Tuesday 25 March 2008

Asian Drink Special #4

Sorry about the delay in updates. I haven't been to the Asian supermarket in forever. So when we swung by the other day, I picked up the cheapest, strangest one I could find:



This drink, FIN...



... where FIN apparently stands for 'Fly In Nature'.

1. Originality - I think the main selling point of this that seperates it from everything else is the fact that they use 'Deep Sea Water'. Seriously. The whacked-out english description wasn't 'SOFT DRINK' as I expected it to be, it was 'Deep Sea Healthy Drink'. I believe it's healthy and all; it only has 4.3g of sugar. I don't know what other benefits it has - everything apart from FIN, Fly In Nature and the nutrition information label is in a mixture of Chinese and Japanese.
Actually, this whole 'deep sea' thing is making me think of Cloverfield. Oh shit. Anyway, I give this drink a nine, because why would you bottle deep sea water? [9]
2. Taste - Oh my god, what is this? It's like someone took some salt water (but then, what do you expect from DEEP SEA WATER), threw in a bit of lemon and thought, 'It needs to be sweeter', and throws in a few teaspoons of sugar. It's drinkable, sure, but at the moment I'm not even a quarter of the way into the bottle and I'm gagging slightly at each mouthful. But that's just me. If they keep selling this, there has to be a market for it. [3]



3. Packaging - Plastic bottle that says 'FIN' on it. Self explanatory. [1]
4. Price - $1.50. Which is reasonable for a drink that large, I guess. [5]
5. Other - Boy, I really don't know if I can bring myself to finish this.

OVERALL: Makers of FIN: you're trying to bust my kidneys, aren't you? In a discrete, supposedly healthy way. Keep trying. I'll probably go downstairs and make my own salt water mix. Because that would taste more awesome. [5]

By the way, happy birthday, Elaine!

Friday 21 March 2008

I finally have it!

Obtaining No More Heroes though, was a real trial.

I made a picture to illustrate the worldwide release date schedule as it really happened:

You can imagine how I was feeling. So at the beginning of this week (around the 17th), I decided to go check out EB's online store to see if it had been delayed yet again. To my anger, the date stated was for the 27th, next week. Wondering if that was just the date for the online store, I went round to my local EB the next day to confirm this date. Sure enough, it was listed for the 27th.

On this same day (Tuesday), a JB Hi-Fi catalogue finally arrived at our household. My brother was flicking through it when he saw that NMH was being advertised in it for $79. In addition, JB usually puts little notifications next to items that are not available yet, right? Next to NMH, there was no such thing. Naturally, I believed that JB had an early shipment or something.

So on Wednesday, I walked to JB to make my purchase. Turns out they were in fact only putting them on the shelves on the 20th, the actual release date. Fair enough. At least it was definite that they would be releasing it then. So I put down $20 for a preorder there, just to guarantee my copy. Note that I had also preordered at EB at the beginning of Feburary.

In the middle of my tutorial at uni, I received a call from EB saying that my order was in. My reaction: WAT. However, I figured that it was cheaper at JB anyway, seeing as though it cost $99.95 at EB and only $79 at JB. The only thing was seeing if I could transfer my $10 preorder at EB over to another game. But if not, no big deal.

So yesterday, I went and picked up my game from JB. Happiness, joy, etc. Went to EB and they were surprisingly kind. So I transfered my preorder to Brawl and wrangled a 'June-ish' release date from them. Which means you can add another six months on.

So far, NMH is awesome. A full review soon.