use at your own risk

I have decided that should I determine that I absolutely must have a hairdryer here, I will just have to buy one. The other day when I tried using my converter with the thing the inside of the converter became very much illuminated, which made me wonder if I had created a mini-fire. Obviously, I immediately remedied the situation by pulling it out of the socket and there was no flame to be found, but there is no way in heck I’m trying that again. I also had a close call with my laptop when plugging it into a power strip at the office. Though it’s a plug from here and doesn’t need a converter, I still managed to produce a small batch of fireworks. That strip was behind Dulcie’s desk. When I was given one of my own to use, one day I plugged it in and seriously blew a small hole in the cord.

Then, there’s the water heater immersion device. Because our water refuses to come out of the shower head and we have no hot water to speak of, the Foundation provided us with a metal coil thingamajig that I literally place in a plastic bucket full of water (careful not to let it touch the sides, else they would melt), plug in, leave it for 10 minutes, unplug it, then pull it out with – voila – hot water. Seems that these contraptions are quite prevalent here, but clearly they’re dangerous and there is no way I trust myself with one of those babies.

Then again, it seems that I do not have to worry about this electricity problem all too often as our power (current, if you want anyone in India to understand you) is out ALL THE TIME. It goes out around 5:30 am in our apartment, just before I get up at 6. It might come on during the day at some points, though I’m not home to know. Today I stopped home at 2 to try to do some work (because it was out at the office and my laptop was dead) but the power was still out. It actually came back on in the office this afternoon which is highly, highly unusual, but when I got home at 6:30pm-ish it was still off here. It came on for a few hours and then went off at about 9pm. Eating refrigerated goods around here is a risky business, but a risk I’m willing to take (apparently… at least until I get sick again, I guess).