Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Plumbing issues?

For about a week, the entrance of my apartment building was decorated with what I can only describe as non-traditional decorations. The guy who in the past has put up signs, was once again putting up signs near the elevator. I had no idea what they said, but I was leaving to go to work and really didn't care either. When I got home, there were a series of plastic bags taped to the wall. Perhaps because I had no idea what the signs and labels said, I looked rather intensely at the contents to try to figure out what the signs might say.

(As an aside, it's important to note that context is very important when you don't understand a language. While I was getting my hair cut yesterday, I honestly had no idea what the lady was saying, but because I was sitting in a barber shop, I could at least guess and assume what she was saying. If those same words were repeated on the street I would have had no context and therefore been completely unaware of what the lady was saying.)

Anyways, I soon figured out the context of the contents and labels. Shortly after the phrase, "is that a condom?" left my mouth, I realized that the rest of the contents in that bag (and the one next to it) were female sanitary pads. (Which look strangely different here. I have ideas as to why but that's not important or appropriate for here.)

After attempting to re-read the sign over the labels and plastic bags taped to the wall, I soon realized that the sign was talking about things that shouldn't be flushed down the toilet. Again, as I gained more context, I started to understand what the things were. Two of the other bags were what I can only assume were the non-dissolvable parts of many tampons. The third set of bags, as I was able to figure out through the wonders of an internet translator, were fur.

The point of this story is that for about a week I got to look at things that apparently shouldn't be flushed down the toilet every time I came home. (I won't post the pictures...)

1 comment:

  1. It has been quite a while since you shared. We thought you had lost your sence of writing and entertaining. Boy, were we wrong.

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