The reason, aside from sheer laziness, that I haven't updated in what seems like eons is that I managed to fry both my ipad charger and my universal plug adapter in one go. The technology-frying venue? A hostel five miles from the nearest small rural town, and hours from any major technology-selling city. I was also there for three days. (Sad trombone/trumpet/whatever-instrument-that-is noise.) I had also pre-paid for three days of wireless internet access on a device that no longer worked. (Sad noise again.)
So my first order of business this morning in Oxford was amending that situation. I needed an ipad cord and a plug adapter, and I figured in a university city like Oxford it would not be overly difficult to find either.
I started by asking at the hostel. Sometimes hostels will have plug adapters, seeing as their client base consists almost entirely of poorly-prepared foreign tourists. No luck. The guy at reception even checked the lost and found for me to see if I could snag somebody else's abandoned power adapter, but alas, it was not to be. So I did some googling on the hostel's computer and then set off.
My research, however, had not extended to getting directions to the possible vendors of said items. So after I hit the Staples that was literally steps down the street from the hostel, the universe was like, "Should have prepared more, suckaaaa! Enjoy wandering around the least picturesque parts of Oxford!"
I went to the train station, as I remembered seeing plug adapters in stores at other stations. As luck would have it, the convenience store at the station--the one selling magazines and candy and generic Oxford souvenirs--had a universal plug adapter. I bought it and tore that sucker open only to realize that it was converting British plugs to every other type of plug in the world, when what I needed was the EXACT OPPOSITE of that. This led me to two (very legitimate, I think) questions:
1. How can one bill such a product as a "universal adapter" when it clearly only works for people whose universe happens to be based in the UK? I mean, I know "the sun never sets on the British empire" and all that, but "universal" and "convenient for British people" are really, really not the same thing. Down with all remaining vestiges of imperialism!
2. Why, why, WHY would you need to buy an adapter for OTHER COUNTRIES in Oxford? If you are in Oxford or traveling through Oxford, odds are pretty good that you are going to be in the UK for the foreseeable future, as it is not a border town (the UK has no border towns, it's an island, guys!), nor does it have an international airport. Is Old Joe Englishman just wandering through the train station one day like, "Dum diddly dum, must kill some time in Oxford before my train to another equally British town. Maybe I should buy a plug adapter so all my electronics will work in Africa, Asia, and/or North and South America! It never hurts to be prepared, cheerio!"
So I spent £19.99 (that's like $35 for those of you keeping score at home) for a plug adapter that was literally just as useless as the one it was meant to replace. In fact, it turned out to be EVEN MORE USELESS (more on that in a sec). So I was quite unhappy. I chucked the packaging in a bin in a manner so perturbed that it clearly marked me out as an Ugly American (TM) and not a Polite, Proper Brit. Then I stalked off down Botley Road because there was an electronics store located at 3 Botley Road Retail Park. In my mind, this meant that the retail park would be located at 3 Botley Road. The British had another idea and said retail park was nowhere to be found. So I stomped back up the street in search of the Westgate Shopping Center, where an Apple dealer was located, thinking that maybe I could at least replace the ipad cord.
And then I had a horrible thought: what if ipad minis weren't in wide release in the UK yet? What if the cord just wasn't sold overseas?
This trip is sucking, I thought. I am so tired of being a grown-up and having to deal with all the--my mom reads this, so I'll censor--muddyfuddling poo life throws at me. One day with no problems! One day! That's all I ask!
The adult, logical part of my brain stepped in and tried to smooth things over: "It's okay. Stop and think: you're in Europe on a backpacking trip for a month. Do you know how many people would kill to have an experience like this? Are you seriously going to let a dead ipad and a rapidly depleting camera battery ruin everything? Just because you can't take a million pictures everywhere you go doesn't mean you've seen or experienced it any less."
Shut up. What are you, my mom?!
"Hey now, there's no call for that. Your mom is a lovely lady and you didn't get her anything for Mother's Day AND it's her and Dad's anniversary today and what have you done? NOTHING.* You are not winning the Daughter of the Year Award, stop lashing out."
I'VE GOT OTHER STUFF ON MY MIND, OKAY?! LEAVE ME ALONE!
It was an unpleasant walk down Park End Street because I was giving myself the silent treatment, which was obviously awkward. But I did manage to locate the Westgate Shopping Centre on a bus station "You Are Here" map, so there was that.
Made it to the shopping center (CENTRE, sorry, Great Britain) and was immediately shown an ipad mini cord exactly like the one I needed. Sweet Jesus in heaven, a miracle! While I was there I asked the salesguy where I might find a universal plug adapter. He recommended Argos, a store across the street, and, failing that, Curry PC World in the shopping center--CENTRE!
