Life Skills?
Why somethings are not as useful as you think
Many decades ago, I was told that I needed life skills. How to change a light bulb. How to cook. The list goes on but you get the idea. The basic idea is that you should never starve or be cold or stay in darkness in your own home.
Light bulb moment
I know how to change a light bulb. I know how to change a fluorescent tube or bulb. But somewhere along the line, someone invented LED bulbs and my world was flipped. I love the fact that light no longer meant heat. Unfortunately, nobody explained that the unique types of LED bulbs. This became a problem when I needed to replace a bulb.
But I know what the tech savvy readers are going to tell me. Take a photo of the bulb. Let Google tell you what the bulb is. Google figured out what the item was but then when it came to recommending me the bulb actually was, it referred me to an extremely expensive option. Naturally, I started searching for a cheaper option. But that was a catch. Google incorrectly referred me to the wrong LED bulb. The picture looked similar to the bulb but the base looked a little wrong.
I was a little suspicious. Having suffered several electric shocks in my life, I tend to be a little suspicious of easy answers involving electricity. My LED bulb had two pins but the LED bulb recommended had little disks on its pin. At this point, my tech savvy readers would tell me to use a text search filtering on the term two pins. The more accurate search threw up a bulb that was identical to mine. There was a catch. The description said GU4. All readers who are electricians can skip the next paragraph.
The picture was correct in almost every way. What it lacked was two grooves on the base. I doubt most people would have notice it. Fortunately, the shopper in me decided to look for better deals. This was when I noticed that all the other GU4 bulbs looked very different. None of them looked like they were meant for homeowners. To cut to the chase, knowing that the LED bulb was two pins was not enough. There are GU4 and GU5.3 sockets. Wiser engineers had figured out that the two pins were not useful enough a differentiator and needs the width of the two pins to be a gauge. The number after the term GU was the width in millimeters. To experts, this meant be enough of an identification but to overconfident people, this looks like a manufacturing defect that strong people can bend to their will. The LED bulb with disks at the end of their pin are GU10.
Cooking with gas
I know how to use a stove, an oven and a microwave. It turned out that it meant I cannot use many modern kitchens. The ones with air fryers and induction cookers. I am not an idiot and I know the science behind those devices. But cooking using scientific theories turned out to be a different experience.
I knew that for induction cooking, my cookware’s base needed to be capable of sticking a magnet to it. Wrong. It turned that the magnet part was heuristically correct. If the metal is too thin, or does not provide enough resistance to current flow, heating will not be effective. Oops. I guess that is why most induction cooking video use pots instead of bowls. Full Disclosure: I am a fan of metal plates and bowls as I have yet to replace any one of them. Even after dropping them.
For the readers that are wondering why I did not look at the base of the pot, all the metal pots were purchased before induction cookers where a thing. I mean it is not that easy to destroy or make a stainless pot obsolete. In the past, nobody looked at the bottom of their metal pot for instructions. At most there was the brand engraved on it.
It was a learning experience like when I discovered that you needed to thaw frozen food first before cooking it. Otherwise you will get ice and burnt food. For those people not inclined in science, ice molecules are not easily agitated compared to the water molecule in the rest of the food. It is possible for ice to stay relatively solid while the rest of the water has boiled.
Save by the bell
My article is not to dump on life skills. It is just to point out that thanks to our increasingly changing world, we need to update those skills. My grandmother had to evolve from using a charcoal stove to a gas stove. My mother had to figure out the alien device called the microwave oven. I was just hoping that I could get more mileage out of my modern gadgets.
There is a catch. My mother did not want to touch the microwave oven for decades. She only used it because it was a gift. I would also have no clue how to use a microwave if it never entered my house. You could be an early adopter and write the books on how not to use the appliance. You can be a late adopter and entertain the rest of the more enlighten world.
Today we have the ultimate appliance. The smartphone. You can look it up and get someone to deliver it to you. It can get you both cooked and raw food. It can get help. But if you cannot wait, you have to do it yourself. Hope that the teacher on YouTube did not skip any steps.