A while back Slickdeals pushed a deal — Sony’s noise canceling earbuds on eBay for just $69.9… Couldn’t resist. Bought one, and picked up two more for a coworker and Jipiss. In the end it arrived with no customs fee, but it was overweight, so shipping cost 10 extra yuan — which I magnanimously passed on to Jipiss and made him pay.

Yes, it’s me again with another filler post. Today it’s two kinds of Mi Home instant noodles and one drink. I actually bought these to pad out an order, and before I knew it I’d padded my way through a hundred yuan. Let’s start with Mi Home’s tomato egg noodles… the reviews online are pretty high.

I’d been using the Moto 360 2nd, but it had been nearly two years, so I figured it was time for a change. Then the LG Watch Sports came out, and I saw you couldn’t swap the strap, so I didn’t buy it. Half a year went by and there was still nothing I liked. I figured, fine, if I can’t change the strap, then I just won’t change it… When I went to order the LG Watch Sports on Google Play, the titanium version was out of stock, of course. Then one night I refreshed out of boredom and there it was. Ordered it right away, and it turned out I’d picked the wrong payment method and paid $16 extra in shipping, even though the Google Play Store page said free shipping. I was worried it’d sell out so I didn’t look closely. The next day I saw the extra charge and asked Google for a refund. They said no… So I said, fine, I’ll return it and order again. They said it had been more than two hours, so no returns… I’ve got a few choice words for them that I’ll keep to myself. So I chalked it up as a lesson learned. The surprise was that when it arrived via a forwarding service, there was no customs duty… I looked, and the customs declaration listed the thing as an “electronic watch.” Clever. I wonder if next time I forward a phone they could write “cordless telephone”…

Buying this was pure impulse — I was ordering one for someone else, saw the color and really liked it, it’s the purple I like, so I grabbed one for myself too. After ordering on the official site, I found out they also have a Taobao flagship store. And with the official site order, you don’t even know when the hell it’ll arrive, seriously… Later I asked the official staff on Weibo, and they said the official site is the same as Taobao, nothing to worry about. The pen supports engraving, but only in English. I got plumlis engraved on it… because I really couldn’t think of anything else. kiritanihaha is too long, hentai is too short. When it arrived I was struck by how it’s a proper China-market version — the packaging is way better than the blue Alstar I bought on Taobao.

I don’t remember where I read it, but at least one line stuck with me as pretty reasonable. “A lot of people gradually realize that their devices — everything except Apple — have almost all been replaced by Xiaomi.” I don’t use Apple, but looking back, there’s quite a bit of Xiaomi around me too. Mi Band, Redmi phone, Mi Power Bank, Mi batteries, Mi Piston earphones, Mi power strip, and… a Mi latex pillow.

Key Smart is a crowdfunding project from the evil empire of America. What it does is use a two-steel-plate module to conveniently organize your keyring. When I bought it, the official site still had a 30% OFF discount, but there are a few things I need to tell anyone who comes after me: This thing ships from the US by surface mail, which means it’ll probably take 20–30 days to reach China. You absolutely must write the address in pinyin, not Chinese characters. If you write it in Chinese, it won’t arrive — at least, there’s no precedent of anyone receiving one that way. If too many of your keys have plastic heads, this thing probably isn’t for you. For official accessories, I’d suggest buying just one of the hanging clips. The rest are a rip-off. That USB drive — Kingston on JD has cheaper ones. So what arrived was this envelope:

Blue Ever Blue, BEB for short — I’d never heard of this company’s earphones. I was just curious and bored, saw they were running a demo listening program on Hi-PDA, so I grabbed a pair to check out. The model I got is the BEB X1001. The packaging feels a bit cheap — just a carrying case and the earphones inside, with spare rubber tips in the case. Honestly, for earphones, packaging doesn’t tell you much. I’ve seen worse. What matters is the sound, so I couldn’t wait to plug the BEB into a Sony D100 and start listening. Two minutes later I put them down and shook my head. How to put it. Muddy, muffled, boomy. Those are the three words I can use for these earphones. I’ve never bought into the whole earphone burn-in thing, but considering these were sent out for demo purposes, surely they wouldn’t be this bad out of the box, so I figured I’d do what people say and plugged them into the D100 to burn in… After nearly 48 hours, I listened again…