That being settled, I went into Primark, the discount department store across the mall corridor, and engaged in some serious retail therapy. Let it be known that I generally despise clothes shopping. You can get about ten minutes of browsing out of me before I'm like, "Take me either to food or a bookstore, 'cause I ain't havin' no more of this. Uh-uh." (I get sassy when presented with the prospect of an afternoon spent among clothes racks.)
However, today I walked into Primark and was like, That's blue. I'll take it! This one has side cut-outs, which will undoubtedly not flatter my body type. I'll take it! This one isn't even the right size. I'LL TAKE IT!
I filled up a bag with a LOT of clothes and then actually tried them on, where cold logic prevailed: "Sweetheart, this makes everything about you look saggy and sad. I don't care if you like the pattern, you cannot buy that."
Even so, I spent £55 ($90...eek) on three dresses, a pair of pants, a shirt, a comb (I lost mine), hair elastics (I'm down to one really stretched-out one), novelty bobby pins, a blingy necklace, and a mud mask in a hermetically sealed pouch. You know how people say you should never grocery shop when you're hungry? You should never go clothes shopping when your entire wardrobe for the past month has consisted of the same three outfits worn over and over, sometimes for days in a row. (Yep, that's right, I've officially become THAT person. Sometimes I don't feel like digging around in my backpack for a clean top, so I just wear the one I wore yesterday or, if I'm feeling particularly lazy, I just put a bra on under my pajama top. Voila! Dressed and out the door in five minutes!)
Primark cheered me up (I mean, the deals! £55 for all that stuff?! What a savvy shopper!), so I headed over to Argos feeling confident, only to have my bubble of happiness punctured by the lady behind the counter. Upon examining the dead adapter I'd lugged along as a visual aid, she said, "No, I've never seen anything that looks like that. Ever." (Fab.) So off to Curry's PC World in the OTHER mall in the middle of downtown Oxford.
I had much more luck here; although I was doubtful about the adapter that was shown to me, as it did not have any clear-cut spot for American plug prongs, the salesguy assured me that American plugs would fit into the holes on the adapter. "I've sold millions of these to millions of people," he said, which seemed like a bit of an overstatement but I just rolled with it because MY ICKY ERRANDS WERE DONE AND NOW I COULD SIGHTSEE IN OXFORD!
I was so excited about this that I accidentally shoplifted two postcards from a knick-knack store down the street. I made it all the way to High Street before I noticed and walked shamefacedly back, expecting every second to be tackled by a stereotype of a British bobby and thrown into British jail (GAOL, sorry Brits, I'm the worst) where, with any luck, I would at least be given a free cup of Earl Grey. But once I'd paid my £1.40 (quite the heist I'd pulled off there) my day remained mostly crisis-free. Until...
Until I got back and tried to plug my camera charger into the adapter. It wouldn't go in.
It'll be kind of hard to describe, but I'll give it a go. The actual slots in the plug adapter are, for reasons unknown to me, in-set into the design of the device. Imagine the adapter in the shape of a Roman arena (ie, the Colesseum), and the slots are at the lowest part in the middle where Russell Crowe yells "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"
I was not amused, as it turns out, because my camera battery charger does not have, like most appliances, a plug attached to a cord that will easily fit within the walls of the arena. Instead, the prongs stick straight out from the back of the rectangular charger, and the rectangle shape was preventing the prongs from reaching far enough to connect in. It was the Three Stooges "poke-in-the-eyes" gag but without any of the amusement that usually accompanies physical comedy.
Since my camera charger was the only device for which I needed the adapter, I was pretty unhappy about this. (All my Apple devices can be charged at a computer.) But then a stroke of genius combined with a stroke of luck.
My old universal adapter, the one that I murdered, had a bunch of interlocking pieces that could be used in various combinations depending on what country you were in and where your electronic item was from. (It, unlike the adapter I got at the train station, was truly universal. Just saying.) By a stroke of luck, the American-to-European plug piece had not been in the adapter at the time of the murder, so it presumably still worked. And the charger I'd just bought had a spot for Euro plugs. Success!
And now I'm sitting at the hostel's PC charging my ipad (it does not like the new cord very much, as it insists that it is "Not Charging" when it, in fact, is), and all is right with the world--for now, anyway. I'm sure that tomorrow will bring some new challenge and all I can say is, "Universe,
*HAPPY 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, MOM AND DAD!!!!!
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