May 12, 2006

scam or scheme

happy wesak day to all. pretty free this few days. woke up early, went to a 'seminar' together with qi and her grandma. yes, seminar... not temple. temple later.

a brief intro about this seminar

main target audience were the uncles and aunties in the neighbourhood. four seminars a day, being 8am, 1am, 2pm and 7pm session. it is being held in a relatively empty airconditioned shop house without any furniture except for plenty of plastic chairs for the audience. entry fee per person RM1 and each receive a card which is able to change with some free gifts. today the free gifts are 2 dark black kicap per person (yesterday was 3 bottles of ketchup sauce). the company is happy YG house (chinese name being yuan qi yang shen guan which is literally translated as yuan qi health centre) with the logo being the lovely cartoon of an old elderly auntie and uncle. the whole seminar was about a middle age guy talking on a lousy mic that goes off intermittently trying to introduce several products, with their main product being the longan nectar, of which they introduced it to auntie and uncle as royal jelly. Each 1kg bottle is RM 50, and every 3 bottles free 1 small bottle. They also introduce big lousy thermal cooker RM 200 each. Each purchase also earned points and stand a chance for a lucky draw for a 'mystery' gift.

basically, i see this as a very carefully planned marketing scheme to target the housewives, uncles and aunties to buy a product directly from them. sometimes, one would buy because others in the neighbourhood were buying them and were brainwashed to think that the product is relatively cheap, just like some toy craze started among the children from time to time.

the longan nectar

this seems to be a cheap item as it had great creative packaging that makes it look very elegant. but on further investigation on this item, there's lots of fishy points about it.

it does not have any date due.
the manufacturing company 'carasinar sdn bhd' http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/print.cfm?NewsID=32077 had a bad record.
it did not have any meditag
on a different note about traditional medication, here's something from an archive of MMR blog.

"My fear of herbal advocates is that people may not seek proper medical care until things are too late thinking something like Pegaga juice may miraculously cure their dengue.
Please note too that in dengue, herbs or "supplements" which affect platelet function or promote "circulation" may actually increase the tendency to bleed which is already high in dengue patients. They MUST NOT be given to patients with dengue.
These include:
Ginseng products
Gingko
Ling Zhi
Spirulina
Large doses of garlic

I don't know how people can conclude that Pegaga "cures" dengue. Anything given during the tail end of an illness may seem to miraculously cure it. So if I give some mysterious concoction to a dengue patient around the 6th day of illness and the next day the fever subsides, is it correct for me to say I have "cured" the patient of dengue? Come on people. I am sure you have more sense than that...." posted by Palmdoc @ 6:39 AM on Sunday, January 23, 2005

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