by Fern Shaw | Mar 26, 2014 | Health and Hydration, water cooler, Water Coolers
I know, I know, I know. I do carry on (and on and on) about how very crucial water is, and I blog about it from every conceivable and (some rather inconceivable) perspectives, but the fact is – it is.
Putting this all into perspective:
Apparently a water pipe burst near my hoos the other day. Turned on the tap to wash the dishes and all I got was this rather impressive gurgling and rather scary pipe rattling. Then, my tap turned into a Spitting Cobra of brown muck. Then, nothing. It was the weekend. None of the neighbours had water either. So;
- no water to drink;
- no water to make a cuppa (which was my next task after doing the dishes);
- no water to wash my hands (bit of a clean hands phobic, me);
- no flushing the loo;
- no water to shower with, which meant I grunged my way into work on Monday (don’t imagine it, it was pretty awful);
- no water to give to the animals; never mind considering watering the plants. Just NO WATER.
Of course, for me as a town dweller, worst case scenario was that I hoof it off to a friend or the shops and buy bottled water. Except, then of course, the rather Scottish part of me had an internal whinge about using bottled water to wash my face with – wastage – perish the thought! Also, with it being rather warm down our way at present, I started getting a little precious and thinking about how thirsty I was. I made up scenarios in my head of me classic desert-scene-leopard-crawling down the street, gasping, ‘Water …. waterrr … waterrrrrr!’ then my head lowering , as I sagged into helplessness – fade out. Eventually, I got over myself and realised the impact of having no water had on me, and then it really struck home.
If that was just me without water for a few hours, try, if you can, to imagine what it is like to not only not have water on tap, but no water anywhere near you, for days. I think, then one begins to realise the importance of water from a very different perspective:
- How by you, dear, dear Customer, purchasing your water coolers translating into money meaning that we are able to donate towards charities like The Africa Trust that build life-saving Elephant Pumps;
- Meaning that people’s lives are literally saved and;
- How these contributions can honest to goodness make the difference between life and death and a future filled with that most precious of necessities – hope.
After this little brain-stretching exercise, I truly am going to be a lot less whiny about having no water and how ‘badly’ it affected me.
Perspective – she’s a bit of a meany.
by Fern Shaw | Mar 17, 2014 | Water, water cooler, Water Coolers
I’ve been known to disembowel clocks that tick (not disarm ticking clocks – that I leave to the brave people of the Bomb Squad). I’ve also run around strange houses and tightened taps almost to the point of stripping the thread because I cannot abide what I call ‘Lazy Person Water Torture’. I recently saw an episode of some series where the main protagonist takes a golf club to a dripping tap and then his wife repairs the tap – how’s that for an equal household!
Now you know what to do when it comes to your water cooler having a dripping spigot – you just call us.
In these other instances however, I’m not quite sure what remedy to suggest. Have a gander:
When a truck carrying construction glue collided with a bus in Chengdu City, China, it dowsed the street with its sticky contents. Firefighters tried – unsuccessfully – to remove the glue by diluting it with water guns and some observers even were stuck in it. The adhesive was finally dissolved using chemicals.
In the past few years, honeybees have spilled onto highways in Montana, Canada and California, where 10 million to 16 million angry buzzers responded by stinging firefighters, police and drivers. Honeybee hives are regularly shipped to farms around the country to pollinate crops, since colony collapse disorder has decimated local bee populations.
Apparently, years ago, there was a lot of mackerel transported from Devon and Cornwall to Grimsby in tipping trailers and a few times the locking catches were not strong enough and the loads ended up on the road where the truck drivers parked for their rest. On one occasion a car stopped sharply for no apparent reason and the fish carrying lorry stopped just as quickly and the fishy load came over the lorry and into the car.
While it may not grow on trees, money has flooded public streets on multiple occasions. In 2004, an armoured truck crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike, spilling $2 million in coins. In 2005, another truck caught fire in Alabama, spilling $800,000 in quarters. And in 2008, a driver on his way to the Miami Federal Reserve fatally crashed, spewing $185,000 in nickels.
And, my favourite:
In 2000, millions of the popular LEGO plastic toys went for a swim when a ship hit by a rogue wave dumped a container full of them overboard. The beloved blocks have now bobbed through the Northwest Passage to the shores of Alaska, one scientist calculates.
I have this vision of remote mini communities somewhere in the world who now have brightly coloured homes due to this. But that’s just me.
Perhaps you won’t feel as bad about mistreating your water cooler after reading about these rather epic spills. That said, be nice to your water cooler! They do after all, keep you hydrated rain or shine.
by Fern Shaw | Mar 17, 2014 | Charity, Guest Blog, Water, water cooler, Water Coolers
Help in Hearing, an independent, family-run business in Buckinghamshire, have assisted countless people with their hearing over the past 14 years.
