Sad sign by the electricity board. The child is using an oil lamp.
I don’t understand the plug points here, or in the subcontinent for that matter. There are like three different types of connection and it is perfectly normal for adults to being shoving pens, keys and sticks inside. Furthermore, the plug points have an off switch and then there is often another on/off switch somewhere in the room. If you don’t have the right plug you need an adapter. This creates like five points of failure in the simple task of charging one’s laptop. I don’t get it.
The Points
There are, to my knowledge, three different plug points one could find in a wall. Square, round and wide-round, which I think is for fridges and stuff. In addition, there is the local variants of round with pencil permanently shoved inside, rendering it a two pronged connection.
Then there are like four types of plugs. Three-prong round, three-prong square, two-prong round and American style square but straight. In order to get a charge you have to match these to whatever plug points are in the room. You can use any accessories you want, keys, pencils, children’s fingers. Grown men in conference rooms do not frown upon this. Indeed, it is quite normal to see someone in business attire bent over, furiously jamming and jiggling a pen into a wall socket to start a presentation.
Multi-Plugs
The one solution to this is a multi-plug, a cheap adaptor you can get at almost any hardware kade. Of course, round and square multi-plugs are different, so you need two. I have purchased tens of multi-plugs in my lifetime and lost them all. They are like socks, they just disappear. Somewhere underground there is a troll with lots of electricity and warm feet.
Many is the time I would have given my kingdom for a multi-plug yet no one ever seems to have one. Or the right one. Or perhaps they’re worried about me stealing it, which I often inadvertently do. Seeing as this thing is cheap it is beyond me why they don’t build them into the walls.
Electricity Itself
Assuming, however, you can complete the mating dance to pair male and female, the electricity still may not work. You have to flip the on/off switch on the plug itself. That is usually not a problem and probably makes sense in terms of saving leaky power. The rub is that the power to a particular plug is often linked to a switch across the room. Or out of the room. Sometimes you need two people, one to stand by the thing and another to flip through the switches. It is a bit troublesome.
Then, of course, in any particular room there are usually only two or three plug points. In a hotel room you’re lucky to get one. This will already have a multi-plug connected to an extension cord connected to, possibly, another extension cord. This means you can get like 18 appliances running off one socket all in a precarious daisy-chain that collapses into darkness when you try to adjust it. Plus the socket can simply melt, as I have done repeatedly, and kept moving. And then the electricity can go out all together, though that happens less and less.
Which is all to say, it’s hard to get a charge.
Great post. The plugs are the old British ones (three pin round), the new Europena ones (square three pin) plus the odd American socket.
What anyone in Sri Lanka should always have (and the one thing I always forget to buy) is a universal adapter.
As far as I know, Europe’s got round two-pin plugs.
I’m sorry, but coming from a fan of your blog in general, this is the stupidest post you’ve ever made. Most (post 1975) electrical installations, provided properly done (certainly not universal in the island) by your post provide 5 points of failure when an unsuspecting child or moron tries to kill themselves jamming stuff into the plug. Trust me- I was one of those morons when I was around 4, but am still around to tell the tale because of this.
In North America, there is almost NO safety built in to normal household electrics (the only saving grace being that a 120v shock at 15 amps is less likely to kill you than Sri Lanka’s 230-4o V at 5, 13 or 15 amps). North American outlets don’t have switches on them, don’t have the earth pin facing up (the proper direction to prevent improperly plugged in plugs from zapping you when you touch them or when a coat hanger falls on the prongs), don’t have an additional safety shield inside preventing unearthed plugs being poked in (the reason we must stick pens in to use the socket) and their circuit breakers (“fuses”) are more to prevent power surges from knocking out your equipment than prevent you from being killed by an accidental zap. Not only that, but high current draw appliances can’t really run on the same phase as the rest of the household, since their power often sags so much it knocks everything out. They then have to switch to “our” style 240v anyway!
Sri Lanka’s electrical system is light years ahead of that in the US (but then, so is most of the world’s). I guess one day the US will finally have to suck it up, when China no longer wants to build equipment that functions on 120v, and decide that universal voltage transformers are just not worth the extra cost any more.
Not every thing in SL should be framed as
“sucks” (which is what I feel this post suggests) just because you don’t understand it, or the room was weirdly wired by an Electrician who didn’t really know how housewiring works.