Livescribe

Livescribe came out with the smartest of all smart pens. 

The Pulse Smart Pen comes with lithium rechargeable battery, IGB or 2GB of memory (up to 200 hrs of recording time), voice recording function, and an embedded speaker.  The coolest thing (for me) is that it can synchronize audio lectures with the lecture notes using special paper with embedded microns.  The notes can also be transfered onto your PC and shared among your friends!

The only down side is it’s a $150-$200.00 pen AND you still have to write out your notes.

 

Difference in Price Tag

There is a reason why replica handbags are rampaging on the internet and on the streets of chinatowns all over the US.  It’s easy to use the most expensive calf, crocrodile, and deer skin to make the most expensive handbags, but it’s hard to wear it and have everyone recognize its price, season and brand instantly.

That’s the difference between Fendi and Forever21 (F21)…or is it? How about Tory Burch and Steve Madden?

And if you ever find yourself luring towards the lovely handbag in an upscale Soho boutique but it costs too much, the chances are that you can find the exact same one on the internet for 500% less in a few months. 

Some examples of girly secrets….shhh.

• The BagAddiction
• HighReplica
• SofiasReplica

Guys, don’t even think about buying one of these for your girlfriends. They can tell instantly a fake vs. real one…then you’ll be screwed for life ^^.

 

 

Embarrassing myself…twice in a roll.

So yesterday I was mixing IV bags in one of those hoods and I poked myself with a transfer needle. (FYI, the transfer needle is the thickist needle you can find in the pharmacy). Instantly, my one of my gloves was filled with blood and I rushed to clean up the mess.  I was amazed how much blood came out of that little poke after two paper towels and lots of pressure!

But then as I sat in the IV room, I felt the world was darkening and my vision became blurry with lots of dark spots.  My coworkers tried to take me outside the room and I couldn’t even hold on to the walls! So they sat me down and they were all scared because my face was all white. I tried comforting them, saying that I was alright and just needed a few moments for my body to work its magic. So it turned out that I just needed some fresh air from wearing the stuffy face mask and lots of food since I didn’t have breakfast.  The only good thing about almost-fainting is that everyone was extra nice to me the rest of the day.

So yaya I am still alive!

Since we are already on the subject of fainting… 

The second embarrasing moment was when the whole school read my paragraph about why I want to run for the Director of Media and Publication.  I’ll just say that my paragraph was only four sentences long, and none of them mentioned how smart I actually am.  My opponent had more than ten sentences in two paragraphs and the first sentence was already better than my whole paragraph! What have I done!?

 

 

 

 

China naughty again

China is busted, again.

 Recent New York Times featured the latest discovery of illegal child labor in southern China’s GuangDong Province. More than a hundred 13-15 year olds were tricked/kidnapped by employment agencies and forced to work 300 hrs/month at only $0.42 cents/hr!!

 China’s embarrassments just keep on coming…

•  President Hu Jintao was the first Olympics torch bearer in China. I don’t think there has ever been a president SO excited about Olympics to have to come out from his chinese white house to do this and it certainly did not make China look any better.
• China just drove all of its Beijing homeless into some vacant buildings without any food and other provisions so that Beijing can make way for that oh-so-important Olympics. Not to mention the thousands of homeless created in the first place because of the construction.
• And NO chinese food in China?! China hired foreign professional chiefs in order to prepare authentic foreign delicacies for foreigners for fear of poisonings and boycott from other countries.
• And of course there’s always those annoying disease outbreaks.

And yes I am chinese and I am not perfect either.

Figure above: where the Beijing Olympics logo comes from.

Happiness in Silver Linings

Everyone is obsessed about Viagra (Sildenafil, pronounced sill-DEN-a-fill), a magic pill used to treat ED (erectile dysfunction) by increasing blood flow through inhibition of PDE5.  Thanks to Pfizer, Viagra’s manufacturer, the problem of impotence is finally solved, or so ita seems…

 

What bothers me is that patients come into Harborivew with a roll of $20-dollar bills for 6 tablets of Viagra but never seem to have enough for a $5.00 copayment for their blood pressure/HTN meds.

Something to think about:

1. Advertisements paid for by Pfizer claim that 40% of  men have ED problems. But it’s more like 3% of 40 year olds and 60% of 70 year olds.
2. Common Side Effects: headache (16-46%), dyspepsia (7-17%), flushing (10%), rash(2%), color changes, blurred and increased sensitivity to light (3%; up to 11% >100mg), and nasal congestion (4%)
3. Caution when using with nitrates (e.g. nitroglycerin, isosorbide dinitrate) and risk of hypotension when used cocurrently with betablockers…etc.
4. go to ER if duration of action is well over 5 hours.

So you basically can’t see, can’t smell, your head hurts and you risk your life if you have diabetes or any cardiovascular diseases.

Nonetheless, it is estimated that 300 million men will be using Viagra by 2025.

I wonder why.

 

 

Red Coat Theory

Everyone wants a “red coat”; something you wear not only to stand out from the crowd but to be the first (and only) one to claim its ownership among your friends. Hence, the second, third, and forth person to own this “red coat” is suppressed by societal peer pressure not to invite attention for fear of title “copycat”.

However, this cascade of effects will only come into reality if the owner embraces all the responsibilities of owning this “red coat”. This means getting a nice pair of Rock&Republic jeans, a pair of black 3” patent pump and either a $$ hair cut or a really good hair straigtener.

This explains why ladies would buy a $1500.00 Prada handbag instead of three $500.00 Coach handbags. Coach handbags are necessities but the Prada bag is about luxury, glamour and envy.

My Future Companion

no it’s not my bf. but someone who can save me from embarrassing moments when I round with physicians next summer. It’s the HCT Diamond phone that comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, windows mobile 6.1, and weighs only 110g!

HCT, a Taiwanese company, is going to launch its Diamond in Europe in a couple weeks and rumor says it might come around to US later this year!(?) I really hope AT&T will offer this, but it’s probably not likely since it already offers the iphone and the LG Vu. (“><”)

 

 

707SC DC’d

My 707SC  phone doesn’t need a show girl to know that it’s fashionable.  It’s white, sleek and patent.

But I lost it, and found it the next afternoon in the middle of the road outside my boyfriend’s place… with a half-broken screen -_-!!  THEN, I found out that Softbank discontinued 707SC and added a new 707SCII that comes only in black and red. So…my new 707SCII black is still sleek but not white nor patent. The only good feature Softbank added is a slot where I can hang accessories. If only I didn’t drop it…

 I took these pictures to show you how the two phones look EXACTLY the same but one is so much cooler.

Complexity in the pharma world leads to public attn

Recent NY Times front page article criticizing on the emerging of 4th tier co-insurance revealed a national problem that worries many in our aging population. Instead of paying a fixed copay of $10.00 for preferred generic and $20.00 for a preferred brand, patients are asked to pay 25% of the actual cost of drugs which can translate to a $500.00 out-of-pocket copay.  Fortunately (or not), the concept of co-insurance is generally applied to a class of high-cost-low-utilization drugs called Specialty Pharmaceuticals, or generally known as Biologics.   Biologics are used to treat various cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and other diseases where success rate can be increased by 50% if used properly. However, the annual out-of-pocket expense can range up to $50,000 per patient per year! By 2020 specialty pharmaceuticals will account for about 37 percent of total drug expenditures (Caremark 2007 Drug Trend Report).

Insurance companies are just trying to survive…and so are we.