I read this week that Singapore is hosting the World Toilet Summit next week. Apparently some five hundred delegates from around the world will be meeting to share their thoughts on the future of flush toilets and the advances in technology that are likely to impact the humble lavatory in this new and exciting millennium.
The event organizers, the Restroom Association of Singapore are also keen to enhance their countries reputation as the clean restroom capital of the world, a position which is no doubt keenly contested.
China is sending a small army of rest room professionals to the summit. They hope to improve their notoriously unpleasant public restrooms before the 2008 Olympics, when, doubtless, the cream of the world's sporting buttocks will be in a position to judge them personally.
Of particular note at the conference will be a display of the very latest themed toilets. No longer is the restroom a mere functional adjunct to the main business of day-to-day living. Now, with the advent of thematic lavatories, we can enjoy our time in the smallest room of the house perhaps role-playing as a Persian prince, or a space adventurer. One such restroom is themed with plants and fake rock walls. It is built, the designers assure the world, to enhance an outdoors ambience; to make the visitor feel as though they are outside in a lush and verdant forest.
Right.
Because, Lord knows, I'd much rather be lurking in the bushes that actually in the privacy of say, a *room*. Perhaps future versions will have automatic rustling noises in the undergrowth and animatronic fauna, peeping out between the fronds. With any luck, they might even build in an occasional surprise bear attack, just to help those people who haven't been consuming enough fiber and don't like the taste of syrup of figs.
For myself, I rather like the idea of a spaceship themed loo, if I have to have one at all. I can just see myself donning a space helmet and gleefully pressing the big red button to 'open the airlock.' With any luck they'll have a full set of flight controls too.
Then I'll finally have an excuse for all those joystick innuendoes.