"Help! I can't get up!

I told my tenant that I would be installing ceiling fans in the bedrooms of the new flat so as to have more ventilation. He told me that he was more concerned that the squatting toilet bowl in the common toilet be changed to a sitting bowl. I told him I was definetely changing as I did not like it either.

I do not know if you have noticed it. I wonder why most of the toilets in coffee shops would still have squatting toilet bowls? Are the proprietors expecting their patrons to be only young and tough? Once I was in the washroom, and heard someone shouting, "Help! I can't get up!"

"Are you ok?" I asked.

"Please help to lift me up".

Fortunately the door was not latched. I gently pushed the door and found an elderly lady in pain, and unable to get up. I lifted her up. She had arthritic pain in her knees.

I advised the coffee shop proprietor to change the toilet bowl, only to receive an admonishment from him. "You think coffee shop business so good ah?"

It would not really cost that much to instal a sitting bowl. A nice and clean toilet would also garner better sales and loyal patronage. I remember when I first came back from Canada, I was not used to the unkempt public wash rooms, and would prefer to walk a few hundred metres just to find a cleaner toilet in any hotel nearby.

Perhaps the Ministry can look into this area and be more stringent on hygiene and proper installation of sitting bowls, cleaning detergent for the hands and electrical dryers or paper towels. Somtimes, some of these items are missing in public toilets.

If people can keep their homes and toilets clean, yet why must public toilets be often filthy? If everyone could help play a little part, the work of the cleaners would be made much easier.

Mahatma Gandhi said that the success of a nation is measured by the way her people treat the animals in the country. Perhaps I could also add that the success of a nation is measured by the way her people treat public amenities, and keep them really clean.

Gan Chau