Lesson Learned

This weekend, I finally decided I was going to give my hair a little trim as I haven't had a haircut since I've been here. Granted, I did cut it really short before I left, so I haven't exactly needed one.

I brought my trusty clippers along, and before I plugged them in, I examined the wall socket carefully. You see, my room, in general, has sockets that accomodate 'western' electronics in addition to 'eastern' items. I have not had any problems thus far with using international adapters and shorting any of my items out with the overload of electricty....until now. The current here is 220 volts, as compared to 120 volts in the U.S. The bathroom has two sockets, one that says 120 volts, and also indicates "shavers only", and the other which is at 220 volts. The plug to my clippers was a little large on one side, so I was unable to use the 120 volt socket. Thus, I decided to utilize my international adapter. I plugged the adapter in first, again examining very closely what I was doing, and then plugged the clippers into the adapter. I then thought, "If I just turn them on for a second and they don't appear to be working properly, I'll just shut them back off and try a different method. However, as soon as I hit the "On" switch, the noise of the clippers being overloaded with power was really loud. Then, they just shut off. My initial thought was that maybe they have some override switch to shut-off automatically and that if I waited a little while, I could try a different outlet-one that I knew would work on 120 volt devices-and would just make do.

Result-Not so much; the motor is definitely done. I guess on a positive note at least they didn't catch on fire causing smoke and setting off the fire alarm in the hotel. So, it looks like I will have to actually find a local barber shop to get a cut instead.

On that note, I discussed with the other rotators if they had gotten a haircut yet, and where they had gone. This one guy highly recommended the place he had been going to, and said that it would cost me Rs. 40, or less than $1, and it included a haircut, shave, and massage. That is ridiculously cheap so it makes me a little nervous, but for that price, I think I'm going to have to at least give it a shot.