August 17, 2005
My London Cylotron
I was iChatting with a friend in the U.S. this morning about my adventures in London, and he was fascinated about my tales of a mysterious oven. He wants pictures, so of course I'm going to put them on my blog site.
So part of Episode III - Living in the U.K. involves figuring out the appliances in my hotel/apartment. The kitchenette has a 2-element hot plate and two strange beasts, one of which I believe is supposed to be a combination oven/microwave and the other is supposed to be a combination washer/dryer. (Picture 1 is of the mysterious oven, which I'm about to describe)
When I first got arrived here (in the South Kensington area of London) I went to the local grocery and, among other things, bought your typical—what we in the States might call—a "T.V." dinner. If I remember it was some sort of a Chicken Curry thing. It didn't look too bad, and I was still jet-lagged and worn out from the trip.
I don't know why I thought this oven thing would be a part microwave, but something in the back of my mind said it was, so I pulled the top off the T.V. dinner curry something platter and started fiddling with the controls. (The controls are on picture #2 of this blog.) I first pressed the top button and set the top dial to what appeared to be 1 minute and waited. An interior light turned on (like what happens with microwaves) and a I could hear a fan, but a minute later when everything stopped with the typical toaster-oven-sounding "ding" nothing was any warmer.
So I figured I would put the contents in a metal pot and heat them over the hot plate. A stove can be good at warming things if you stir a lot and keep the setting low, right? Unfortunately, the light on the stove didn't turn on and I didn't feel any indications that the pot was getting any warmer.
So I finally put the concoction, pot and all, back in the oven, turned the lower dial to about 125 (remember, this is metric) pressed both top and bottom buttons and waited for 20 minutes until I had an almost-warm dinner ready. I spent that time looking for instructions (there were none) and looking the maker and model number up on the Internet (they aren't there) and went down to the front desk and asked for information. The hotel people sent a man upstairs who told me that the oven/microwave was actually NOT a microwave, and seemed to thing the clothes washer (my other mystery) should be intuitive enough to use.
Not much help.
So a few days later I have some spaghetti that I'd made an hour earlier and I wanted to warm it up, so I put it in a glass bowl and heated it in the "oven" for a while. Turned the both dials a bit, pressed both buttons. Waited about 5 minutes. When I was almost done I unpressed (pressed a second time to disengage) the top button and the strangest thing happened: there was this electrical "zorch" sound and I could see electrical arcing (small lightening) in the oven? After a few flashes I looked in the window and saw that the spaghetti sauce was bubbling all of a sudden very quickly.
I looked inside the oven. When I had disengaged the top button (so the lower yellow light was on but the upper green light was off) there was this metal element on the top of the oven that looks like the flat part of a fly-swatter that started spinning. This certainly doesn't resemble anything I've ever seen in the States!
About a week later I decided to try the "microwave" feature again. I'd brought home some leftover BBQ'd chicken breast and wanted to heat it up quickly. So I placed it on a plate, turned the top dial, pressed both buttons and then depressed the top button. After a few seconds I heard the sound of sizzling chicken. After a while I stopped the microwave, turned the chicken over, started it again and "ZORCH" same scary arcing for a while. When I took the chicken out it was definitely done. Also unmistakable was a slight dusting of black ash on the rest of the plate. I don't know what the lightening zapped in there, but had been pretty much vaporized!
The other mysterious machine is the washer/dryer combo. I've used this machine before last time I was in London. It may sound like a nifty contraption, but don't be fooled, it really doesn't work all that well.
First of all, it's really really really really small so you have to do a load of laundry about every 3 days. Second, it takes hours to wash a load. Thirdly, the drier doesn't dry your clothes as much as cooks them a little bit. I really have to pull them out and dry on an ironing board overnight.
And lastly, there's no indication as to how much soap to use, or what the dial settings mean. Look at this last picture and tell me if you know how it's supposed to operate. In truth, I've pretty much gotten it figured out. And I have to admit the load of whites that turned into a load of blues (and apart from a now-light-blue shirt went in the garbage) was due to the fact that a dark sock hid itself in the carriage after a darks load and assaulted my whites. It wasn't the machine's fault.
