Plugs and sockets

For one, I have realised that Americans are clueless about the rest of the world. I had been running my laptop on battery ever since I left home on Tue, and it became obvious that I will need to plug it in soon. Now my laptop has a UK plug, which is about twice as big as your typical american socket, and so I needed a
Universal socket adapter to do this. I was thinking it would be a simple matter of walking into one of the departmental stores and picking it up. After all, similar adapters are available at every street corner in India. And I recall that it was quite easy to find one in Sri Lanka and Australia as well. so I thought no big deal of it. In the end, I had visited 4 supermarkets and go over 15 miles before I found one in Fry's. And that too is an international adapter which just happens to work in the US. Oh well.