They offer a variety of services from a free hearing test at their hearing clinics as well as a free online hearing test to many hearing-related issues.
They also believe in extending their values through to their Corporate Social Responsibility and through their contract with AquAid in having water coolers, have been donating monthly to The Africa Trust.
In doing so, these donations to The Africa Trust have been used to build fresh drinking water wells in areas in Africa where it is needed most, like in schools and villages.
As a result of these donations, Help in Hearing will be having its very own Elephant Pump built in Africa.
The Elephant Pump is a water well that is a modified version of an age-old Chinese rope pulley system and it is built with the assistance of the people of the area who are then taught how it works and how to repair it using local materials and parts.
This is essential to ensure clean and safe water is part of their daily lives.
We, at AquAid, are looking forward to being able to present Help in Hearing with photos of their very own well in the near future.
by Fern Shaw | Jan 21, 2014 | Health and Hydration, Water
Colour me amazed! I was watching a programme and this info blurb popped up. One of those ‘Did you know?’ thingies. It said that penguins can convert salt water to fresh water.
This led to some serious research – ‘just imagine,’ thought I, ‘there are sufficient penguins that each water drinking person could have their very own penguin water cooler + penguins are rather terrific and always sufficiently well dressed for a night on the town’- bonus!
The facts:
The supraorbital gland is a type of lateral nasal gland found in penguins, which removes sodium chloride from the bloodstream. The gland’s function is similar to that of the kidneys, though it is much more efficient at removing salt, allowing penguins to survive without access to fresh water. Contrary to popular belief, the gland does not directly convert saltwater to freshwater.
Living in saltwater environments would naturally pose a large problem for penguins because the ingestion of saltwater would be detrimental to a penguin’s health. Although penguins do not directly drink water, it is taken in when they engulf prey. As a result, saltwater enters their system and must be effectively excreted. The supraorbital gland has thus enabled the penguins’ survival in such environments due to its water-filtering capability. The penguin excretes the salt by-product as a brine through its bill.
Right then, so perhaps not your very own penguin water cooler, but what about your very own brine producer? No?
Oh, alright then! As you can see from the photo on the right, my pitch to the penguins was not well received – they left in rather a hurry.
As it turns out, there are two bits of good news stemming from this blog.
1) Hopefully you’ve learnt something new (I most certainly have) about nature and the animals in it and;
2) although, sadly, you can’t have your very own penguin water cooler converter you can, of course, contact AquAid for any super-duper water cooler requirements.
Our water coolers don’t smell of fish and don’t leave guano all over your workspace. Bonus.
by Fern Shaw | Jan 16, 2014 | Health and Hydration
I’ve schlubbed my way in from my ‘olidays and am gearing myself up for the AquAid Drink Water Daily Challenge and all of a sardine, it strikes me – what am I going to be drinking out of? I can’t just drink out of any old thing (actually I can, but being a tactile sensitive person, I’m fussy – deal with it), I need something that screams (softly) ‘DRINK FROM ME BECAUSE I’M JUST TOO GORGEOUS NOT TO’ or something thereabouts.
Bearing in mind that despite what the head honcho’s would like, I’m not chained to my desk 24/7, which means that during the hours I’m not in the office drinking from our water cooler, I’m going to need an alternative, thus the great internet search commenced. Great galloping grannies did I come across some doozies, as you will see from the images.
I’m very into glass containers at present; however, I doubt it’s very practical lugging an unusual glass water bottle like the one pictured above just to gain some style cred. Uh-uh.
I did quite like the ‘wrist-bottle’, but being rather co-ordination challenged, it’s likely that seventy percent of the water would end up splashed all over my keyboard, which would pretty much defeat the object of the keeping well hydrated part of the challenge.
Rather like, ‘What differences are noticeable after four weeks of three litres per day?’
‘Well, nothing noticeable on me, mate, but my keyboard’s sprouted a few potatoes’…
I also came across this rather ‘take me to your leader’ type container, very reminiscent of the green creatures from Toy Story, but common sense prevailed, as I’d probably spend more time playing with the water bottle than actually drinking from it.
After exhaustive research, I decided that I’d just use my plain Jane, weather beaten water bottle, because the focus here is drinking the water and seeing the result and not how ‘stylish’ I look while drinking the water.
I have had a little word with the office though and asked them if I can decant the water from the water cooler for after hours, to which they agreed. Good for me! (Initially I did ask if I could borrow the water cooler bottle, but that didn’t get the desired response.)
If you’d like more information about what the AquAid Drink Water Daily Challenge is all about, drop us a line or telephone our HQ, we’d love for you to participate with us – the results can only be good!
