Sunday, February 7, 2010

Pins and Pencils


The life of goods here is short -- it's a harsh climate, things get heavy use, they get abused and..... and quite frankly there is are such poorly made products to buy here it's staggering. With the many power surges and outages and fluxuations electronic equipment (from TV to Computers to Appliances) have a short life span. This really is to be expected, it's just a fact of where we live and the conditions.


What is unexpected is the poor quality of simple everyday items that normally wouldn't get a second thought...something as simple as Pins and Pencils.


How can sewing pins be “bad”? Let me count the ways: they are different thicknesses (but mostly really thick and they leave holes in the fabric), many are totally dull, the little heads pop off, they bend if you try to put them through more than two layers of fabric, they aren’t smooth and they snag the fabric as you pull them out. Did you even imagine it would be such a problem to get a quality sewing pin!? I won’t even go into the ways a ‘safety pin’ can go wrong except to say that there is nothing ‘safe’ about them.


I had never thought of it before but a pencil has four basic components that can (and do) fail: wood, lead, metal eraser cuff and eraser.


We’re so glad they aren’t (yet) making cars or industrial machinery.


There really is a lot more going on here than exploding hotdogs (which I spared you the story of), sewing pins that fall apart and pencils that defy sharpening. It's just been an awfully dull week at the homestead. Someone quiet in the family had a much more interesting week and stories to tell about stories about hit and run accidents, riots, witchcraft and coffin parades, things that don't translate nicely one local language into the next, 1-pin pineapples, etc....

1 comment:

Unknown said...

all i can say to that is last night, our toilet, which has just been 'fixed' after not working for one whole year (but who's counting?) broke our half-broken water pump. this morning, no water AND no toilet!