Suicidal Kettle

In my 1.5 years of staying in the hostel, I have not seen or heard the water filter being changed. We have two water fountains on each floor, and they see heavy duty use from the residents. Besides the usual I-drink-my-water-from-the-fountain, there's also I-brush-my-teeth-over-the-fountain-with-no-regards-to-others and I-wash-my-dishes-over-the-fountain-and-leave-oily-stains-all-over-it.

The worse part is that the 'filtered' water has a strange taste. You can't taste it straight away, but if you let the cold or hot water stabilize till room temperature, you can actually smell something wrong with it. It's more disgusting than chlorine, and I have no idea what it is. I've never tasted it anywhere else, just from the water fountains in our college.

So before I came back this semester, I decided to get a kettle. The cheapest home appliances can be bought at hypermarkets, so I went to Tesco. Indeed, a 1.8 liter cordless kettle is only RM18! I bought it without hesitation. I'm sure there are differences between a RM18 kettle and a RM69.90 one, but quality is not really my concern.

While the cheap and soft plastic used for the body is a dead giveaway that this is cheap stuff, I'm more concerned about its suicidal tendencies. You see, out of the 17 times or so I used it, there were two times that the kettle did not stop boiling. It just kept boiling and boiling until I manually flipped the switch. This is a dangerous thing to happen as the heating element will short circuit itself if it ever heats up without being submerged. Plus, there's the explosion. I've seen it personally and it ain't pretty.

So I now have to make sure that the kettle cuts off power after it brings the water to boil, or risk having boiling water spill onto the power plugs, which is barely 10cm away. But all this mortal danger is worth being able to drink clean water that doesn't smell like chemical waste.