Fight ‘em, Phiten!

These days I’m starting to see a large number of people wearing this cool, totally rad and awesome necklace/bracelet/whatever thingamajig around, and it looks totally cool. I really want one of these. In case you silly sods have no idea what I am talking about, let me bring you up to date on the latest fashion in town:

Coolest shit in town

Heck, it’s even worn and endorsed by the top atheletes in USA, such as this random baseball player whom I don’t know! But who cares! It’s endorsed, therefore it must be good for me!

Really cool baseball Lord Man King with Phiten enhancing his powers. I totally need one now.

In order to enhance my manliness so that all shall bow to me, I could not afford to get the cheap imitations that all these poseurs around school were wearing. No, only the most expensive, most original, MADE IN JAPAN Phiten Titanium Necklace X-30 Tribal, which by the way, costs just a meager USD35. Cheap, too cheap. I hope they can make more expensive stuff to satisfy my ego-boost when I can tell people “Oh, not much, it just cost about, 400?”

So began my quest to look cool. I headed down to Marina Square where the Phiten accessory shop was located. It is, like, so totally cool. They have this test to show you the effectiveness of Phiten products! Wasting no time, I put down my bag and allowed the staff to fondle use a Phiten shirt to cover my arm to show me just how effective it can be.

The test is simple. Keeping your elbow locked and arm straight, use your middle finger to lift up a bottle. Then, repeat it again, only this time round, you put a Phiten shirt around your arm.

“Do you feel like it’s lighter? Like your muscles feel less tense?”

It did feel easier to carry. (It really did, no, I’m not lying, nor am I being sarcastic.)

“Do you have any pains, like shoulders being tense or neck pain? Or back pain?”

Yeah, I do have back pain, so the staff member asked to to try to experiment again, once without the shirt, once with the shirt on my back.

Once again, it felt lighter, but this time I do have a ready explanation for it: the guy was supporting my back with his hands because he’s holding the shirt there. (This makes me wonder: what if I say that I have this nagging strain around my groin area?)

The guy then went on to explain really cool stuff to me, which I could then pass on to my friends to show off my knowledge on how Phiten products can actually help me. I am going to do just that now.

Phiten products help release the tension of your muscles when you do exercise or when you simply just utilize them, making activities less strenuous. It does this through ions, because ions sound totally cool and scientific and people will never question scientific notions. The ions will control your bio-electric current (whatever that is) and make it easier for you to carry the bottle. To quote directly from the Phiten website…

In nature, titanium is not a soluble material. However, by utilizing the high-intensity Phild Process, Phiten scientists are able to dissolve titanium in water. This creates Aqua-Titanium.

Aqua-Titanium most prominently used in our necklaces and apparel, where the entire fabric is permeated with Aqua-Titanium and emits energy that effectively controls your bio-electric current.

But.. but.. we learnt in chemistry that Titanium is a metallic structure with strong metallic bonds between them due to the strong electrostatic attractions between metal cations and delocalised valence electrons, and hence the bonds are too strong and Titanium is not soluble in water!

Fear not: there is the Phild process. Here is a diagram of how the Phild process works, once again ripped off from the Phiten website. I credit phitenusa.com here in case I get engaged in a lawsuit.

This stabilizes ions.

Wait a minute… This looks like something else!

Ionic lattice of NaCl

So they change it into an ionic lattice, so it can dissolve! I SEE! But wait again… where do the negative ions come from if Ti can only exist as a positive cation?

Hmmmm…..

So they use some high intensity Phild Process in order to make titanium soluble, but actually turn it into titanium ions which are already soluble and can be obtained really easily anyway without the Phild Process, and generate infinite energy to pop negative ions into existence.

Now, that makes sense.

All the theory boggles me, so I threw it to one side. After all, when I finally get my Phiten product and I look cool, nobody will bug me about the hidden processes behind my successful manly transformation, but rather swoon over me 24-7.

Finally, the time came to make my purchase. As I put the necklace on the counter, the register rang: SGD50.

SHIT. I FORGOT TO CONVERT AND I ONLY BROUGHT SGD35.

So I did the coolest thing to get out of this situation. I leaned over the counter and spoke smoothly to the lady cashier, “Oh dear, it seems I do not have enough money with me right now. Fear not, sweetie, I’ll be back soon from the ATM, ready with cash in hand.”

Raising two seductive eyebrows at her, I left the store, and made a few detours to shake off anybody following me, and ran like mad to the bus stop before getting on a bus home. Good thing nobody from the store caught up with me. My cool status was preserved.

When I got home, I decided to pay homage to my dear Biology teacher Mdm Cross, and perform a control experiment using whatever shirts I could find.

Replacing the bottle with my sling bag (with H2 chem prelim booklet 1 in it, so I daresay it’s about the same weight), I proceeded to do the same experiment, only this time, instead of putting a Phiten shirt over my arm, I put my brother’s adidas shorts over it (I hope he did not do anything dirty in it, the contents may energize me and spoil the control).

Once again, it did feel easier to carry it, although I still cannot explain why. I do have a hypothesis on it:  having a light weight pressing down on your arm would take your mind off the other weight on your middle finger and make you perceive it to be lighter. I think it’s too far-fetched though.

Not done with it, I proceeded to place my warcraft book on my arm and repeated the experiment. It felt easier as well.

Conclusion: people should totally pay me SGD50 to wear my warcraft book on their neck.

I admit, there are many, many flaws in my control experiment, notably: there is only one subject, me.

Hence…

I AM GOING TO TAKE THIS EXPERIMENT TO THE STREETS AFTER A’S. WATCH FOR THE EPIC POST WHEN I FINALLY HAUL MY LAZY ASS OUT OF HIBERNATION AFTER A’S TO DO IT.

But I still don’t look cool