This is why Razor has my son pegged for an engineer: the kid was the only one who could figure out how to flush the toilet in the first hotel where we stayed in Israel.
Ok, so it's one of the reasons. And probably not the best one since although I'm not altogether sure of an engineer's exact day to day job description, I somehow doubt that they're called upon very often to figure out how to flush toilets. Even foreign toilets with funny flushers.
In my defense the flushy thing, while in plain view, looked some sort of tissue dispenser. It was similar to this flushy thing: except the two buttons fit together to form an oval and the oval wasn't actually part of the toilet but was part of the counter over the toilet. It just never even occurred to me to push on a tissue dispenser to get a toilet to flush.
I won't mention where I took the above picture, because as it turns out cameras weren't actually allowed in that building. The important thing to notice is that there are TWO flushy buttons, a high flush and a low flush.
The flushy thing on this one looks just like a US toilet, except that there are two handles, a high and a low flush: And then on this last one you can see the flushy thing on top of the toilet, although it's hard to tell there's a high and a low flush: Actually, the shape of the buttons on that one is very similar to the flushy buttons that confused my daughter and I so much that we needed a potential engineer to help us flush a toilet, but you must understand that the buttons weren't attached to the toilet itself, so we aren't as inept as...okay! Okay. So we were spectacularly inept at flushing a toilet. Whatever.
As I understand it, the high and low flush is designed to save water but there was only ONE toilet I where I could tell a real difference between the high and the low flush, and that was only because the low flush flat out didn't work.
At any rate, this concludes my series on the toilets of Israel. I'd like to stomp my foot and pout and say that I'd quit milking my Israel vacation for material when and if People in the Sun quit milking his, but he's got a cute baby so what can you do?
Awww come on now... I need to know all I can about Israeli toilets. Never know when it can be useful.
Please do not stop talking about your Israel trip! Your blog is as close as I am EVER going to get.
There are about a dozen engineers where I work and only about two of them (the mechanical guys, I think) know how to put toilet paper on the dispenser.
So, it sounds like your future engineer has a head start on most.
Oh my... I never would have figured it out... and how embarrassing would it have been to actually have to ask for help to flush??? Gah!
I guess I'd better stick around home.
SJ - How about this? Very few public restrooms featured either paper towels although some contained a working dryer. But the toilet paper was tough enough to use as a paper towel in those bathrooms that lacked both!
Thanks Christine! Of course sou'll be sorry six years from now when I've posted the last of my 942 pictures!
Awww c'mon Lotus! It's not EVEN as foreign as the Korean toilets!
What would we do if you weren't here to educate us on such important matters? They just don't teach this stuff in school!
Ingrid - Our education system is severely lacking, don't you think?!?! There I was, a college graduate unable to flush an Israeli toilet!
I think you should keep the toilet stories coming..they are really educational.
Glad I finally made it over here!! Been catching up on cats and toilets! It took ME a while to figure out the low/high flush thing out in South Africa but once you do, it's all just variations on a theme.
Yeah, your arrows got better. Like you said on my blog (or something similar) - "If 1 outta six people take photos of restrooms.."
I've seen the toilets with the one button at the top here in the states.
We should have the two button option. Some people can't get all their excrement down in one flush. So maybe a high power flush will take care of that situation.
We've got similar here in France. They've been standard for years.