecisive struggles on the issue of what to do with the Tellini's hob bundled in the cooker hood package.

RB-3SS (Tempered Glass Black)

Dimensions (mm)
RB-3SS (GB) : 880 (W) X 520 (D) X 131.4 (H)

Cut-Out Dimensions (mm): 725~840 (W) X 435~480 (D) (R 0~110)
Body Weight (kg)
RB-3SS (GB) : 21

▪ Able to fit into most of the cut out dimension in current market
▪ Convenient cooking three in one time
▪ Variety cooking
▪ Powerful flame with simmer
▪ Flame failure safety device
▪ Battery ignition

More Information

3 burners, in Chinese means 生火 （Producing Fire) which is essential in making food and providing warm environment during winter time.

No regret on buying this. RM1090 for the hob and a free gift (Rinnai Steam Cooker).

Home Appliance Hassles - Part 1

Malaysia - Chapter of the Cooker Hood

After a troublesome study and wandering around in the jungle of modern cooking appliances, shifting through pages of brochures and lepak not less than 5 major forums, finally settled down with Tellini cooker hood and looking forward for other stuffs.

Some critical decisive factors include:

1. Extraction Rate
Famous brands like Rinnai, Fujioh, Sakura doesn't offer the air extraction rate that's desired within our shrinking tiny budget. They usually only ranged from 700 m3/h to 900 m3/h and effectively useless for asian cooking styles.

2. Cooking Style
Again, famous western brands like Electrolux, Fagor and Teka are, in my opinions, not really suitable for our deep fry style of cooking. Oil will spill everywhere and your wife will starts complaining like no tomorrow when she's cleaning up the mess.

3. Brand
With branded cooker hoods, comes with hefty price tag. Fujioh is one expensive monster but darn effective workhorse. Rinnai is relatively expensive too but not effective when you get one of its midrange hoods. Other brands like Pacific, Futile, Tellini and Fagor are within my consideration.

4. Price
Hoo ha, midrange products prices ranged from RM800 to RM4000 depends on the other considerations I stated above and below. My budget is only RM1.5K to RM2K.

5. Maintenance
Mrs. Nerdy (Haha, I will start to salute her this way) starts her murmuring on some Auto-cleaning techie thingy after she heard some horror stories on never ending cleaning nightmare from her colleagues. Ok, scope creep happened in real life and this is a major scope creep as it will definitely add up to the cost. Commonly, there are 2 types of auto cleaning methods,

a.) Hot Cleaning
b.) Liquid based Cleaning

Hot cleaning will use heats to melt the collected grease and a turbine to direct the oil to the designated container. For liquid based, you will need to pour some cleaner into a storage tank and activate the cleaning function and it will wash the fan/etc and flush out the dirty water into designated container.

One of the most problematic dilemmas when finalizing the purchase was the issue of packaging. Distributors like to bundle their hob and hood together as some best buy deal. I dislike the idea when I start to think of buying the two things separately would require me to spend extra dollar. Darn, and I definitely prefer a best of the class solution, instead of getting something not really I want.

Examples include

1. Rinnai

RH970S Cooker Hood + RG2BSi Hob.

I admired the built and appearance of Rinnai's inner flame hob, which looks solid enough to last decades. But I don't really like the bundled cooker hood range since it is filter based and only got 700 extraction rates. Price tag at about RM2K.

2. Ika, Rubine, PeXXXX (I forgot the name), Ela

Fall below my budget of RM1.5K to RM2K and they comes... again with hob. One thing worrying me is the use of digital display panel. Haha, sometimes I just don't trust technology enough to acquire one of these. LOL

3. Fagor, Futile, Pacific, Tellini, Teka, Electrolux
Within my budget. Relatively popular. Meet most of my functional requirements.

At this point, it is obvious that one of the constraint is that I'm forcefully to get one of the "promotional" bundled package.

So, how's Tellini came into picture? Well, it's all started with the following flyer:



Wooo Hoooo, RM1.3K for a hood with 1500 m3/h suction power and auto cleaning feature. Eager me printed out the flyer and rushed to one of the shops selling this Tellini thingy.

I need to choose between Hot auto-wash or liquid based auto-wash. Both are roughly same price but the one with hot auto wash got 1500m3/h suction power and the other only 1250 m3/h.

Well, confirmed going with HSW-2me Turbo AutoWash model because Mrs. Nerdy believes that liquid based cleaning is cleaner. (No comment about this, :p) Emmm.. Ok, no fancy designer type chimney hood, that's for sure. I'm fine with that and so with Mrs. Nerdy.

