The Butter vs. Marjarine debate - Part 1

One of the things I would like to do one day if I ever become a famous (and rich) blogger with plenty of time to do useless things to post on my blog (which isn't likely to happen soon since I tend to leave my blog abandoned for weeks now. Busy me!), is to do little experiments to test out as weird claims made in the numerous chain emails that clutter up my inbox. A good example is the one about the butter vs. marjarine debate , which goes on and on about how crappy marjarine is compared to butter. Supposedly compared to butter, marjarine has less nutritional value, triples the risk of coronary heart disease, was originally used to fatten turkeys but ended up killing them instead, etc, etc.

Unfortunately there is no way I can test any of these claims without doing some elaborate lab tests on the nutritional value of marjarine, or continuously eating it everyday to see if I one day die of heart disease, or go stuff turkeys with marjarine to see if they die. So I'm not going to bother trying to dispute these, unless someone gives me a grant to carry out my experiments (I'd probably use 20% of the money to buy really cheap testing chemicals and equipment while saving the rest for shopping. Bwahaha! Ok, there goes my prospective sponsors...)

But there is one particular statement in the email that reeeaaally gets me questioning the scientific validity of the entire thing:

"Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC."

The part about ONE MOLECULE itself makes the entire sentence meaningless, and if the writer of this email had paid attention in primary school science class, he would realize why. Here's a simple little explanation of what is a molecule to demonstrate my point:


Same as with water, marjarine is made up of molecules, which of course would be a lot more complex. Lots of molecules of marjarine would just make lots of marjarine. So if you have one molecule more of marjerin, it just means you have an itty bitty bit more marjarine. Having more or less molecules doesn't change marjerin into something else like plastic!

My suspicion is that the fella who wrote this email was suffering from a bout of grammatical incorrect-ness, and what he was 'probably' trying to say is "The molecular structure of marjarine is ONE ATOM away from being PLASTIC".

But I mean, if you really wanna go round spamming people with emails like these and freaking people out, then at least get your sentences and science terms straight. -_-

And even IF the writer hadn't fuddled up his words, the statement STILL isn't a valid point against marjarine, because lots of stuff in this world has similar molecular structures but their chemical properties are different, but it doesn't mean if one thing is hazardous, the other thing with a similar molecular structure is equally as hazardous.

Case in point, water vs. hydrogen peroxide. Chemical formula for water is H2O (everyone remember my little lesson up there, I hope!), whereas hydrogren peroxide has a chemical formula of H2O2. Which means, only one additional oxygen atom is in each molecule of hydrogen peroxide. Yet we all know clean water is safe for consumption, but if you drink pure or concentrated hydrogen peroxide solution, you are for a bout of mouth blistering, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and probably whole lot of other nasty things. Not quite my drink of choice.

So yeah, I'm really quite bugged by that one little sentence. But yet another part of the infamous email that I was itching to debunk. But since this post is long enough already, I shall continue this in part 2!

The Butter vs. Marjarine debate - Part 1

My busy personal life

I've had to abandon my blog for a couple of weeks now due to too much stuff to do. I'm not even all that busy at work, but my personal life is more busy than my work life. And that's not even from going and hanging out with friends, which would at least be somewhat more of a 'personal life'... but from other things.

I currently have over 80 unread emails in my personal inbox (most of which consists of daily reminders from this website called Fruits of the Vine to read certain bible passages, which is good for me coz' otherwise I'd never get round to reading that book. But bad coz' I delay reading my daily passages, and the reminders end up accumulating to... a LOT). I go the nearby fitness centre after work (but still not losing weight. Yeeeeesh), and more recently I've had to prepare stuff for my bro's Malaysian wedding dinner and also moving in to my dad's new condo. Which is at USJ 1. And those who know where I lived before would know that USJ 1 is practically a stone's throw from my old place, so the only purpose of the new place is that it looks cooler and better security. And my old place was already only 7 minutes drive or so to my office. The drive from my new condo to my office is now only about 3 minutes. Here's the view from my room window (no zoom or anything), and the location of my office is marked pretty clearly, I would think.

Yeah, so the running joke from my dad now is that I can paraglide down to my office from my room if I wanted to. Would be a good idea, except walking home after work would kinda be a pain in the butt. Perhaps I should build a cable car instead! Hmmm... (hear Carol's brain ticking).

My bro from the US is coming back in a couple of days, and I'm stuck having to go to Indonesia again for 5 days. Grr. I'll miss almost 5 days of hanging out with him. Double grr. And now with the silly piggy flu going round, I hope neither of us have to get quarantined. That would be a triple grr.

