MegDesk

Last weekend Lucas and I went to the annual Elektrofil electronics fair, and I made a major new purchase: A hair dryer.

I’m not sure if it says more about my frugal nature or my disinterest in fashion and beauty, but since moving overseas nearly five years ago, I’ve been using a little dual-voltage travel dryer that I bought at Target shortly before the move to China. When it’s switched over to 220-volt, it only has one setting, and it has a US plug that needs to be adapted to our European outlets. Originally it had one of those polarized US plugs, where one prong is wider than the other. However, since the polarized prong wouldn’t fit into our plug adapters, at some point we took a file and actually filed the prong down to standard size. Later, since the plug in the bathroom faces straight down, we also had to squeeze the prongs together to make the plug tight enough to stay in the adapter.

You would think that such a small purchase wouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow it carries a sense of permanence. I don’t really know why, but as long as I keep using the travel dryer, this is clearly a short-term situation. Especially since it’s a “travel” hair dryer, it makes me feel like we could just pick up and travel somewhere else.

In the last few months the plug has started coming loose again, and every morning I have to readjust it more than once when it loses contact and the power cuts out. When I could no longer find a jury-rigged solution that lasted more than a few minutes, I decided that the time had finally come to bite the bullet.

Luckily, the timing of Elektrofil was perfect, and I was able to buy a new 220-V hair dryer at a significant discount. So if we do suddenly pick up and move, it won’t be a huge loss!

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