Culture Shock: Seriously??? #1

So my personal definition of culture shock is this:

When something from a certain culture, that in any other circumstance may be fine or normal, occurs at such a random or alarming rate it’s enough to push you over the edge.

So I’ve only been here about three weeks, but already I’ve lost my cool on this. Especially since we’ve moved into a new apartment I CANNOT for the life of me plug anything in. Two things you will commonly see in this country.

#1: Lamps, appliances, anything electrical just sitting there not plugged in. You go to turn on a lamp, oh wait, you can’t. It’s not plugged in. You go to plug it in, oh wait, you can’t. The plug size of the lamp does not fit the plug size of the outlet in the wall.

#2: Anything plugged in has to have an adapter. It doesn’t matter if what you have has an American plug, a European plug, or even in some cases a plug from Great Britain. They all have to fit into an adapter in order to plug into the wall. I find that most outlets are fitted with a standard European outlet-2 small circular holes. So why is it so hard to make appliances, fans, lamps, etc have the same?? Most of these things have 2 small circular prongs, but not the same kind of small! So you have to plug them into an adapter.

It’s been enough to nearly push me over the edge. Let me give you an example of what I do on a daily basis. For instance, tonight: It’s hot, it’s about 10pm here and my house needs to cool down. So I turn on the swamp cooler because that air is cooler than the air outside. My fan is currently on the windowsill bringing in air from outside. I now want to move my fan to the other side of the room to bring in the cool swamp cooler air. I first go out and find the nearest outlet (NEVER in a convenient location). I pick up my fan and realize the prongs on my fan do not match the outlet I have found. But then I also realize that my cord is not long enough (it NEVER is). Now I go and get my power strip (ghetto thing that sparks every time I plug something in…and it can only be someTHING because more than one thing will burn it up. I realize that this power strip has completely different electrical prongs as my fan. Not to worry, I have an adapter! So I scrounge for my adapter and carry it and my power strip to the “nearest” outlet. Luckily my power strip is fit with a row of outlets that will fit any kind of plug because to put an adapter on that would just be ridiculous! So now my power cord is plugged in, fan plugged in (I managed to not get shocked) and swamp cooler air is successfully blowing into my room.

Now don’t get me started on when I go to plug in the hot water pot to heat up my coffee water in the morning…..