WATER BLOG DAY!

If everyone remains faithful to one website, my blog will be among [at least] 5148 blogs in the world that blog about water. After all, this is supposedly the "year of water" [and I thought it was just a Penn phenomenon...]. Today is Blog Action Day 2010, and the topic is water... and I'm supposed to come up with a witty blog post about two hydrogens covalently bonded to an oxygen molecule.

By the way, here is the link to my blog on the Blog Action Day page! It happens to be called Food Tech :D. The Penn group "Free Stuff at Penn" also blogged about water, which makes me very happy since they even mentioned how water in Philly is hard water and is that the Penn campus has filters in places... [I can't attest to that since I haven't seen any of those].

Anyway, I suppose now is the time to talk the hard facts of hard water [ha.ha.ha.] and give an actual meaningful post, sans waffle. Again, everything on this blog is my opinion, so please don't feel offended if you like to buy 250mL bottles of water from Costco [my parents do that].

One thing that I detest about the U.S. is the fact that prebottled water seems to be a necessity. WATER IS A NECESSITY. Prebottled water is a marketing gimmick used to screw up the environment. I really don't know why else we humans in the U.S. require prebottled water. In countries where water carries bacteria, insects, disease, mercury, poop, etc., bottled water is necessary. For most of the U.S., however, bottled water [okay, I got sick of typing "pre"] just pisses me off. I don't care if you're only capable of putting "pure spring water" to your lips. It's freakin' H2O with a bunch of minerals and trace elements. What do you use to brush your teeth? What do you drench yourself in, when you're showering? Where in the world do you SWIM, if you dislike normal tap water? You've been ingesting tonnes of tap water in your life, and you even rinse your fruit and vegetables with it. You wash your dishes and your clothes in it.

Why, then, are you afraid of sipping it? Why do you fear calcium? Is it because it leaves a white residue on your coffee-maker? Do you censure the fluoride in water because it's ostensibly harmful?

Why is it okay - oh, I mean, imperative - that you, a privileged, literate, richer-than-80%-of-the-world person, drink water from a bottle, whereas other people have to live on malaria-saturated swamps?

Tap water makes so much more sense.

It's pretty much the same thing as bottled water.

I have to admit that NJ tap water tastes very different from HK tap water, and Philadelphia tap water. Actually, the best tap water I've had comes from the airport at South Carolina...or maybe I was just really thirsty after the plane ride]. I have to admit that NJ water didn't taste that great initially, but after a few days, it started tasting clear. In other words, it started tasting like water, and spring water started tasting chemically bizarre.

One thing to get clear [hahaha, "clear"] is the fact that if you get used to NJ tap water, you can get used to any tap water, because NJ has all the pharmaceutical monopolies. Another cool thing is that they give out water quality reports every year in late August to each resident, so we all get to know what's in the water we're drinking.

I have one bottle for my water. It is bright green, stainless steel, and doesn't smell at all [the ones from Marshalls absolutely reek when I checked their insides out]. It cost around $10 from Borders when the one in my town was closing down. I believe it was from Gaiam, and you can find this company's bottle on Google Shopping. It used to have some design on it but it washed off, although I prefer it plain green.

Is my argument solid like ice? Will you melt it with your anger? It's okay if you disagree; I'm not partaking in consumption. I'm not wasting the energy associated with

1. Obtaining and refining oil.

2. Making oil into plastic bottles.

3. Filling bottles with water at some factory.

4. Finding "spring" water [or tap water] and drilling holes in the ground.

5. Shipping water to warehouse.

6. Shipping water from warehouse to store.

7. Shipping water from store to home.

Instead I'm just getting water pumped from some local recycled/water-that-used-to-be-sewage-perhaps plant and putting it in a stainless steel container.