Aquino’s restroom visit

How many presidents have their photo ops inside the public restroom of an international airport? To my mind, only ours.

There are many ways to spin the photo of P-Noy, with Transportation Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas, testing the faucets of the Naia Terminal 1 restroom. One is that the leader of the land is so hands-on that even the workings (or non-workings) of toilets inside the airport merit his attention. Another is that he’s giving major priority to refurbishing the airport as part of his drive to upgrade the country’s image and boost tourist arrivals.

And quite another is that the state of public toilets in the country is so abysmal they need presidential action and attention, no less, before things improve. Reminds me of something Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima told Inquirer editors some months back: that his department was paying attention to the state of toilets in public buildings because restrooms were an “indicator” of these agencies’ performance – if not hygiene. After all, if you couldn’t pay attention to leaky faucets and non-flushing toilets, if you could tolerate the stink emanating from restrooms in your own building, one would have to wonder what else you – a public official – has been ignoring or tolerating.

A common experience of mine while visiting a town hall or public building in the provinces is asking to use the nearest restroom and being shown instead to the private bathroom of the mayor or the head of agency. Apparently, it’s the only “presentable” facility for visitors. But if the mayor and his staff know the other restrooms aren’t exactly for visitors’ use, what are they doing about it? Why can’t they make the toilets for staff and public use at least tolerably presentable?

Visiting the big boss’ bathroom, though, tells you so much more about the person than even an interview or social encounter. In one city, I found a bathroom complete with a Jacuzzi and glass-walled shower I had to wonder if the chief executive lived there (and with whom?). In others, the bathroom doesn’t even have running water, speaking volumes about the poverty and poor management of the person who uses it.

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Hygiene facilities – what are known in this country as “comfort rooms,” although I can’t for the life of me trace the etymology of the term, though a visit to one at just the nick of time certainly gives one a lot of comfort – vary from country to country, culture to culture.

When she was about to leave for China, I warned my daughter about stalls marked “Asian toilet.” That meant that instead of a toilet seat, one would find a hole in the ground, albeit with plumbing, forcing one to squat to do one’s business. One time, in a restaurant outside Beijing, I found it nearly impossible to stand from a squatting position and nearly stepped into the toilet. My friend in the next stall had to call out to be helped to her feet. We took to “inspecting” toilet stalls from then on.

In Central Asia, as we were driving down from a mountain resort, we stopped to relieve ourselves by a roadside café and found, instead of toilet stalls, a long ditch with running water where we were supposed to simply squat over.

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On the other end of the scale, there are most notably “Japanese toilets.” While attending a conference in Bali, we were booked in a resort whose bathrooms used Japanese fixtures. We Filipinos couldn’t stop talking about the toilets, which had all the bells and whistles one could wish for. Buttons directed the water in the bidet, whether one wanted to wash “in front” or “in the back.” There was even a button that would send forth a gush of warm air, drying the area.

While visiting Japan during winter, I used the bathroom of a local museum and marveled at the heated toilet seat. When I pushed a button on the wall, it turned on a tape of singing birds, apparently to mask any sound one makes while on the toilet.

A doctor-cousin of mine tells of visiting the restaurant Morimoto (owned and named after a famous Japanese chef) at Chelsea Market in Manhattan and paying a visit to the restroom. There he found all the hi-tech gadgets I’ve been talking about, and when he returned to their table, “I couldn’t talk of anything else for the next five minutes.”

A clean bathroom, even one without the high levels of Japanese bathroom technology, but simply with a working flush, running water, toilet paper and soap, is for me the barest standard of civility in a place that caters to the public. If a restaurant can’t even maintain a serviceable restroom, I’ll have serious doubts about the management’s ability to maintain standards of hygiene in the kitchen or dining room.

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So maybe now that P-Noy no less has paid a visit to the public restroom at Naia Terminal 1, can we expect the management in that terminal, not to mention Terminals 2 and 3, to at the very least step up their game when it comes to maintaining cleanliness and hygiene standards?

There are many things wrong with the aging, over-capacity Terminal 1, but bathrooms are the right place to begin. I wish designers Kenneth Cobonpue, Royal Pineda and Budji Layug all the luck in the world in their drive to re-design and rehabilitate Naia Terminal 1 to at least acceptable standards. But even the most expensive face-lifts would be all for naught if airport management fails to maintain those same standards, beginning with the restrooms.

And could we expect the same changes not just in our international airports but in domestic terminals, bus terminals, government facilities and even malls? True, when you have to go, you just have to go. But the experience could at least be made less uncomfortable and discomfiting if the place one “goes” to provides a modicum of hygiene, privacy and comfort.