Thursday, January 04, 2007

I'm starting off 2007 with this?!

We've been going to a certain restaurant in Taichung for a couple of years, and I always found amusing a sign that is stuck on the door of a stall in the men's restroom. It's in the stall where the "squatter" toilet is located. Well, this time I happened to have my camera with me, so I took a picture of the sign:
Now I don't teach technical writing, but it would be interesting to do some usability testing on these instructions. (Would people think that they had to take off their shoes before "dropping"?...)

I had a little trouble getting a clear shot because the sign kept reflecting the light of the flash, so I tried a couple of times until I found that standing at an angle and using red-eye reduction made for a pretty clear picture.

It was at about this point that I also realized that if anyone had come into the restroom and seen multiple flashes coming from inside one of the stalls, I'd have had a bit of explaining to do... Guess I could have told them I was 閃電俠 (the Flash)...

(Remind me to get a picture of the other sign--the one that contains the words "Memento excrementi"*--some time.)

*Sounds like a great title for a blog, doesn't it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You've just made the lives of my Spring 2007 WRT 307 students brighter! (Because I will use this in class; great for a lesson in international design!).

When Dwight and I were in Indonesia, the first one of us to visit the loo at any given restaurant had to report back: "sitter" or "squatter." Important information to know when deciding, well, ya know. . .

Jonathan Benda said...

Ha ha! Good to hear you'll use this in class. Let me know how it goes.

I remember one of my college professors once telling our class that when he and his wife went to Japan, they had trouble with the squatters. He said, "My wife had to pull her dress over her head to use the bathroom!" (For some reason, that's the only thing I remember from that class... Think I was in shock for the rest of the semester.)

Anonymous said...

I remember a funny experience or trauma that my daughter suffered while in Hsin Chu. We went to a local temple where her great grandmother’s ashes were kept. When the nature called, she just couldn’t do it over a squatter. She cried and was very mad at me for taking her there. (She was about 6 yeas old at the time.)
Now I wonder whether this posting is a sequel to ‘joyful afterstool’? Anyways, it’s funny.

Jonathan Benda said...

Wow--imagine traumatizing your daughter like that... It's probably taken her years to repress this memory... ;)

Yeah, if I keep this up, this blog is fast going to need to be retitled "Jonathan Benda's Excremental Vision"...