Bill Gates Free Museum, Water, and Toilets

Washington state, USA, top left, is where you can visit Bill Gates' free museum near the Seattle Center and Space Needle.

I am going to tell you about problems with toilets, how to solve them, and the Bill and Melinda Gates museum and exhibition center you can visit, and read about, in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Problems (and solutions)
Here's are some problems which have bothering me, and some of them are being solved by Bill and Melinda Gates.
1 Traveller's Tummy

Either you or your family or somebody you know has had diarrhoea on holiday, after a meal out at a restaurant. Hand washing can stop your re-infecting yourself. Those signs in UK toilets in restaurants are not just for patrons. The signs are a legal requirement to remind staff to wash their hands.(If the sign is in the toilet, probably staff use this toilet and there's no other one for staff.)

2 Piles

Somebody you know at some time has developed constipation or hemorrhoids (piles), nowadays thought to come from too long sitting down at home, work and on transport. (So how come my now retired gardener got piles? But he may be just one exception. Two things are 100 percent certain, as American Benjamin Franklin said, death and taxes. All other stats are mainly about probabilities and how near you can get to 100 percent, such as reducing fatalities.)

3 Toilet Safety
Women in India and other countries have been attacked when going out to the fields or open land at night because homes have no indoor toilets. More toilets are needed in homes and public buildings.
Toilets in Malaysia and some toilets in Singapore have kiddie low-level urinals. Often near the door of the Ladies. I saw a boy's urinal in the Ladies in the new station, Cashew station, in Singapore.

4 More Toilets Needed
Local authorities have not enough money to build toilets and are closing those which exist to save money on maintenance. Toilets should be a priority. Volunteers, paid toilets with one free cubicle (which was the norm in 1950s Great Britain when people would say euphemistically, 'I have to spend a penny'). Shopping malls and railway stations where the free communal toilet is paid for my all the shops and used by staff and customers, with hourly checks.

5 Toilets Are Being Built
Some organizations are building toilets in Africa. But in places without running water, you need to dispose of waste without open sewers, nor infecting water such as rivers, beaches, and the sea.

Story

Through a London branch of Toastmasters International, the Harrovians speakers' club in London, I met Apollo, who changed jobs and came back to tell us how he was helping a project to provide toilets in Africa. He said, "It's very gratifying. In my previous work, nobody thanked me. After I helped install a toilet in Africa, a happy woman came to me with tears in her eyes and said, 'Thank you'.

6 Urine and sewage must not pollute public places (such as lifts in skyscrapers and stairwells in car parks) so we need more public toilets. Singapore and the UK have has evidence from modern technology of people committing offences and have been able to take punitive and preventive measures.

All of us, every day, have personal needs. We all need a drink of water and a toilet throughout the day, at home and when travelling.

Nowadays people carry bottled water with them everywhere, adults and children. America is the best country for water.

The United Nations tells us we need to adopt a squatting position on the toilet, and to wash our hands, with soap, after going to the toilet and before eating. Once we have sorted out ourselves, we need to ensure that everybody worldwide has access to indoor toilets and hand washing. Who says?

Story
I came across this news in a roundabout way through my daily research. I was looking for events this month and throughout the year. I looked up the United Nations days of the year. I found two interesting pages, one which sounded abstract, on statistics, the Statistics Day, I've already heard a lot about water, Just A Drop charity at World Travel Market, but the other which seemed more purely practical, World Toilet Day. Statistics and toilets are connected.

Let's look at hand washing. I had seen reports that hand-washing cuts down on diarrhea, or re-infecting yourself.

Singapore Signs
I had also seen the signs in Singapore about washing your hands with soap, and how to wash the back of your hands and how long to do it. The Singapore newspapers, heavy and light, and the internet had run articles about hand washing and backup stories showed how to persuade people to wash their hands, and wash with soap and wash longer. (Oops - do you use soap EVERY time? From now on I will!

Answers (and more problems)
The United Nations.
Bill Gates is investing. We need new designs of toilets to cope with those who want to squat in places with only pedestal or throne toilets and opportunities to sit on a throne or pedestal in places with only squatting toilets.

Most places worldwide have only one type of toilet. Anybody from England in the old days (the 1950s to today) would have gasped and shouted to others in horror on trips overseas, "It's a French toilet!" Two or three or four decades later I noticed the French restaurants, hotels, and homes had mostly abandoned their squat toilets. The French tourists in Singapore, finding a squat toilet at the end of the row of cubicles in the ladies, said, "Oh la la! Toilette Turque!" (Oh, no! A Turkish style toilet.)

How does this affect me as a traveller? Or as an armchair traveller researching at home, somebody in the tourist industry, organizing a meeting, choosing a venue, giving to a charity, spreading the news on the media? What about giving to charity, paying tax, local government?

What worries me about the Daily Mail article headline is that it spreads the seeds of doubt in the mind of those who think you should not bother to wash hands.

I have had a nurse in a doctor's surgery tell me that it's pointless to wash her hands before giving me a blood test 'because germs are in the air all around you' and her supervisor at a hospital had told her not to waste time on washing herself and the patients. A year later I got a different set of stories story about all the precautions and guarantees, that the needle for each patient was new, and she washed her hands between patients etc.

I caught myself infected by the doubt and thinking about washing hands, "Oh, it doesn't matter". I am glad to re-read the research and remind myself that: yes, it does matter.

One study purports to show that squatting improves the speed and ease of going to the toilet.

After a member of my family had what could have been life-threatening lymphoma, four of us spend hours every week exchanging emails on academic studies about the statistics of recovery and different treatments.

