Life is sweet. If you live in the USA or Canada, then you may have imported a machine from Japan to skip the 11 month wait for the US release or to play rare Japanese RPGs, which are apparently unappealing to Western tastes. The television system is also NTSC and your voltage is 110 Volts, which is nearly 100V, if you are concerned you can buy a extra power supply that gives 100V. You can plug in and go. Life is sweet. Your tv system probably isn't compatible with NTSC and your power supply is 220 - 240 Volts.
Life is sweet as a lemon.
Sony have promised that PAL releases will be optomised for PAL and will not suffer any slowdown and will be fullscreen. Though Sega promised something similar with the PAL Saturn, the fighters in Virtua Fighter are fatter and move slower than the NTSC ones, and this game WAS optimised for the PAL release. Games are often released earlier in the US than in the other markets, so again non-NTSC areas lose out. However there are a few things that you need. A tv or monitor that supports a 60Hz refresh rate.