after going though 3 cheap beds and one expensive one I bought an air mattress from RTmart. The first one broke but the second one is grest and it comes with an electric pump it only cost 700nt and I had the best night sleep in years last nght.
I wish I had bought an air matress when I first got here. Then I would have saved about 20,000 plus been able to sleep.
A bit weird…
We bought one Taiwanese made DVD player, but it burnt out after a year. So for the next one we went Panasonic. Then a friend bought a video camera and used our TV and whatever (I’m so not into electronics) to replay. He pressed some buttons and got it to work. After that, the DVD player would not play. We could hear sound, but there was no image.
We took it into a local shop and the guy said he had to send it away to Panasonic. A week later we picked it up.
He told us, “Don’t ever touch this button.” No charge and sent us on our way.
What is this button??? And if you can’t ever touch it, why is it on the remote?
Interesting, most of our furniture was bought at ikea - the build quality is total crap on a couple items but otherwise no problems at all. Our Japanese import Panasonic dvd/amplifier died just after the warranty ran out. Total crap.
The Japanese send their Friday afternoon stuff here.
Very true in that many companies in Japan and in Taiwan will
ship their defective or suspected lower quality stuff to Taiwan and Southeast Asia to get rid of it. Taiwan buyers will sometimes look for cheaper lots of product that have suspected quality problems or returns from other countries so that they can buy cheaper and sell cheaper to the low price crowd consumer here. Everybody should beware of cheap
priced electronics in places like RT-Mart.
Batteries/battery packs in Taiwan are rife with copies. Alot of them are China produced battery rewrapped with a Japan shrink wrap. Many Lithium packs come from used cells that are rewrapped/repackaged.
Some local companies will place orders with these specs in mind at cut rate prices, then sell a little cheaper than the originals.
Now dont get me started on the used cellphones sold as new with replacement housings and copy stickers, barcodes…etc
Having donated my recently-purchased new phone to a taxi driver, I am back using my Nokia 8210 from around 5 years ago. The original Nokia battery (which cost around
[quote=“yangdemei”]A bit weird…
We bought one Taiwanese made DVD player, but it burnt out after a year. So for the next one we went Panasonic. Then a friend bought a video camera and used our TV and whatever (I’m so not into electronics) to replay. He pressed some buttons and got it to work. After that, the DVD player would not play. We could hear sound, but there was no image.
We took it into a local shop and the guy said he had to send it away to Panasonic. A week later we picked it up.
He told us, “Don’t ever touch this button.” No charge and sent us on our way.
What is this button??? And if you can’t ever touch it, why is it on the remote?[/quote]
It’s probably to switch between input signals. What he really meant to say is “my Engrish not good nuff explan dis yu.” If you punch the button two or three times, it would probably cycle among the different possible input modes until it got back to the one that worked. Then again, it might have to go through all 70 (or 105, or 500, or whatever) channels before it got back to the one that worked, so maybe his way is better.
And before someone bitches at me about my horribly anti-Taiwanese comment, I spent ten minutes in a hobby shop once, trying to buy a transmitter RF module from the owner, only to have him explain that Taiwan has recently opened up the frequency spectrum to the frequency band that my existing module works in. He spoke no English, I speak no Chinese (beyond “xie xie”, anyway), and it cost him the sale since I otherwise would have bought the thing. It’s entirely possible to communicate even moderately technical matters IF they are willing to try.
Same day, half an hour earlier, a counter bimbo at Mos Burger ran away and got one of her coworkers to take my order, because she was too terrified to take an order off the picture menu from a foreigner. She never got to the point of finding out whether I spoke Chinese or not; she saw my white face and ran for help. For those of you who have never been to Mos (lucky bastards), they have a dual-language picture menu where you can point and pick. Even a three-year-old could handle it.
Yeah but you were pointing in English.
I wish! I am 165 cm and 81 kg… (that’s a 91 cm waist) 
And yet another. . . .
