Uncle Patrick’s Toilet Dilemma: Lion or Lioness?
March 31st 2008 21:00
Unlike others in my family, my Uncle Patrick was lucky enough to finish high school in Hong Kong, meaning he could read and write English very well. (I say lucky as education is costly in Hong Kong so most of my female relatives were forced to finish high school early so they could get jobs to put the males through school.)
When my uncle decided to migrate to Australia in the late seventies, he thought he would brush up on his English so he wouldn’t need to ask people for help. One of the first things he made sure he knew was the various words for toilets: lavatory, male, mens, gents etc. That put him in good stead until he went to a zoo. Instead of seeing a symbol of a man or the word male/mens/gents he was confronted with the words LION and LIONESS. For once, Uncle Patrick was stumped. He had never come across these words before in his English dictionary and was unsure of which one to use.
When he told me this story, he had me roaring (sorry) in laughter. He then told me about one of his cooks who fell asleep on the train between Newcastle and Sydney – the poor sucker had been asleep for six hours and when he woke up he found he was back at Newcastle.
Uncle Patrick also told me about the first time he tried to use public transport in Australia. He knew how to spell Sydney but didn’t know that you had to get off at Central station to go to Chinatown which is near the CBD or that none of the train stops around the CBD had Sydney as part of their name. So when he saw a train heading for Sydenham, he naturally thought that was the train to catch to go to Chinatown. Imagine his shock when he hopped off at Sydenham station and was greeted by suburbia instead of skyscrapers.
But back to the lions. Years later I got a job at ING. You know, the company that has a lion logo. I told my sister there were three types of toilets at ING: one for lions, one for lionesses and another for lion cubs. My sister never believed that story and rightly accused me of basing it on Uncle Patrick’s story.
When my uncle decided to migrate to Australia in the late seventies, he thought he would brush up on his English so he wouldn’t need to ask people for help. One of the first things he made sure he knew was the various words for toilets: lavatory, male, mens, gents etc. That put him in good stead until he went to a zoo. Instead of seeing a symbol of a man or the word male/mens/gents he was confronted with the words LION and LIONESS. For once, Uncle Patrick was stumped. He had never come across these words before in his English dictionary and was unsure of which one to use.
When he told me this story, he had me roaring (sorry) in laughter. He then told me about one of his cooks who fell asleep on the train between Newcastle and Sydney – the poor sucker had been asleep for six hours and when he woke up he found he was back at Newcastle.
Uncle Patrick also told me about the first time he tried to use public transport in Australia. He knew how to spell Sydney but didn’t know that you had to get off at Central station to go to Chinatown which is near the CBD or that none of the train stops around the CBD had Sydney as part of their name. So when he saw a train heading for Sydenham, he naturally thought that was the train to catch to go to Chinatown. Imagine his shock when he hopped off at Sydenham station and was greeted by suburbia instead of skyscrapers.
But back to the lions. Years later I got a job at ING. You know, the company that has a lion logo. I told my sister there were three types of toilets at ING: one for lions, one for lionesses and another for lion cubs. My sister never believed that story and rightly accused me of basing it on Uncle Patrick’s story.
Photo by Trisha M Shears. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
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