Toilets.

I’d like to talk for a minute about toilets, also referred to in Australia as ‘loos’, presumably because of the state of your sphincter after using them.

You remember that old myth, about toilets in the Southern Hemisphere rotating the other way? Well, I had completely forgotten about it until I called my brother and he asked about it. Well, this was a mystery that couldn’t go unsolved. With elder brother in tow, I marched into the nearest building (the library), went into their bathroom, into the stall, and pushed the button.

“Fuck! It doesn’t swirl at all!”

Sadly, as I’d discovered (and screamed in the public bathroom stall), the water doesn’t rotate at all. It’s a water conserving toilet that pumps water in as it’s sucked down. It just goes straight through, no swirling. I was pissed.

Well, I just huffed right out of that bathroom and out of that library, and into the next building, which just happened to be having a faculty reunion. I found their bathroom, and claimed the stall next to the old man who had come in before me.

“Motherfucker! Why wont it rotate?!”

Seems all toilets on campus are the same conserving type. I must now find an old-fashioned toilet. I tack this on my list of things I need to do, after getting scuba dive certified and camping in the rainforest, but before climbing Ayers Rock in the Outback. I cannot allow this to be unresolved.

Still, I need to give my new school some credit. The toilet paper is way more plush. They actual splurge on real Kleenex brand, as opposed to the sandpaper issued on campus. I don’t leave the bathrooms feeling like I’d been riding a mechanical bull with a frayed saddle all afternoon.

And at least we have real toilets. That’s more than I can say about the bar I went to last night. They didn’t have toilets or urinals. Just a long trough on the floor. Water dribble down from an exposed pipe on one side, and I pretended nothing was wrong. I know Australians are friendly and big on sharing, but when it seems less like a bathroom and more like porcelain bukkake, I have to draw a line. So I did.