Toilets

Last night, knackered, I went to bed at 10.30. And because my hotel has a yodelling karaoke joint below my room, I didn't sleep until 2am, what with bellowing women, hamfisted guitarists and a man who arrived in the middle of the night just to rev the engine on his Ferrari. Didn't he know the Formula One race was at the weekend? Worst of all for my paranoia was that every time I went downstairs to complain about the noise, the whole street went silent. Until I'd gone back up to my room, and exchanged bamboozlement for rage when the music and yelling started up again.

Fortunately, I had an early morning teleconference and meetings from 11am through until 4 this afternoon, which gave me PLENTY OF TIME FOR REST AND RECUPERATION. STOP IT YOU BASTARDS I would yell between violent mood swings. It's unfair of Singapore to have this reputation for being the Switzerland of Asia, and then not actually being organised and rational. Which leads me onto the toilets.

In Hong Kong, at every office, every coffee shop, every high-class restaurant, whenever you need to use the toilet, you first have to request the key from somebody. The guardian of the crapper, I suppose, whose job it is to zealously look after a small aluminium key attached to an enormous plastic toilet sign, which is ceremoniously handed to you when you need to drain the lizard/shake hands with the wife's best friend/splash your boots/see a man about a dog/micturate.

It's fairly offensive that people can't be trusted to go to the toilet without first getting express permission. It's like you're six years old. And come to think of it, six year olds don't need to get express permission to go to the toilet. They can just wet themselves. God, primary school was rubbish. And smelt of urine.

It was with great pleasure that I got to the office in Singapore, and found that you didn't need to request a special key to visit the toilet. You just got up from your desk, walked down the corridor and went into the room with a picture of a man on the door. What could be harder than that?

Some of this pleasure was dispelled when I realised that unlike Hong Kong, where every toilet is almost as futuristic as Japan, and the taps are equipped with infra-red sensors to switch themselves on and off, the taps in Singapore are those semi-vandal-proof ones where you push down hard on the top and then a gush of water spurts out for a second or two. And then you have to bash it again and again to get enough water to properly clean your hands. And there's only cold water. And the soap dispenser doesn't work. And the last person to go to the toilet before you apparently never learnt that the toilet seat is to sit on. To sit on, you disgusting nincompoop.

Whereas in my limited experience of toilets in office buildings in Hong Kong, while I wouldn't be eating maple and pecan ice-cream off the floor, I generally felt undisgusted to be there.

Perhaps this says something about the relative national character of these two city states. Hong Kongers don't mind being embarassed a little in return for hygiene and the luxury only handsoap can provide, whereas Singaporeans are a little more private, but don't like advanced plumbing technology. Perhaps not. You can't go generalising about an entire nation based on the contents of two lavatories. But if at least the one man who keeps failing to aim properly were to read this and mend his ways, I'd promise never to chew gum within a hundred miles of the Merlion. Deal?