Bear with me on this one. The first few weeks of this exchange were intense: trying to get my head around a new job, this blog, Skyping schedules, a new language (new enough). So an odd thing that has been happening to me since I got here just kind of got pushed to the back of my priority list of things to deal with. Electric shocks. So quite a big thing really, depending on, well, how big they are.

Since I arrived 6 weeks ago, I’ve been feeling electric. Literally. I touch a door knob, I get a shock, I shake hands with someone, I get a shock. (That was embarrassing by the way.) When it happened in my first week at work, I said to the electrifying colleague, ‘Did you feel that?’, which instantly sounded like an, admittedly awful, line.

Anyway, it was a mystery to me why it was happening until I met a fellow Brit at a party last week. We shocked each other on kissing cheeks, which cued a conversation about how sparky NYC is. But this Brit had done the research. Apparently it’s down to the dry air and all the air con. Don’t ask me to explain further than that, I don’t have the answers. I do know, though, that humidifiers are the solution. My friend Ed gave me one in my first week here, but it leaked all over my floor, so for now I’ve still got thrills and, yes, they’re multiplying. If anyone knows how to solve this, frankly, painful problem do let me know.