For the past few weeks, my mother has been calling to say, “we sent you a monkey for Christmas, has it arrived yet?”. Each time, she seemed disappointed that I didn’t have my monkey.

Last night, it arrived. The Powertraveller Powermonkey-explorer universal charger. It’s an external battery for extending the charge on your gadgets, and it comes with a bunch of adapter tips for different phones and toys, a charger with a set of international plugs, and a small solar panel for charging off-grid.

The only additional adapter tip I’ll need to buy is for the DS-lite, which isn’t quite a standard mini-USB. Can’t have my kanji practice tool dying on me!