Take your Jedi weapon. Use it.

The doorbell chimed, the dog barked and I went down the corridor to open the door, where a man stood and said, “Benjamin Lee? Your shaver is here”.

So I screamed and ran and hid behind the sofa until he was gone, leaving a huge plastic bag containing a box which contained a Braun Series 7 (790cc Type 5671) self-cleaning electric shaver.

Then I remembered that a PR company had written a month ago asking if I would test drive Braun’s new self-cleaning electric shaver, and that they would send me one if I said yes, and I had said yes. I think they knew that I wasn’t a fan of shaving, and that my unshaven look was borne of an aversion to shaving rather than anything to do with fashion.

I don’t have that much of a problem with facial hair, like most Chinese men, and you can’t really call mine a five o’ clock shadow. It’s more like a April 2nd shadow, as that’s how slowly our facial hairs grow.

But the thought of not having to use shaving cream/gel and a manual razor was appealing. Anything you need to plug in and recharge is appealing.

Excited, I opened the box…

Removed the pamphlet on top of the styrofoam inner box…

And revealed the top of the styrofoam inner box.

Then I took off the lid of the top of the styrofoam inner box.

And I thought, “that’s a pretty big thing to bring up to your face”, before I calmed myself down and took apart the rest of the box and its contents.

There was this little canister of clear liquid with a “flammable” warning.

The shaver part of the whole kit was in it’s own plastic spectacle case, and opening it revealed a sleek silver thing with buttons and an LCD display at the end.

Darth Vader had one of these, and he cut off Luke Skywalker’s hand with it 25 years ago, so this is not new technology.

Still, I read the instructions very carefully (anything with flammable liquid in a plastic canister and a plug to put into an electrical socket requires you to do so), and I’ve started charging the thing to use later. It should charge in a short while I go find the rest of my Jedi outfit.