Killing the Kettle

I should probably change the title, shouldn't I? The hubs will wonder if it was intentional and not accidental.

We usually boil our water, wait for it to cool and then drink it. When I was living in Malaysia, I think I used to drink the water straight from the tap. I vaguely remember that boiled water was only for the thermos flasks. While I was living in Australia, I drank water straight from the tap. Nowadays, my parents have fixed a filter, so we don't drink tap water, per se, anymore. But in Singapore, I boil the water, wait for it to cool then drink that. By the way, the water in each of the countries taste very, very different. Every time I go back to Australia, it takes me a couple of days to get used to the water again.

Anyways, I decided to give the inside of our kettle a scrub this morning, the water was actually starting to smell funny. We usually use a descaler, which is a chemical solution that's added to your boiled water that makes the limescale magically disappear. I think it didn't work the last time... maybe it's because the weather these days is too hot and the water that gets piped through has taken some melted bits from the various pipes. I try not to think of all the weird things that live in pipes. Yes, boiling the tap water saves my mind from going into overdrive.

So while scrubbing the kettle, I noticed that the plastic was cracked at some places. Hmm... time to get a new kettle. We've probably had this for close to five years. Kettles should be changed every five years. And I was thinking of the kettles that we used to have, as in when I was little. There was no auto-stop mechanism, only a whistle, and you'd have to physically turn it off. Did we keep that kettle for more than 10 years? I remember that it was made out of stainless steel. Maybe stainless steel kettles do not get scaly.

Meanwhile, I must have got the switch a little wet and it short-circuited just as the second round of boiling was starting. This caused the wall sockets around the house to trip and kind of crashed the internet. Luckily I didn't have any assignments to hand in or needed to send an urgent email somewhere.

Bye-bye, kettle, you've served us well for the past 5 years!