I went to Nova and picked up some CD-RWs in the basement. Same place I’ve gotten them in the past, and I haven’t had problems before. This batch, I’ve tried five of the ten so far, and NONE of them will burn. Looking at them with the light reflecting off the bottom surface, I can SEE the defects in the layers – thin spots, rings and ripples,
Edited to add:
I went back to Nova last night, talked to the vendor, and he allowed me a full replacement on these with a different brand. I had to pay the difference in price, of course, but he took them back after only a couple of questions to make sure I hadn’t destroyed them myself. The new ones work perfectly, and I would now recommend them and him to anyone.
As you go down the upper flight of stairs toward the basement, you’ll be facing directly toward his shop and can see the stacks of disks all over the counter. The lower flight turns left and you’ll be facing away from his shop. Just do a quick 180 at the bottom of the stairs and you’ll be right by him.
These disks are “CyQ’ve” and have a silver whirlpool design on the top. They’re 4X-12X.
I have to say the service here in Taiwan is probably the best I have come across anywhere. They seem always eager to please.
Even the 7-11’s staff wish you a safe trip when you leave the shop, although I know it couldn’t come with less sincerity.
Irony par excellence.
Okay - Martha Stewart time, here… To get the crusties out of your hot water pot, coffee maker, humidifier, etc, you can run it through two or three cycles with vinegar. I don’t remember the exact ratio of vinegar to water but it’s a high enough concentration to stink like hell so you should do it outside or with the windows open or something.
I don’t think you can have TOO MUCH vinegar. You’re just wasting vinegar if you do.
I realize the quote feature isn’t working for me but I’m too busy (lazy) to figure out why.
Well I have lots of calcium in my water heater, and I usually remove the loose stuff by shaking it out, and then let it boil with the vinegar once or twice… it helps a lot… and no, it;s a stainless stell one, very cheap, and it las lasted 3 years so far.
Er, not exactly.
"You should use the finest Balsamic vinegar available, with a twist of lemon in it. For water, although normally a top-quality mineral water would be called for, in this case since your goal is demineralization, you should use distilled water. Only buy distilled water in glass decanters; plastic is for peasants.
This is Martha Stewart, saying it’s time for evening roll call, so I’d better get going before the guard beats my ass again."
My IKEA furniture is lovely and has lasted well for two months so far … It had better last a number of years for how damn expensive it was.
Okay - Martha Stewart time, here… To get the crusties out of your hot water pot, coffee maker, humidifier, etc, you can run it through two or three cycles with vinegar. I don’t remember the exact ratio of vinegar to water but it’s a high enough concentration to stink like hell so you should do it outside or with the windows open or something.
I don’t think you can have TOO MUCH vinegar. You’re just wasting vinegar if you do.
I realize the quote feature isn’t working for me but I’m too busy (lazy) to figure out why.[/quote]
I’ve done the vinegar thing before and it does get a good bit out, but it isn’t very effective on the bottom of the boiler where it gets the hottest. I’ve boiled straight vinegar (ugh!) in a boiler before, but it still didn’t get the gunk off the bottom. I guess the cocktail of minerals and chemicals from the water was too badly baked onto the teflon. And how often are you going to boil it out with vinegar? You can get quite a lot of build up between cleanings. Over here in HK, our problem isn’t really that the water needs to be boiled to kill bacteria (although it doesn’t hurt to do so), but that the chemical and metal content of the water is too high. Only filtering will get rid of it. Try telling that to your mother-in-law, though. They all seem convinced that boiling solves everything.
You’re just jealous that you haven’t graduated to a teflon lined heater yet! :raspberry: 
Hmmm. will get one… NOT!
Will get mineral water delivered with a water dispenser instead… They are not expensive.
That said, i would believe that the acids you can use if the problem is bad will react less with the stainless steel than with the teflon.
I can’t even convince my wife of that. Despite reports that bottled water (in America) doesn’t have much of any guidelines for purity, she’s convinced that it’s better than the filtered stuff (boiled is okay, though). And she’s lived in Canada/U.S. for 12 years!