Pureit - daily survival guide to the occasional bouts of stomach flu in Jakarta

This morning, while scanning the latest news on Google, I read with interest, this article on TODAYonline about some members of the Singaporean football team got hit by gastroenteritis, while in town for SEA Games. Why the interest? Because it's one heck of a common problem here in Jakarta. So common that last night during a social dinner with friends and friends of friends, we had to excused ourselves earlier because Hubs was recovering from one and another guy was still suffering from the ill-effects of a recent episode.

I remember in the early days when I was commuting to Jakarta to see Hubs, he was always mindful that I don't drink tap water, let alone cooled boiled tap water. Whenever we eat out, we made sure to order bottled mineral water or hot drinks. And at home, we only use tap water for normal washing/rinsing i.e. very short contact time with the food, but for soaking of vege and cooking, mineral water it is from the Aqua Galon water dispenser. Reason being - the few times Hubs or I, soaked or cooked with tap water, we noticed that we always suffer from some stomach discomfort in the form of stomach gases and bloatedness. And of course the mild diarrhea. Not a full gastroenteritis, but let's not take any chances, shall we?

I came across this portable water filtration system called Pureit by Unilever, first on a telly while vacationing in Bali and later in a hypermart in Jakarta. Having done some reading about the product online and tested the water sample with no untoward effect, I told Hubs "let's get one for the home" because I sorta feel sacrilegious to be using mineral water ALL the time to cook. I mean there are some parts of the world where having continuous water supply is a problem and here we are using mineral water to cook?! Bottomline, my point is if I can use quality tap water to boil/cook, let's do that and leave the mineral water for drinking.

We finally got ours at Lotte Mart in Gandaria @ Rp 499,000, a relatively inexpensive investment (I dare say!) to get quality filtered tap water compared to fixing expensive, complicated filtration devices to the main water inlet to our condo. The unit was easy to set up (pretty much like you would set up a traditional mineral water pot) and involves a few cycles of filling up with tap water and drain it off before the water is finally good for use. And so far, so good! :)