Mosquitoes (&Voltage) 101
Let me take you back to my visit to the travel clinic in Los Angeles. The nurse explained that I had a choice whether or not to take malaria pills and get the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine. After a long debate with anyone who would listen I decided to take the pills and get vaccinated even though I swore that I would avoid mosquito bites at all cost.
As it turns out, Indian mosquitoes love me. The apartment building where I am staying sits right on a lake and often there are mosquitoes buzzing around in the building. I take precautions at night by covering myself in bug spray and wearing long sleeves and pants. Each morning I wake up with a few new bites, but nothing could prepare me for what happened on Tuesday morning.
I woke up for work on Tuesday and looked in the mirror to find many bites all over my face. I decided that it was time to take further action. When I got home from work and a work function at 10:00pm, I stopped by the lobby and asked them for a mosquito bat. They look like tennis rackets and electrocute mosquitoes. It was a very long day of work and I wanted to be able to rid my room of my roommates before I fell asleep. Much to my dismay, I went upstairs and found mosquitoes on my pillows.
I called downstairs (now 10:30pm) to ask if someone could please come help me change my sheets and bring a mosquito plug for near my bed. After half an hour a nice man showed up with new pillow cases and an exterminator sprayed the room. I am not sure whether it was the mosquito spray or the man, but my apartment smelled less than ideal. I decided to plug in the air purifier machine that Patrick got as part of my birthday gift to freshen up the room. It is the size of a toaster and is essentially a small fan and releases some light, refreshing scent. After unwrapping it and plugging it in, I went into the living room and sat down on the couch to finally eat some dinner.
The next thing I know there is a cloud of white chemical smoke coming from my room and the purifier (it's the size of a toaster) was smoldering. Luckily, I caught it right when it started and unplugged it and the fire went out within a few seconds. In a panic I called downstairs to tell them that my room was full of smoke and to come help me air it out. I was on the phone with Patrick laugh/crying out of exhaustion and panic explaining what was going on because it was like out of a movie when it got better...
Never did I expect to have 10 men from the apartment building come into my apartment at 11:30 pm on a Tuesday night with fire extinguishers (luckily they were not necessary) yelling "fire!" in Hindi. I assured them that the VERY SMALL electrical fire was out. They explained to me that even though the plugs in the wall accept American plugs, some things need voltage conversion. I gave them the advice that they should post that somewhere or provide a converter upon check in. In retrospect, I probably should have looked that up, but after a long day at work and inhaling so much bug spray I'm lucky I was able to keep my eyes open.
They took away the purifier and propped open my door with a table. I joked that this must happen all the time, to which one man answered without a smile "This is the first time." Nothing was damaged except the purifier and my pride. I asked to see if they had any other rooms open for me to sleep in that night while my room aired out, but they were completely booked! My room smelled so badly that I opened the door and sat in the hallway until 3:30am when I finally decided to sleep on the couch.
The upside to this story is that I now know that the mosquito plug in keeps them away and that I need to buy a voltage converter. The hilariously sad part of this story is that the front desk now giggles when I walk by in the mornings. Hopefully, I can be back in their good graces by baking some cookies over the weekend as a thank you for their help :)
A lesson learned in both mosquitoes and voltage, for sure.