Preface: My bathroom adventures continue. This installment takes place in Qingdao, Summer of 2006. Now, before I go on, I want to explain the tactics for men using a squat hole. If you are already familiar, then slip down to my abject humiliation. Now, for the rest of you, here's the deal. Women have it easy. Let me explain why. Assuming one is wearing jeans or pants, the manouver can be quite tricky. One stands with one foot on each side of the hole. Drops 'trou (vanaculer for pulling one's pants down). Then one leans foward andsquats down so one's butt is possitioned to releave himself in the hole and not on himself. So, one accomplishes this by using one hand to pull his pants, which are around his ankles, forward. This manouver is extreamly important if one does not want to soil himself. Without this manouver, ones pants that are around one's ankles form a sort of net, catching what one does not want caught. Now, this is why women have it easy, given the manouver detailed about, a woman still has one free hand to ballancer herself. Now, a man, on the other hand, need to use his 'free hand' to redirect his junk downward so he doesn't urinate on the jeans he has pulled forward. What this means is that a man does not have the option of using a hand to ballance himself. From the very first moment I used a squat hole as narrated in the 1st installment of this blog, my biggest fear has always been that if I lost my ballance, I would fall @ss first into the squat hole. Even more disturbing was the fear that if somebody opned the stall door, it would slam into my head, therefore forcibly driving my @ss down into the hole where I would be stuck in the hole. I don't speak manderan well enough to say, "for the love of god and all things Holy, somebody please help me!! I am an ingorant american, after all".

The moment: I am in a coffee shop in the Qingdao Internation Air. My wife and I are having a mocha while waiting for a flight to Xi'An. I get that same old bubbly feeling. My god, will this ever end? So I make a quick dash for the nearest rest room. As I open the door, I make a quick scan of the restroom - a line of individual stalls. The first four stall doors are closed. But the fith door is halfway open. Ha, my luck. So I quckly run for that door and thrust it open whileI am unbuckling my belt. A split second later, there is a loud BAM and a man's grunting voice shouting out in suprise and pain. I totally clocked this poor guy right in the freaking mellon. OMG. I can't believe that in my own haste and carelessness, I did to somebody what I was afraid of being done to me. I have scince learned that "I'm sorry" is "dui bu qi"...but I didn't know that at the time. So I profussely say "I'm sorry" in English over and over again while I back away from this guy. I consider it lucky that I didn't have to make eye contact with his guy, I would have felt even worse.

Since then, I know that my days are numbered before karma plays a heavy handon me. *sighs*