There are some household items that just make life liveable, aren’t there? I wouldn’t be without my kettle, for instance, and a nice bedside lamp for reading in the evening is essential. These items of course require a little help from that very useful invention (or maybe discovery) of mankind – electricity.
The problem is, while shops fill up their shelves with these convenient items, it appears that someone’s forgetting to tell the manufacturers how to connect them to the supply of electricity. More specifically, what type of plug sockets to fit. So they went ahead and made it up for themselves.
When I first moved to the UAE , I was relieved to discover that the plug sockets in houses are the same as sockets back in the UK – no need to ditch the hairdryer after all. But several months later my hairdryer frazzled and it was time to trade it in for a brand new one.  So naturally I headed to a supermarket to pick up a new hairdryer.  Everything looked and sounded good on the box, so handing over my dirhams, I bought my hairdryer. And that was that.  Or so I thought. It was only after I needed to use it the next day –wet hair waiting to be blown dry – that I discovered my new hairdryer’s fatal flaw. Instead of the usual three pins, I stared bewildered at the plug and its shiny two-pins that were definitely not going to fit in the socket in the wall.
Damp hair in tow, I went back to the shop with the hairdryer. Surely there must be some mistake I ask? Was it shipped in from another country by accident? Apparently not. In fact, after inspecting all the other hairdryer options with the rather bemused shop assistant, I learnt that the funny-looking plugs are pretty much standard. I finally found one with three pins – a travel hairdryer so small that it would take a good half an hour to just dry my fringe.
I left the shop, hairdryer-less and annoyed. Trying another store proved no better – and still got a bemused response from the sales assistant. Why didn’t I just buy an adapter, came the ‘helpful’ advice to my plug-related dilemma. With a lot of willpower I bit my tongue to resist retorting that it might just prove more useful to actually have plugs that fit the standard types in my flat.
Defeated, I sought out an adapter, and went back for the original hairdryer.
Several adapters later, I’m still perplexed about how someone can miscount pins on a plug.
When my hairdryer plug doesn’t wobble precariously around in the adapter socket, or emit angry sparks and hisses, my hair dries just fine. But I suspect it would be a whole lot safer – not to mention faster -if I didn’t have to replace the zapped-out adapter every few weeks, or re-plug it in when it falls out of the socket.
I’m starting to think it might just be easier stepping out into the sunshine and let my hair dry. It’s free, and no-one has to play pick-a-plug to get it to work ...
[writer] Amelia Jane



[Originally published in Abu Dhabi Week vol 2 issue 18]