Eastern or Western?

Disclaimer: There will be a lot of bathroom humor in this post. And by bathroom humor, I mean that literally. Read at your own risk.

Carrying around toilet paper in my purse nowadays is a lesson I had to unfortunately learn the hard way. (Read: the very hard way). My familiarity with non-Western toilets is minimal. The occasional camping trip led to some uncomfortable situations but all-in-all, my experience at public washrooms has been generally positive. Sure, on road trips, you would find the yucky, smelly, dirty washrooms but none of that experience could prepare me for what I would find in the Kingdom.

Prior to moving here, I had the privilege of watching this hysterical video on YouTube: How to use Eastern Latrine. Mostly humor, but oh so relevant.

Obviously, my experience is limited to using female washrooms here in the Kingdom but I am told that the male washrooms are quite similar in nature.  Public washrooms here are an experience, to say the least. Most public toilets consist of one crucial decision. You can take the Eastern style or Western style.



Eastern style




Western style

 As you can see, the Eastern style toilet can be used in a manner similar to the one presented on the YouTube video mentioned earlier. There is a hole and a hose. Easy enough to figure out I suppose.

The Western style toilet is where I am confused.  As ladies, we are accustomed to having toilet paper around. If you were to find yourself in a situation where there wasn't any, you could just switch stalls, no problem.  Here, that is not the case. We are provided with a toilet and a hose.  Let me set the scene as to what this is really like.

You are at the mall, shopping, eating, enjoying great company. You are wearing your clothes and an abaya and you feel the urge to use the restrooms. Upon entering, you have the two options, Eastern or Western, and you choose Western. You step into the stall which has a floor-to-ceiling door for obvious privacy. Unfortunately, as you get into the stall you realize there is an inch of standing dirty water and the entire stall from top to bottom is dripping wet. There is water, dirt, and hair everywhere. This is when you wonder what the hell happened in the stall before you got there. Was there something explosive happening? Why is there water EVERYWHERE?? Did someone wrestle with the hose while they were grooming themselves? The thoughts that run through your mind are disgusting. (and FYI, this is not an isolated incident, this happens every time, at every toilet, for everyone).

I don't mean to be crass, but then you do your business (which invariably leads to one of two possible outcomes).  Once completed, you would naturally reach over for some toilet paper. There is none. You are left with a hose (also known as a health faucet - thanks R). The hose sprays water which I suppose is what you are supposed to do to clean yourself. I'm not naive to the fact that water is probably a better method to clean oneself (bidets were invented for a reason).  But in a public washroom, I'm not sure what you are supposed to do.

I will leave it to your imagination as to what one should do in such a situation. You have a hose, your hands, and your clothes.

Any advice is much appreciated.

All I know is that my purse is fully-stocked, at all times, with toilet paper.

Cheers!
M

Cable, Internet, and Mobile phones

Perhaps if this were 1990 and not 2011, I wouldn't be so concerned with my wireless, cable, and internet providers. But this is 2011, and I care, very deeply. Honestly, when I lived state-side, I didn't have very nice things to say about my cable and internet providers. Complaints of service, products, forced bundles, and random rate hikes were universal and yet there was some monopoly over the service providers.  We can say the same about wireless providers - the AT&T monopoly over the iPhones until recently created a polarized society where you either put up with the phone you like or the coverage you like because having it all is too much to ask. Unfortunately, given our insatiable need for real time data regardless of cost, we would pay hundreds of dollars a month to these providers. Think about it - everyone needs the fastest modem, the high-definition television packages, and the unlimited data plans.

I'm not even trying to be critical because that was me (maybe it still is?). Before moving to the Kingdom, I carried around two blackberries and an iTouch. I needed one blackberry strictly for personal use - to manage two email accounts (one for my maiden name and one for my married one, even though I've only managed to change my last name on Facebook - but that counts, right?), keeping up with texts, phone calls, Facebook updates (with birthday reminders), and a recently created twitter account to follow random celebrities.  Then I had a blackberry for work, where everything was disabled except for sending and receiving emails and being "on-call". I needed the iTouch because when R was in the Kingdom and I wasn't, we needed Facetime to be able to communicate. I needed the ability to run into a coffee shop or anywhere that offered free wi-fi to talk to my hubby.  I sound like a crazy person, I know. But I'm sure it's not much different than any of you. The sound of something vibrating makes people dig around purses and pockets and it's almost a race to see who wins.

I wouldn't say I miss those days, but I do miss the ease and reliability of having everything I need in my purse full of gadgets. All that changed when I moved to the Kingdom. We were provided local phones for communication and safety. So now I am carrying around my sweet Nokia cell (picture below).  I feel like I've lept into a different era. Initially, I was terrified. How am I supposed to text on this thing? I guess Twitter and Facebook updates on the fly are out of the question.  There's no way I can watch the latest YouTube videos on this. How am I going to survive? 

The honest to goodness truth is that it feels amazing. With the access to real time data, there's an obligation to respond and have an opinion immediately. This goes for every e-mail (work or personal), text, etc. There's no obligation on this thing. Quite frankly, I couldn't type an email on this phone if I wanted to. I don't have that kind of patience. So while you are reading this on your blackberry, iPhone, iPad, etc, know that sending a text message for me is an arduous, time-consuming task.

Okay, so now you know the phone situation, let's move onto internet. As much as we hated paying hundreds of dollars for our own secure high-speed wireless network contained within the walls of our condo, it was necessary.  We certainly have no shortage of devices in our home - laptops, iTouch, iPad, Kindle, etc. This is normally not an issue - plenty of devices could connect to our network easily. This is NOT the case here. Anytime we want to add or subtract a device from our network, we have to shut down the entire network and all our devices. Reboot everything and the first three devices on are the ones lucky enough to connect. This is very frustrating. We never know at any given point what has internet - is it the iPad today, or the iTouch? Or is it the other iTouch because we took one into the car to plug into our cassette player? (Yes, our car has a cassette player - that's a whole other story). 

And last but not least, television. Those of you who know me, know that I am a little bit of a tv freak - both actual televisions and television shows (those of you who know my dad, know why). My first two years in Charlotte, I lived in a studio apartment no more than 400 square feet with nothing but a bed, couch, and 50 inch TV (if you think about those proportions, the tv is BIG). When we found out a few weeks before I was to leave that we would be allowed to ship some items, the first thing we shipped was our TV, surround sound system, and Blu-ray player (obvious necessities). What I couldn't ship with me, is high definition TV channels, more than 10 TV channels, a TV guide, and a DVR. While I am very thankful to have a big screen tv, I dearly miss the ability to know what is on every channel and the ability to record and watch it when I please! 

Here on the compound, our cable package is about 30 channels, half of which are in Arabic. I also have about 10 all sports channels (24-hour cricket anyone?). That leaves very few channels that are in English and that I would actually watch. Also, we never know which channels are going to be working at any given time - unannounced blackouts are common. The TVs in our bedroom and family room have completely different channel numbers.  It took some serious patience and on-line research but now I know when certain TV shows (in standard definition only) are on and at what time. But if there's a show I want to watch I have to plan my entire day around it (it's not like I put a reminder on my phone?). Ugh! Do you know how frustrating this is?

There are a lot of things I love about this country and this experience, but I don't think I will take cable, internet, and wireless for granted ever again!

Until next time,
M