Sharing a Squat with Bob Tot
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
37
41
Trip End
Aug 2008
Beijing,
China
Sunday, March 9, 2008
There are about 20 to 30 of us here, and there are at least 7500 construction workers. We all have keys to this bathroom...they do not. A 10 minute walk to the bathroom becomes a spy mission so that you can clandestinely sneak to the general area without being spotted by their scouting teams, get in quickly and lock the door behind you before the hoards storm the Bastille. I feel like the Omega Man trying to fight my way home as lurking interlopers try to slip inside as soon as there is the slightest crack in the doorway that leads to the luxury of the only restroom in the building complex. This sounds like we are treated likely royalty, but once inside you'll find, with absolute horror, one of the most shocking and completely disorienting aspects of Chinese culture...the Squat Toilet. That's right my friends, no friendly reassuring toilet bowl with an alluring vulcanized plastic seat and porcelain, no, it's a nicely tiled hole in the ground. This is a brand new multi-million dollar building, and they have installed squat toilets. But these squats are ultra modern and even are equipped with automatic flush mechanisms. So imagine your position, and then when you stand, the hole flushes itself, however even the slightest body movement triggers this water torrent to be unleashed that splashes into the hole over which you are closely hovering. Imagine if you will, this water coming into the hole at the roughly the same speed as the narrows of Colorado River the first few days after the snow pack melts and you can understand why this squat also often serves as a combination involuntary bidet and shoe/sock/ and trouser washing service. Enough about the bathroom, and I won't even mention that you don't flush your toilet paper in China...you place this soiled paper in a small trash can nicely placed next to the hole. This can is emptied every few days...ah, the sweet aroma of every day Chinese Life.
So only we handful of BOB employees share this tiny bathroom, which leads to your next obvious inquiry, where do all these thousands of Chinese workers go? The short answer is similar to the answer about the 800 ton Gorilla...where ever they want. I won't be to gross here, but I can say this...you don't want to leave your empty paint cans in the stairways, because they will not stay empty for long....that's all I'm saying.
To compound this issue, this is the week that dozens of Television professionals fly in from all over the world to receive their training for the Olympic Games. The exercise is aptly named the nicely abbreviated phrase, BOB TOT. I think actually Bob Tot was the nickname we had for one of my classmates in Mrs. O'Brien's 4th grade math lab, Robert Tottleman, No, BOB TOT, is simply, Beijing Olympic Broadcasting Technical Operations Training. Say that three times fast after a couple martinis (Actually just have the martinis and keep you mouth shut...) This is a very organized 4 day series of instructional seminars, management meetings, and an excuse to expose various South Americans, North Americans, Europeans, Scandinavians, and a random Asian to intense 3 day jet lag and overloaded sensory stimuli, before packing them up with a ham sandwich and shoving them back into a shady China Airlines plane for minimum 13 hour flight home.
My little piece of the puzzle is to provide communications for the simulated Sports Broadcasting Exercises. At the end of the festivities, the Broadcast Groups all take part in a mock television broadcast of the Olympic Games. Fake Games are provided by the means of video tapes from previous Olympic events. This makes me a great deal of money when I gamble with the dozens of uniformed Chinese Security Guards on the results of these contests. They are amazed that I always know the winner of each and every athletic endeavor, while they sadly turn over most of their 7 dollar a day paychecks. Just joking, I didn't take their money, but it was tempting because these much younger than high-school aged military attired boys were riveted to the big screens full of such fabulous delights as White Water Slalom racing and Horse Jumping from Athens in 2004.
At the end of the "War Games," the Engineering Staff would create various horrendous "incidents," such as failing live sports feeds from venues to the Broadcast Center, all communication lost between different groups and the most crippling obstacle of all, the coffee runs out and they are down to their last 3 donuts just 37 minutes into a 10 hour over-night shift. These catastrophes are dealt with as best as can be, but watching from afar, it is not difficult to look at this as a grandiose and equally pointless fire drill. Just as we all file down from offices in the middle of the day, careful not to use the elevators, in an orderly fashion, for our pre-scheduled office fire drills, these mock situations have no real impact on what would happen in real life. If there was a real fire, flames shooting out of Accounting, and most of Human Resources caving in as the heating ducts collapse in your building due to the intense heat, there is no way everyone would happily bounce down the flights of stairs discussing the recent merger of two competitors, or delighting in a quick rehash the highlights of last night's big game. It is the same with this exercise. It is easy to fix any problem in a simulation, but add a screaming producer, a demanding director, and your professional life flashing before your eyes...I'm not sure it will be so easy to tell that something simply was unplugged, or a dipswitch was accidentally misadjusted. All I know, is they serve a nice catered meal, and the afternoon coffee break cookies are delicious.
