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Thursday, January 04, 2007

Bathrooms and Bodily Functions

In case you noticed the title change (which I'm sure nobody did), good job. The two little tykes that were watching me blog the other day helped me correct the title. I still don't know the difference between ㅗ and ㅓwhen it comes to pronouncing words that I've never seen written before. Anyhow they fixed up some of my mistakes (by screaming two different vowel sounds at me), and then helped me navigate that little death trap that the update page sets where you can inadvertently delete the whole blog. They told me the website would die if I hit the orange button. Now some other little ones just ran into the computer lab. One told me to eat something and shoved a little eyedrop-dispenser sort of thing in my face. After confirming with the boss that it was indeed edible, I let him spritz it into my mouth. It was some inferior pixie-stick sort of stuff. Than another one gave me a nice little candy soccer ball. I've also received two bananas today, and last night a student gave me a box of "choco mushroom" mike-look-alike candies.

Anyway, the title stories: one deals with bodily functions and no bathrooms, the other with bathrooms and no bodily functions. The first is merely that as I was walking to school, I noticed a man standing on a strip of grass between the road and the apartment complexes. The area is all filled with trees, so a few months ago he would have been nice and hidden by foliage, and would have been able to take pee in private. However, as winter is upon us here, there were no leaves to see, only his..... Plus, it was probably about 30 degrees (F) outside. It must have been rather unpleasant, to say the least.

The other story happened last night. I intended to go to the bathroom during one of my 45 minute breaks, but when I went in, I noticed that of the two stalls, one didn't have any TP and the other had a jammed door. I had to choose between not going to the bathroom, going without TP, or taking ridiculous and drastic action. So, I went into the TP-free stall, stood on the toilet, hoisted myself up into the 18-inch gap between the little fake stall walls and the ceiling, and then slithered/maneouvred (I'm not even going to attempt to spell that frenchish word right - weird English words are already becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of) myself over the barrier and then dropped into the locked stall. Confronted with a bizarrely (yeah, screw that word as well) jammed door, I started prodding (gently) and pushing (less gently) and kicking (not at all gently) and what not until, well, the whole door fell out of the socket and crashed into a urinal, making quite a din. Luckily, even though there were people in the lobby of my school, which is just across the hall from the bathroom, nobody heard anything. I was terrified that someone would come into the bathroom and find me trying to put the door back in place, and even more terrified thinking that I would be totally unable to explain. However, nobody did, and so I managed to replace the door in relative peace.

Alright, I have 30 minutes before class and need to get get some little "pooloppang" (goldfish-bread) from a street vendor. 4 for a dollar. They're little fried fish-shaped bread with a sweetish bean paste in the middle. Quite tasty.

3 comments:

Laura said...

and just so you know, mike roy, on my south african computer, your title just shows up a a series of squares!!

I'll let you know if I have any crazy foreign country exploites. so far its just been almost being run over by a motorcycle and not being able to exchange money because everything is closed on sundays! How will I eat? I will have to use some of your uber-cheap tactics on this one.

The good news? I have wireless in my room so I will be able to check your blog all the time since I really have nothing else to do.

Megatron said...

so i checked my voicemail this morning, expecting it to be my angry advisor yelling about something, but instead i got a most gentle "wake up cup." it was very soothing, even though i wasnt sleeping, i was just in a basement computer lab that had no service. try again sometime, cup.

Mike said...

no, I called jamal too :-P