Emmm... Not bad. It got the twin fans, 6 speed button control, auto cleaning and designed for asian style cooking.

Again (Yaks), the bundling of hood and hob made me sick. Let buying the hood alone is RM1248 and if you buy both the hoob and hob, it will cost you RM1248..... What the heck, this is like giving away the hob (Worth RM548) for free.

Anyway, the "free" hob doesn't have the auto gas cut off safety feature and the design is less efficient than the higher end peers. To upgrade to higher end, you need to pay extra RM600 for TGB-2ms model.

Fine. If they want to give out their hob for "free", how could I refuse it? :p

(Mrs. Nerdy at the other end already hinted me that she wants a Rinnai burner LOL)

RM1.38K for the Set C package, alum. ducting set and wall cap. RM132 for the ducting set and cap might be a bit expensive but they claimed giving us a thicker ducting exhaust hose. No installation included since I planned to get cheaper labor to do the job instead of paying extra RM300.

However, I can't really tell whether buying this Tellini hood actually worth the money since I wouldn't know until the day Mrs. Nerdy use it (and when she starts complaining). Life's moving on.

House Renovation Hassle - Part 4

The toilet beside the wet kitchen gotta wear some "clothes". Well, I decided to go for white/blue combination to create a watery feel. Sounds like double works since toilet definitely can be more watery than you think.

Ok, so the final design is like this. Separate the wall into 2 vertical parts. Top will be white color, and bottom will be blue. Can't really tell the actual outcome yet since it is still in progress.

For Bottom Half Part of the Toilet

More about this tile


For Upper Half Part of the Toilet

More about this tile

Update: Currently I'm buying more blue tiles than white because the workers putting up the blue part more than 60% of the space. Darn, spending more.

Stemlie? Stemlife? SameLie?

An interesting article caught my eye this morning from www.btimes.com.my

StemLife Lodges Police Report Over Blog Article

I'm thinking like what the heck, what the hell!!

Curiousity kills a cat (or millions of cats), I googled about the mentioned blog and found it here.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Use StemLie

Obviously no matter which method you use, Levenshtein distance measure? Soundex algorithm or etc, the word Stemlie strongly similar to Stemlife. By now most people should know which company the blog owner referred to.

I'm not really a life science related person but at least I know where to look for more information.

Below are what I found on the Internet that I believe quite interesting to the subject matter.

A. From Thai StemLife

THAI StemLife provides:

Counseling of clients and training of medical professionals
The essence of decades long experience in cryostorage in ART/IVF, unique in Thailand, none of the existing companies in Thailand have similar backgrounds
Effective and proven collection methods (high volume closed system) that most doctors prefer and that is US FDA approved– Blood Bag System
AABB compliant and identical processes
ISO 9001/2000 accredited
A 365 days (round the clock) collection and courier service throughout the country
A 24/7 hotline service to a highly trained representative
Liaising with transplantation specialist centers for the use of the adult stem cells
Liaising with stem cell treatment specialist centers for the use of the adult stem cells (diabetes/heart)
Assured optimum storage facilities and use of the Thermogenesis stem cell storage bag
Testing of maternal and cord blood for contaminants and infectious diseases
Zero percent (0%-sic!) in-laboratory contamination
Assured intact cold chain transport from hospital collection to cryogenic storage and back to clinic for applications when necessary
Only company in Thailand with Cryoshipper, liquid portable nitrogen tank to transport your sample in the most optimal conditions possible
Licensed to transport biological goods by International Shippers
No unnecessary transports to foreign countries

Original Link

My Comments: I don't see any assuring evidences that the product is assuring. ISO standards mostly dealt with documentation and some generic guidelines. Mentions of 'AABB compliant and identical processes' doesn't say it is AABB accredited.


Compared to another competitor mentioned in the blog, CordLife, I found this:

CordLife: AABB Accreditation . CordLife REALLY got the real accreditation and StemLife as far as I searched, only mentioned about compliance/identical. Emmm, abit misleading.

Even better, from a Wiki article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood

Public cord blood banking is strongly supported by the medical community. However, private cord blood banking is generally not recommended unless there is a family history of specific genetic diseases. Private banking is unlawful in France and Italy, and opposed by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies.

The word "Unlawful" really is shocking. This starts to sound like "Lampe Berger" case.

Anyway, maybe I'm just not specialize to give my own facts but hey, this is what consumers react to information(fact?). Lodging a police report in this case is like try to stop the information (fact?) out flow before the public start to realize what kind of scheme they subscribing in.

LOL.