Squat Sedia!

Yeah, I know. It should be spelt as SQUAD. But some of my former instructors who were literally askar Darjah 6 wrote things like SQUAT HUT. But that’s far better than some local university students who joined the ROTU and wrote SKOT NOMBOR SATU and so on.

Anyway, I’m not going to write about my past life in the military. I am going to write about the first word up there:

SQUAT

How long can you squat?

The longest I have was when I was sitting for the SPM exam. I think it was the Ugama Islam paper. The previous night I had a carton of spoilt orange milk mix. And the session lasted almost 25 minutes. I know I couldn’t stand straight after that. It was excruciating.

A typical squat toilet would look like this:

When you have a large tummy like me, squat toilets such as this, would be the second choice. The seated toilet would be heaven. But at least, the squat toilet above would allow me to have a better feet-position – wider stance. Better stability, and I can allow my stomach to rest, and expand and contract freely during the “shit birth” process. It’s like having your feet on stir-ups in the labour room, only vertical instead of horizontal.

However, one of the booths on my office floor has this squat toilet, much like the ones in Thailand. The same as the above, but instead of being sunken into the floor to give more feet-area, this one is raised. Here is an example:

Now, a person like me would have trouble to maintain both feet on the feet-place. My tummy is just going to push both my knees apart. So, if I have to use this booth, I’d have to shore the walls so I don’t fall off. Not exactly comfortable, but if a man has to do it, a man will have to do it. Instead of spending hours dumping crap, I’d want my crap to all come out in one go so I could get up and leave asap! So, I would avoid this booth totally if I could because I know by the time I had to leave, I wouldn’t have been able to dump all I wanted.

Yesterday, my boss from my old office, who also happens to be the Managing Director of this present office I’m in, dropped by with another colleague of mine for a meeting. By the time we were done, I had to rush to the toilet. At the same time, a guy, bigger than I, entered the toilet behind me. I got the seated toilet (there were other seated ones but they did not have any water pipes in them), so had to enter the one with the raised squat-toilet. And from my previous postings, you should have an idea of the duration I normally spend in the toilet. I can read a magazine from front to back, or three Nat Geo magazine articles equivalent. I could hear this guy groaning – it was either he was shitting bricks, or he was giving birth. But I would settle for the conclusion that it was difficult for him to push his crap out with his knees squeezing his tummy at the same time. Had I been a minute late, I would be suffering that torture.

By the time I was done, he was still in there. And that was like 20 minutes. I washed my hands, used the machine to dry them – still, he was inside, groaning. The poor soul. I wonder if he could get up at all after the session.

Better him than me!