It's Electric

THE last couple of weeks have been rather gruelling. An oppressive blanket of heat has descended over my quaint little town. Though there has been talk of rain, and rumours of rain, not a drop has been seen in ages and the weather has been hot, hot, hot.

I tend to take the heat in my stride but recently I have been visited by a rather curious affliction. Whenever I touch anything metallic I tend to get zapped by a jolt of static electricity discharge. This seems to happen to me all the time whenever I’m at work or on my way to and from work. I walk to my office and as I reach out to pull the door handle ZAP! I get a jolt of electric current. The same thing happens when I walk to the car and try to open the door. I’m zapped again. Ouch! You may think that this zapping action would mean that both the car and I will now be at the same electric potential and so there would be no more zaps. But no. Half an hour later as I get down and close the door I’m zapped yet again.

All kinds of objects give me the jolt. My filing cabinet, and other paraphernalia in my office. I'm lucky my guitar hasn’t zapped me yet! No one else around me seems to suffer from this problem. I can understand electrostatic discharge (ESD) being a problem in cold dry climates. But here in hot humid Malaysia???

I’ve been reading much about human ESD lately and have come across all kinds of unusual stories. There is one about this couple, a guy and girl who both suffer from unusually high static electricity buildups in their bodies. Apparently every time they smooch, they receive quite a jolt of electricity. Now, that must have been something! Talk about sparks in a relationship! So perhaps there is something positive to be had from all of these - I've just got to remember to carry that electroscope the next time I'm on the party circuit :-)