No shit!

I was having a great time at Newton Hawker Centre the other night, slurping my prawn noodles and overpriced sugarcane juice, when I needed to take a leak. So I skipped (skipped, skipped) to the loo but at the entrance I was singing no happy tune, turning back instead in disgust.

No, faeces wasn't pouring out of the cubicles -- it was because I had to pay to enter. It struck me as highly ironic. Waste discharge is an essential part of human life, why should we be charged for it?

To ask us to fork out pee-money is akin to saying we should start paying for every breath we take, every move we make. Unlike The Police's famous tune, our Home Team would be unable to be watching you. Just as how I breathe and move as I like, I could very well exercise free will in where I pee -- if everyone started defecating on the streets, the government would jump to pay people to use the public toilet. Granted, one would be lunatically anti-social to do as the dogs do, but on a theoretical level, toilet entry everywhere should be free.

Certainly, unlike consuming air or moving, processing effluent costs money. But to attract bladderful passers-by to their affluent shopping trap is reason enough for The Marriott or CapitaLand to scrap the 10 cent rule. Logically, this practice then should extend to other capitalist sinkholes, like HDB retail centres and neighourhood food centres. An appropriate government agency, be it NEA or HDB, needs to step in to redress the discrepancy. They could either absorb the cost as part of national environmental management, or charge the businesses on site a monthly toilet maintenance fee.

If the government shirks this responsibility and we still have to pay to enter, the HDB/food centre toilet management entrepreneurs really must do a much better job than their current shameful effort; strangely, these charged toilets tend to be dirtier and smellier than their free-to-enter counterparts.

Anyway I feel kind of weird, ask me to pay 10 cents also talk so much. But to reprise the hackneyed phrase, it really is about the principle of the issue. And if this disconcordant practice is not resolved, my processed sugarcane juice might really end up on Newton's public sidewalks :)

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PS: The Japanese, upon visiting the house of their host, are known to check out their toilet early on in their stay. To them, from observing the restroom one can surmise the cleanliness, aesthetics and soul of their hosts' whole house and indeed, their hosts themselves. So let's all please keep our toilets -- both the free-to-enter or the wanky 10 cents type -- reflective of the gracious population we aspire to be...

... or we would be just as rotten as this.