Yeah, got a bunch of emails to try and clear now. Ack.

My busy personal life

Would you recycle... your organs??!!

I would! And even though I've been wanting to for a long time, after much procrastination (mainly due to not really knowing how to do it), I've finally gone and made my an organ donor! Thanks to this new local radio station, BFM, which I didn't know existed until a friend recommended it to me. They run a lot of talk shows about various topics every day, and one day I heard this talk about organ donation, with a guest speaker from the National Organ Transplant Centre (or something like that), and she explained the process of how to go about becoming an organ donor, as well as debunked some famous myths about organ donation.

Like, a lot of people aren't too keen on donating their organs, some of the main reasons being that they are afraid that the process of organ harvesting will postpone the funeral, that the body will come back looking like crap, or that organ donation is against their religion. The speaker explained that after death, the organ harvesting process is actually very quick, and the staff performing the havesting make every effort to ensure the body is kept in as good condition as possible. As for the religion bit, frankly I've never heard of any religion with any clause along the lines of "Thou shall not giveth thy organs away to anyone else". I would suppose most religions teach the importance of giving... and there are people out there in dire medical conditions who need organs to survive, and once your dead, it doesn't make you any more of a sinner if you're missing a couple of body parts here and there, so why not give already? Yeah well, the speaker didn't quite say it like that, but you know, I'm just...um... paraphrasing. Yeah.

As for me, I'm always into recycling whatever can be recycled, even myself. Waste not, want not, you know. And I was happy to find that the process to apply to be an organ donor was pretty easy. I just visited their website at www.agiftoflife.gov.my, clicked on the section on section on organ donor registration ("Jadilah Penderma"), downloaded, printed out and filled in the application form, and faxed the filled form back to the number provided. I also called their toll free number to make sure I did it right and that they received it. Instead of talking to a real person, I got a voice recording that asked me to key in a few numbers, say my details out loud, and at the end of it, the voice recording said they would send me my donor card within 2 weeks. *Bleep*. I was kinda like "Huh?" after that, wondering if they actually got my info right since I didn't speak to a real person, but I waited a couple of weeks, and lo and behold, I got my donor card in the mail!

It's actually a rather flimsy piece of card which will probably look like 'rojak' within a few months of keeping it in my wallet. But I HAVE to carry it on me at all times, so I don't have a choice. I'm also supposed to tell my family that I'm an organ donor, so that in the event of me passing on, kicking the bucket, biting the dust, and other nice replacements for the word 'die', my family will know my wishes and not object to the organ harvesting. This is a pretty big problem when they try to collect organs, families of the deceased donor have no idea, so they make a big objection against it and give the harvesters a hard time. So people, now you know I'm donating ALL my organs and tissues, so when they come for me, make sure they make the most of my dead body. Haha, that sounds very wrong. :P

While I'm not squeamish about most of my body parts being in someone else (or more than one someone else) after I die, the one thing that is a bit freaky to me is my face being on someone else, like was the case with this lady, Connie Culp , who was shot in the face by her husband, resulting in her looking like...um... really ugly. After a successful face transplant with facial tissues taken from another lady (who was dead by then, of course), she looked a lot more normal.

I suppose if I'm dead, I won't be able to experience the weirdness of having my face on someone else... but wouldn't that just be the weirdest thing for the family and friends of the dead donor? To see the face of someone they knew on another person? I mean, I wouldn't say no to donating my facial tissues (I guess that comes under 'all organs and tissues' on my donor card) coz' it would the best thing ever to someone who's been horribly disfigured like this poor lady.... but doesn't reduce the freaky factor.

So I guess the new question now would be... would you recycle your face??!!

Would you recycle... your organs??!!

INTAXICATION...

is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. "


Well, it was fun while it lasted! :P

INTAXICATION...

When is the American Idol first single NOT the American Idol first single?

.... when it's sang by the RUNNER-UP and played as if he was the American Idol winner!

Seriously, I was driving home today was I heard the American Idol coronation song "No Boundaries" play on the radio. Of course, since Kris Allen won the whole thing I was thinking that he was the one singing the song... but after listening for a while I thought the singer sounded strangely more like Adam Lambert. And I turned out to be right after the song finished and DJ said it was Adam.

Like yeah, I know practically the whole world, and including myself (well, almost... until the end when I heard Adam kill the coronation song) wanted Adam to win, ok, but he didn't, ok, so like why can't these guys let the AI winner's single be THE AI winner's single, and why the heck are they playing Adam's version instead of Kris??? I think this is the first time ever I've heard of the AI idol winner's first single being sang by the runner-up instead on air.

