Wednesday, July 24, 2019

welcome to the family!

Et voilà:


I hate my kitchenette's gas range. It has a kind of temperature-sensitive popup safety tab that will cut my gas range's flame down to the lowest possible level if it senses that my pot or pan is too hot and potentially burning my food. Unfortunately, the sensor controlling the gas cutoff started off super-sensitive (as I found out when first making gumbo), but as of a couple weeks ago, it has become infinitely more hypersensitive, making it impossible for me to cook anything on the gas range any longer. I can't even boil water. Something is broken.

Up to now, my solution has been to rely on my portable gas ranges, which use spray-can-sized canisters of butane (pronounced "Bhutan" in Korean). These work okay, but as the gas in the canisters runs out, the range's flame gets weaker and weaker, and you have to wait until the flame gutters out before you can slap in a new, fresh canister. (In theory, you don't have to wait, but if you're constantly slapping in new canisters, you're going to end up with a pile of mostly empty canisters that all produce weak flames, and that all must be used up before you throw them away.) So while the portable ranges are convenient, their convenience is nearly nullified by the annoying need to wait through long periods of weak flame.

This is why I just bought the induction burner. You might be wondering why I don't just call down and have my gas range fixed. The problem with doing that is that fixing the kitchenette's range merely resets my problem to square one: I'll still be dealing with those stupid safety popup tabs (or whatever they're called—I don't actually know the proper term). I'd much rather jack up my electric bill and have reliable heating than waste time repairing something I've never liked from the beginning. My previous apartment, despite being a shithole, at least had a more normal, safety-tab-free gas range in its kitchenette.

I can understand the apartment building management's concern over fire. Fires in old buildings with hundreds of families in them can be massively deadly. That said, I'd still rather cook with burners that are far less annoying and inconvenient.

Murphy's Law says that, now that I'll be using an electric burner (I might buy a standard electric burner, too), the circuits in my circuit breaker are going to fucking fry. One way or another, I'll need to call for repairs. Zee cosmos, eet ees always agaynst me.

Now, if I could make a request to replace my modern gas range with an older model...



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