Monday, April 16, 2018

A family visit to Sewing World Gallery @ Sky Park One City Mall

In the older generation not too long ago, sewing machine had been a common item found in many household. At that time, sewing (and perhaps knitting, too) was an essential skill learnt by most housewives.

Then, sewing machine had been unconsciously become lesser and lesser seen in household nowadays. It prone to become industrial item found in clothes and fashion factories.

Meanwhile, the Mostwell Group which is the sole distributor of Janome sewing machines in Malaysia has been endeavoring to bring back the continuation of sewing arts and crafts into today's households by organizing numerous events, trainings and programmes to teach everybody from age 7 onwards who are interested to learn about sewing to master the skill.


The Sewing World Gallery located at 1st floor of Sky Park @ One City Mall with close proximity to the LDP USJ toll (accessible via a junction near to Shell petrol station) is an over 10,000 square feet gallery showcasing many sewing products made by their students. There, you will open your eye to realize that sewing is indeed a kind of arts and crafts similar to drawing, calligraphy, pottery, painting, etc.

 


Entrance to the Sewing World Gallery is free of charge. Inside the gallery there is also a small museum of sewing machines and tools, a small auditorium, and a classroom for interested parties to sign up for their sewing classes.

Sewing inspires creativity. They show you how old jeans can be transformed into new life as cushions, handbags, and other creative items.


There are also interested stuffed toys, some of which are as big in size as a human.


Inside the gallery, you can also find the largest bag in the world recorded in Guinness World Records which is as large as a garage.

There is also the largest display of handmade fabric flowers recorded in Guinness World Records, showcasing 99 names of Allah (known as Asma'ul Husna).


The Sewing World Gallery is really a nice educational place to spend your leisure time with your family and friend. If I am not mistaken, it is the first and only gallery of its kind in Asia.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

My Ooree 8 inch USB table fan (UF108)

If you need a small table fan at your workplace or study desk, or you tend to work with your laptop at outdoor café and nice to have some cooling breeze, perhaps you can consider this Ooree UF108 8 inch USB table fan.


This USB table fan is good enough to generate breezing wind that you can feel within 1 meter in front of it, yet its size (8 inch diameter end-to-end) and weight (416 gram) are also good enough for it to be portable.

It is powered by USB source, which can be the USB port of your laptop / desktop / monitor, or the USB charging port of your power bank / charging adapter. By powering it with a mobile electricity source such as  power bank, you can use it anytime and anywhere, such as during camping, during electricity blackout, etc. The fan has a low power consumption of around 2.5W only.

Its 1.2 meter USB cable is detachable. It has an on/off switch behind too.


It will have some noise of fan rotating during operation, but overall still considered pretty quiet.

Note that the 8 inch as advertised is the diameter of its metal frame. The diameter of its fan blade is around 5.5 inch only. Its build is pretty solid, despite its packaging box is hollow inside (without any foam or paper support) which does not provide much protection to the fan during delivery.


As you can see, its packaging box deformed during the courier process, which is the main complaint I have with this product. Luckily the fan is not too fragile and still in good condition during unboxing.

Its price is quite reasonable. If you search around carefully, you can find online seller selling it at less than RM20, despite most of the sellers are putting a price tag of RM30-RM40 to it.

There is another model UF110 which is 10 inch and with double speed control, selling at a higher price. If you need stronger wind, you can probably look into the UF110 model.


Saturday, March 24, 2018

My Cashido 10 second ozone anti-bacterial water-treatment machine

Ozone has been used over the past 150++ years for water treatment since its discovery by a German-Swiss chemist called Christian Friedrich Schönbein.

A brief history of ozone usage in water treatment is as below:

  • 1886: The ability of ozone to disinfect polluted water is recognized in Europe.
  • 1891: Test results from Germany show that ozone is effective against bacteria.
  • 1893: The Netherlands started to use ozone in large scale as disinfectant in drinking water.
  • 1906: France city Nice commissioned first municipal ozone plant for drinking water.
  • 1909: Ozone is used as a food preservative for cold storage of meats.
  • 1915: Ozone is widely used in Europe with at least 49 major installations throughout the region.
  • 1939: Ozone is found to be able to prevent the growth of yeast and mold during the storage of fruits.
  • 1965: Scotland employs ozone for colour control in surface water.
  • 1970: French exploited the use of ozone in algae control.
Today, Ozone is known to be a very strong oxidizing reagent which able to effectively:
  • Kill bacteria and viruses.
  • Remove 75% of pesticides.
  • Remove bad smell (such as fish-smell, smoke odour, etc.)
  • Remove colour formed by organic compound.
  • Keep food fresh.
  • Settle down heavy metals in water for easier filtration.
Its effectiveness is well supported by academic researches. To name a few of them:

 
 


However, Ozone in gas form, when inhaled into our lung, is harmful to human health. The following bodies have specified the safety level of maximum concentration of ozone permissible in occupied space:
  • FDA: 0.05 ppm
  • ASHRAE: 0.05 ppm
  • EPA: 0.08 ppm
  • OSHA: 0.10 ppm
My Cashido 10 second ozone anti-bacterial water-treatment machine is an electronic device that can generate ozone almost instantly and mix it with normal tap water to form ozonized water. Its operation is claimed to release less than 0.01 ppm ozone into the air, which is well controlled below the permissible level.


The ozone gas generated is directly transmitted via a soft silica tube to its ozone mixer installed at the water outlet of faucet. Therefore, very minimal amount of ozone gas is released into the air during its operation.

This machine has additional safety measures to prevent excessive ozone from being released into the air:
  • It only start producing ozone when it has detected water flow at the faucet. It will immediately stop working once the water flow stopped, or it detected the water is just dripping instead of flowing.
  • It will auto cut-off itself after 10 minutes of continuous operation, even if the water is still flowing.
  • It has 2 LEDs. The red LED will turn on when it is connected with electric power, even when it is in standby mode. The blue LED will turn on whenever it is generating ozone to be mixed with the water, and will turn off when no ozone is generated.
With the ozone in the ozonized water made by this machine, we can use the water to:
  • Wash our hands, face, legs and other body parts. (The machine can be installed for shower too)
  • Rinse our mouth and teeth.
  • Bath our pet(s).
  • Wash fruits, vegetables and meats (before refrigerator storage and/or before cooking).
  • Wash kitchen utensil, cups, bottles, baby products, toys, clothes, etc.
  • Clean the floor, table, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, etc.
  • Sanitize dentures, contact lens, etc.
  • Wash and sanitize pimples, surface wound, insect bites, etc.
This Cashido machine is called 10 second machine because the generated ozonized water only needs as short as 10 seconds to complete its function to oxidize, disinfect, deodourize and decompose pesticides & harmful materials of the target object you are washing or cleaning with it. If the contact is less than 10 seconds, then the washing/cleaning is considered partial, with some left out remains untreated.

Note that the ozone in the water has a short half-life of 20 minutes and will eventually disappear from the water (released as oxygen), leaving no residue in the water.

Therefore, ozonized water cannot be stored as it will soon lost its effect in disinfection of bacteria and viruses, pesticides removal, bad smell removal, etc. due to its short half-life period. It needs to be generated on the spot when use.

With this Cashido 10 second ozone anti-bacterial water-treatment machine, we can expect a more hygiene living environment, healthier & fresher food, and better health (by eliminating as well as preventing bad breath, body odour, Athlete's foot, skin problems, etc.).

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.