Circle-fan or Teeth?

Back in December, our washer (aka washing machine) wasn't working in the intended manner, in that it would stop right before the spin cycle, leaving the laundry in a pool of water.

During this several week period, I got to trek all my soiled sundries 1 mile to the launderette, where I was greeted by toothless Cockney service woman. Apparantly "most people" pay for the laundry service, which means that you don't have to sit there ensuring your clothes are not stolen through the washing cycle, but some of us students would rather eat than waste money on service charges.

There was something very odd about reading very serious academic books about urbanism whilst the attendant smoked half-cigarettes and watched the soaps. This turned out to be a bit longer than I'd hoped, as I chose to spend a few more pence to dry my clothes a bit rather than lug home an additional 5 pounds of water weight.

I felt rather ridiculous about the whole ordeal, particularly when it turned out that our washer wasn't so much broken as the pipes were backed up. The pipes, that run from the sink to the washer, were blocked with a delicious backup of sink gunk and limescale, a wonderous substance present in London's hard water. I was indeed present when the plumber pulled out what looked to be a solid grey turd. lovely. In the coming months, we plan to clean out our pipes a bit more thoroughly.

I should mention too that learning to use the washer and other appliances has proven somewhat challenging as well. Our washer has several numerical settings, indicating a type of cycle. I suppose this is relatively straightforward, though I do prefer the nearly-failsafe American system that we have on our washer at home in Oberlin: whites, darks, delicates. However, I've seen other washers in London homes that allow you to specify the RPM of the spin cycle. While I understand why one might want such a feature, one friend's washer fails to indicate what these numbers in the thousands indicate; we joked that the washer doubled as a kiln.

Actually, I believe that the reasoning behind this lies in the intention of producing universal products, e.g. that can be used anywhere and that overcome language barriers. Ovens that I've seen, for example, use both temperature and a symbol to indicate the type of heat. On our oven, a three-pronged fan with a circle around it means convection, and a jagged zig-zag seems to indicate broil.

Though I think it a wonderful idea to provide universal symbols, I had a difficult time deciphering the meanings of these symbols, and found myself asking my flatmates whether I should cook something on "circle-fan" or "teeth". Our oven also has "plain-fan" symbol, but this function no longer works.

Additionally, there are still quite a few interface issues that make it all the more difficult to figure out. The oven in the flat my parents recently moved into required that the clock be set before you could turn on the oven, regardless of the fact that you might not even be using the timer during your cooking process. I appreciate the thought of trying to make things universally accessible, but create a few difficult operations, and once you've lost the guide and some foreigner moves in expecting to be able to cook things, all hope is lost.