Quarter Life Crisis
The world according to Sven-S. Porst
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The Register reports about a London loo guide based on the iPod's notes feature. It's true that the notes feature is underutilised (and somewhat slow imo). But what's even more true is that they blatantly stole the idea, well the bit without the iPod. From my mom.
When visiting places like Paris or London in the 1980s, she could remember remarkably well the locations of nice loos. – Mind you, she had two spoiled brats to look after who wouldn't just pee anywhere... So she always talked about how good it would be to have 'loo guide' for those places and that she wants to compile one. Which of course never happened until now.
And apart from the fact that I am now capable of finding my own loo (thank you), I also think that the problem itself has diminished during the last decade. Loos seem to have become cleaner on average in the past decade. And of course my twisted self has come up with a perfectly good theory why this is the case and how it is a bad thing.
The situation looks similar to the 'bag boy' situation that I ranted about a year ago: You'll only have people packing your shopping if labour is too cheap. Traditionally this was the case in unjust societies such as apartheid South Africa or the US, but good old hyper-capitalism lets us enjoy it in more places today.
Same for loos. My mom never saw the need to compile a loo guide for Pretoria or Cape Town. Because loos were clean. And they were clean because you could (and still can, remember that ending apartheid was about people's rights rather than their wages) hire someone to clean them for next to no money†. The same holds for the US – shiny loos restrooms. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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