light up

It's far too hot to do anything except watch the Australian cricket team drag our national identity (as well as good old fashioned manners) into the dirt. Except the cricket doesn't start for another few days, so I have to content myself with watching the dog chase her tail, or reading the new Walter Moers novel The Alchemaster's Apprentice (which is awesome).

Oh, and I'm cursing this stupid lamp I bought from Ikea. I shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but the lure of Swedish sensibility, combined with the deep desire to get out of a warehouse that is better organised than I will ever be, and full of people I never want to see again forced me into buying the dumbest lamp ever.

The lamp is solar powered.

On the surface, this is a very good idea. My new watch is solar powered - an hour of sunlight keeps it going for 6 months, and because it gets exposure to light every day it will never stop! I must have been thinking of that when I bought this wretched lamp.

I've forgotten what cutesy name the lamp has, but I've renamed it. LameLamp. To begin with, you have to remove the solar cell and place it in direct sunlight for at least 9 hours, preferrably 12. I decided I would leave it on my veranda for two days straight, thinking that would mean sunlight from about 5.30am to 7.30pm. Doubled, that's about 21 hours.

9 hours gets you 3 hours of lamp time, from the LameLamp. 3 nines are 21, so that should give you about 9 hours, right? (My maths skills are hazy) WRONG.

ONE HOUR. THIRTY MINUTES. The LameLamp begins to dim.
ONE HOUR. FIFTY MINTUES. The LameLamp dims further.
TWO HOURS. LameLamp goes out.

Poor little LameLamp.

Clearly I expected too much, as I so often do. I could take the LameLamp back, but I feel sorry for it. I don't really use my desk that much (preferring to do most of my work at the UNSW Library, where the lights are powered by the souls of the Engineering students, apparently), so as long as I remember to put the solar cell in the sunlight in the morning, we should be ok.

Ha.


Give it a month, and I'll be posting about how my room has no lights because I keep forgetting to charge my LameLamp.


x



Remember my mention of continued employment? This turned out to be a phallacy, a falsehood, a misconception. I am unemployed as of next Sunday. While this is frustrating, I'm not worried. Not yet, anyway.

Mostly I'm looking forward to not hearing Susan Boyle ever again.