Into the Asylums

Hospital 1:

An imposing Victorian brick building that brings the word "asylum" instantly to mind on first sight. This architecture and the dated building features inside, on some level undermine attempts to update the way we treat the differently mentalled. It is a grim place where institutional power is wielded and the abberant of our society are smashed into a medically-defined round hole with a bloody great hammer made of drugs.

Sorry, wrong blog. For more on that see
"mybiasedpoliticalopinionsaboutmentalhealthservicesthatyoullprobablydisagreewith.blogspot.com"

For reasons not related to my sanity I am in this hospital. Being the sort of person who passes urine, I visited the facilities. Here I was met with:

Now in keeping with ancient radiators and sash windows that between them make it impossible for the building to maintain a comfortable temperature, here we have a delightfully retro design. In the photo below you can see the deathless, and punctuation-free, phrase "on touch off." I took a photo, noted that the drier didn't work, and wondered if an enterprising patient had sabotaged the drier as a comment about the fact that they, like the drier had now been rendered, were powerless.

On revisiting the facilities I realised I had missed a vital clue - on touch off was a button! I had viewed it as a strange flowchart or a process because of which I had assumed first the drier would come on then I would touch something or other and then the drier would turn off. If it had said touch, on, touch, off I might have understood.


Or maybe just put a bloody circle with a line at the bottom like every other power switch? Perhaps I'm easily baffled.

If you read this blog regularly Tom then you know how I feel about buttons vs sensors. But the brilliance of on touch off is it just carries on until you make it stop. If I so wished I could keep my hands under there for 10 minutes. Why not go mad? An hour. 2 hours! Drain the national grid for my dry hands! 

Temperature and power were adaqute enough but factoring in this control and for being the only drier I've seen with a Zen Koan for a power button this is a drier that will be swirling round my head like a cryptic crossword clue for many days yet. 

Also folks witness my first video for the blog which although terrible quality demonstrates on touch off nicely:

Hospital 2:

An imposing Victorian brick building that brings the word "asylum" instantly to mind on first sight. This architecture and the dated building features inside, on some level undermine attempts to update the way we treat the differently mentalled. It is a grim place where institutional power is wielded and the abberant of our society are smashed into a medically-defined round hole with a bloody great hammer made of drugs.

For reasons not related to my sanity I am in this hospital. Being the sort of person who passes urine, I visited the facilities. Here I was met with the Heatrae Sadia No Touch which aside from sounding like a stripper and the standard strip club instruction had some lovely pictorial instructions which are better shown than explained. Thus I took a photo, and then noted that the drier didn't work, and wondered if an enterprising patient had sabotaged the drier as a comment about the fact that they, like the drier had now been rendered, were powerless.

This last picture depicts one dryer feature that hasn't come up yet on this blog - the duel outlet that allows the user at a flip to dry face or hands. Being a gentleman of sound breeding and character naturally I would never lower myself to washing my face in a public lavatory, rendering this feature useless to me.


But how do you feel about this dear readers? I've had no comments on this blog yet (almost as if was a blog about a triviality) so please. Comment below. Duel outlets for changing between face and hands:.Yay or nay? The forum starts here.