Climate Change v Carbon Bitemark

For a start, the climate changed dramatically here in Singapore today, as it does every day. Beautiful morning while E@L hangs around his bedroom getting nothing done, and then E@L ventures to the pool to do, oh about 15mins of laps and then to do 2mins of reading to finish (he put the book down at 1:30am with, he discovers now, only five pages left, doh!) The Gone Away World. This was just after breakfast, say 2pm, (did E@L mention that he is working from home today?) and as soon as the thought of the above activities enters E@L frontal cortex a frackin' major storm hits, blowing leaves everywhere, then gut-wobbling with rumbles from everywhere ( mostly from the sky), cracks and flashes (not talking Club Romeo here, but lightning) and then, with the prominent pattering of large drops that builds to a Beethovian crescendo, down comes deafening torrential rain... For 20 minutes. And the swim slash reading session in the fresh air and sunshine is postponed, yet again.

One of the primary causes of this horrendous shake in the structure of the universe is that E@L is still using an electric toothbrush, c.f. an earlier post on the old blog.

Lately, the Philips Sonicare he purchased at that time (18 months ago, 50% out of warranty) has been playing up. He has worked out that wiping the stem of the brush after each use will prevent that buildup of scary black slime in the recesses of the detachable brush connection which you note with disgust as you take it apart for traveling, but that's not the issue.

It's the switch. It has been intermittently playing up. The beast turns itself off after 10secs or so. The thing won't start, or it won't turn off. Mother of all fracks!

The reason (we are assuming) is that the green rubber "protective" and "waterproof" on-off button has torn and let water into the gap and onto the contacts. (Familiar story? Let us talk about latex failure in general another time...) Check it out.



Passing through BEST-Denki in Vicocity yesterday (not working from home), E@L noticed the electric toothbrush display. The Philips range was there, as per. And in prominent place was our model.

E@L picked it up. He had noticed something (in itself, cause for celebration). The rubber button was torn . It looked exactly the same as E@L's, the same depressed defect at the top, the same dark shadow in the hollows of the rent (cause for weeping and... wait for it... gnashing of teeth)!

"Yes," said the sales, clerk coming up. "That model does that all the time [wtf!]. Our new model [$30 more expensive] has a substantially improved button. See, this one sits outside the casing so it won't wear. However, it has a new form of brush attachment, so your old brushes won't fit."

"Of course they won't. Progress. Great, thanks," says E@L, and heads to the nearest Guardian or Watson's to grab some manually driven nylon (?- complete guess) bristles from OralB.

Sigh.

E@L