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Let's talk voltage for a minute.
There's no possible way I can begin any bit about my coming to
the UK without addressing this very important topic, first and foremost.
I'm leaving for England in a few days. I'll be there for a month.
L'amour will bring me there, but that's another story in itself.
I'll admit that I'm your stereotypical American-I shudder at the
thought of the small soft drinks without refills in the UK almost
as much as I cringe when I have to double every pound price to figure
it out in dollars.
And don't you know that you're the one driving on the wrong side
of the road?
However, there is nothing that baffles me more than non-American
voltage.
When I was in the UK and continental Europe in 2001, my cousin
and I had this brilliant idea to buy a hairdryer in the U.S. that
was dual voltage, but of course, not to change the voltage button
when we got to the UK.
This led to a hairdryer possessed which eventually climaxed to
a loud glass-shattering "crack" as a grand finale. We
were in Europe for a month without a hairdryer, and this really
did nothing for our plan to land ourselves some foreign hunks on
the way.
After all, Jewish girls are not known for hair that dries into
anything even remotely attractive if left to its own devices.
A few years after that trip, in New York City where I live now,
I met an English guy. Despite my ethnocentric nature and my inability
to understand a word he said for at least the first four months
we knew each other, he decided he wanted to be my boyfriend.
This led to my first visit to his house in England.
I learned quickly that blowing out the power to half of your boyfriend's
house because you need to charge your cell phone (which obviously
doesn't get service in the UK anyway) is probably not the best way
to impress his parents.
See, if I had only thought to look at my charger and see that anything
more than 110 volts was bad news, I could have saved myself a whole
lot of embarrassment and ultimately, the $25 I had to spend on a
new charger when I got home from that trip.
So, as I peer at my half-packed bag and an assortment of adapters
and converters, I can only hope that the four times I called DELL
to ask if my laptop would blow out on 220 volts (even though it's
printed right on the power cord that it can handle that much and
then some) and the desperate search for grounded adaptors wasn't
in vain.
But y'all better get your flashlights and batteries ready, just
in case.
Lauren
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