To Kara's credit, the recorded version of the song sounded much better than when Adam sang it live. The single cover for Adam (below) is pretty weird though. It's like supposed to be an inspirational song, but Adam looks like a character from the Addam's Family (which is probably the show that inspired his look in the first place. Lol!). I'm not a big fan of the song, but still love Adam and looking forward to see what he churns out.



... IMHO, Kris's version of the song sounds much better, even though the single cover looks like they slapped it together like a sandwich. More evidence that they didn't expect him to win.



I was also chatting with my pastor the other day about the AI results, and my pastor mentioned he was glad Kris Allen won, for the simple reason of his humility. When Kris Allen auditioned for American Idol, the first thing one of the judges, Kara, asked was "Are you the best singer out there?". Obviously this was to see his level of confidence, so the she was probably hoping for an answer along the lines of "Yeeaaaah! I'M SO the best singer out there, and I'm definitely the next American Idol!".

Instead he replied "Well, there's probably people that are better than me". To which Kara gave this "Hmm... okaaay..." kinda look, and later on Simon says that Kris' modesty is actually putting him off... and Simon gets annoyed with Kris' modesty several times throughout the show. In the end, when they announced Kris as the winner, Simon was so flabbergasted, he couldn't even get up to give him a standing ovation like the other judges. I guess he was thinking Kris could never win with such level of modesty and seemingly low self-confidence... but Kris showed that you don't have to be overly self-confident to be winner. You just need a lot of talent, and probably a lot of God... coz' Kris is a Christian too, by the way. I also didn't know that until my pastor mentioned it... but after he did, I'm pretty happy that Kris won by sticking to his beliefs, without trying to be someone he wasn't.

I hope Kris will keep on staying humble, living and performing for God. :) Looking forward to next round of Idol mania in 2010. Weeee!

When is the American Idol first single NOT the American Idol first single?

No lesser victims than the anyone else...

I first heard the news about the collapse of Jaya Supermarket at Section 14 from someone on Twitter, of all places (I guess Twitter ain't such a waste of time after all. :P). For me, and I suppose for most people who grew up in the Klang Valley, the news didn't fail to elicit the jaw-dropping, wide-eyed reaction accompanying by the exclamation of "Whaaaaaat???".

I also remember the times when I was a kid, when I walked around this old shopping complex with my family, and years after, I still sometimes drove by the big blue building, or stopped by Digital Mall next door. So it's surreal to think that the same place you used to happily roam around in as a kid has now come down in a heap of rubble (though not all of it... I decided to be a typical 'kay-po-chee' Malaysian and visited the site myself yesterday. Only the rear section has collapsed, not the entire building).

Fortunately, the collapse didn't happen when the shopping complex was still in it's prime. It was already designated for demolition, and demolition works had already been carried out quite a bit... so not many people were injured. Unfortunately, some of the foreign workers working on the demolition process were killed (at this point, I hear it's two, but death toll is probably higher)... and this is the part that really saddens me.

With previous incidents of building collapses and lost of lives in this country, people will always make a big hue and cry about it because the lives lost were locals. And I'm wondering if for this case, whether the hue and cry will be just as big, since the lives lost are 'merely' a bunch of foreign workers.

I wonder because the general perception of foreign workers in this country in not great... and not without reason, of course. There are a lot of cases of foreign workers becoming snatch thieves or robbers, and a lot of people, have low opinion of the average foreign labourer we happen to see anywhere. I won't make excuses, I'm also one of those who are wary of foreign workers.... especially with so many emails flying around these days warning you of dangers of thefts, rape, spiders biting you in the butt (whoops, unrelated topic!).... well, you get the idea.

But of course, even though there are bad apples, another view we often fail to see is that some of these foreign workers do come here to make an honest living through hard work. They do physical work all day, with low pay, probably living under pathetic conditions and low (maybe NO) benefits... and most of them have families back home in Indonesia or wherever the heck they come from, that they work to feed. They come to Malaysia with the hope of a better pay and a better life for their families.

So in an event like this, when honest workers die in a tragedy that probably resulted due to the incompetence of an engineer telling them what to do, I hope that people don't take it any less lightly just coz' those who died were 'merely' foreign workers. They are people, like you and me, trying to make a decent living and doing the best they knew how. My heart goes out to them and I hope whoever is responsible will compensate the families of the departed REALLY well, and not sweep this under the carpet.

No lesser victims than the anyone else...