Saturday, July 12, 2008

What's in a name?

Today I bought water treatment system for our water pool. Equipped with all the information I needed (thanks to Marlyn's research work), I walked into the Swimming pool supplies store and told the guy at the counter that I wanted H2O2 water treatment kit. The guy looked at me disappointed and told me that they dont have it. I was really sad to hear that. But I did not give up and tried again, "Do you have anything that does not have chlorine for water treatement?"
This time the guy look happier and promptly took me to the shelf lined with different bottles labeled as Algcide, Sanitizer and Algistat, Oxidiser et al.
This was 'out of syllabus' becos Marlyn never mentioned anything about algicide and algistat and what the hell was an oxidiser?
So I asked the guy, " so for the small pool that I have, what should I buy?"
He said " you need algicide to kill the algae and oxidiser to oxidise the debri" or something to that effect.
I translated that in my mind as " you need to spend $$s and you need to spend more $$s"
And Marlyn's advice was ringing loud and clear in my mind and I was not ready to give up and buy something that had was not environmental friendly, non toxic, organic, green etc.
So I just repeated whatever I had read about H2O2. I said to guy," This H2O2 is supposed to be H2O and extra O for oxyzen".
Very hesitantly this guy says, "But H2O is water. Right?"
I was rolling my eyes in my mind (Sylvia style) and was like, " Yes, ofcourse. so that is what hydrogen peroxide does is that it turns into water."
At that moment, the guy jumped up and said, " Oh, that is what this is!!"
Then he said, "The active ingredient for this solution is Hydrogen Peroxide." and it was!
So we had landed with the right stuff but took a longer route. but yeah whats in the name?

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