***

The good news is

1 Bill Gates is encouraging and investing in research to improve and distribute toilets worldwide.

2 You can visit his FREE museum on the subject in Seattle, Washington. 

FREE MUSEUM TO VISIT IN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON USA

VISITOR CENTRE

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center
440 Fifth Ave N.
Seattle, WA 98109
(206) 709-3100 ext. 7100
Open Tues-Sat
10 am - 5 pm
Admission free

GO TO PAGE TO SEE Nov 2nd 2017 Discovery Center Launch Party 5-8 pm pacific time.

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Visitor-Center

Read on:
You may be interested to check out for yourself the two pages I looked at - as well as the article in the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3830867/Why-NOT-wash-hands-soap-GOOD-thing-health-allergy-expert-explains.html

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer
One of my next posts will be on what to see in Seattle, Washington. Please share links to your favourite posts. You can follow and comment on this website and contact me on Facebook messenger

***
PS

I then remembered an article in the Daily Mail and went to look it up. My view is that the headline is misleading. the United Nations figures are very clear. So are the facts in the body of the Daily Mail article.

The United Nations report and Statistics figures show that about 1 in 6 children in the early 1800s and in some of the under developed third world countries die before the age of five today. That is far higher than the numbers dying from nut allergies.

It doesn't mean we should allow people to die from nut allergies. But nor does it mean we should stop washing our hands, as the article said, for the very young and fragile, the elderly, those in the food service industries, should still wash hands.

Looking at the statistics, as well as from general knowledge, you can see that survival rates in maternity hospitals, hospitals in general, are statistically improved by hand washing. The Un statistics show that the death rates and illness rates go down dramatically with hand washing. Hand washing reduces diarrhea as well as breathing problems. Ability to thrive and work depends on the brain, the lungs, and the heart. Diarrhoea affects not only the circulation of the blood but the lungs.

Inspecting meat by the Glatt kosher inspectors involves checking the lungs to see if an animal was healthy. Now I can see why.

STATISTICS VALIDATION ASIDE
The statistician in the family was the final arbiter of the conclusions. We looked first at the credentials. 
Was this somebody's opinion? 
Did the researcher have more than one person studied to prove the conclusion. 
('My Dad did x, such as smoking, and survived,' is not a guarantee to other people. Why? Because Dad might be the only survivor of 999 who died doing the same thing.)

If genetics plays a part, somebody else's Dad might have a strong constitution. People who are sick need to know what prevention and cure treatments help people like patients who are already ill and have different genetics or inherited characteristic and constitution. 

We were always looking at: 
how many people were studied; 
over what period of time; 
were the results greater than the normal statistical variation which would normally occur by chance, from the toss of dice; 
and were the same results found later by other studies elsewhere - 
plus how recent was the research?  

Was there a control group? If eating bananas or baked beans happened in countries which had WWII, that might seem to prove that baked beans or bananas created WWII. But if eating bananas before and after WWWII, or in countries not involved in WWII, you can see that bananas did not cause WWII. (The same applies to praying for rain, which keeps failing until eventually weather changes independently of the prayers, and predicting whether you will have a boy or girl and giving the money back to the 50% who had a boy and could be bothered to complain and ask for money back.) Did recent studies back up the earliest ones?

***

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer

One of my next posts will be on what to see in Seattle, Washington. Please share links to your favourite posts. You can follow and comment on this website and contact me on Facebook messenger. Please look at my books on Amazon.com and Lulu.com If you buy one and find me I can sign it for you or your friend and write a personal message.

Excuse me, I just need to go and 'spend a penny'.
Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem - which cities are capitals?

Problem
Which cities are capitals? The word capital is confusing. It evokes an emotive reaction. We use the word capital to mean excellent. Capital also means the head. Often the capital city is the administrative head, the seat of government.

That leaves opportunities for other cities to be better known. Sometimes one city is older, more historic.

The former capital has the history, but stays smaller, such as Cracow in Poland, has the photogenic old, historic square. Warsaw, the big city, has a delightful old quarter, rebuilt, nice and clean, like a theme park.

When the government spends its money on its favoured city, the city expands and has museums added. Sometimes the small former capital has the character. The new big city is too big.

For a long time as a tourist, as well as a resident, in America, I preferred San Francisco to Los Angeles. Yes, Los Angeles has: a great theme park, and a great ship. Plus Avenue of the stars. But San Francisco has the bay and the bridge and the prison tour and the trams and the crooked street.

Driving across the border to Canada, or visiting as a tourist, I preferred Montreal to Toronto. Yet later, Toronto grew and the museums and attractions grew and Montreal became smaller, a relative backwater. In the 1960s, Montreal was the place.

In the next century, the French speaking only Montreal was not such an attraction for those who spoke English. The Chinese restaurant owners and workers struggled with French and moved to Toronto. So did the tourists.

I speak fluent French, although Parisian style French. I pronounce yes in French as 'wee', Parisian style, instead of 'way' which is Canadian style. French speaking Montreal seemed to have shrunk. Without English street signs and English speaking people it's harder to get around.

Whilst Toronto had grown. Montreal was now a one day or one weekend city, second on the list, instead of the big city, the big attraction. The place I flew into and out of was still Toronto, but now I planned to stay there at the start, not head straight off to Montreal.

But what is the capital of Canada? Not Montreal, not Toronto. The administrative capital is Ottawa. When I went there I visited some interesting museums. Everybody in government and public buildings had to be bilingual, to keep everybody happy and comply with their laws. When I was living outside Canada I had hardly heard of Ottawa and could not have said it was the capital.

Russia has had its capital moved. Moscow and Petersburg or Stalingrad.

Cambodia is another place where you have your attention drawn to two cities. The capital is Pnom Penh. But the major tourist destination is Siem Reap, for Ankor Wat and other ancient temples.

Answer
Let's make a list.

Story 1
I first discovered this problem, that the capital is not the big city with all the tourist attractions, in the USA when I went to live there. New York is the big city and probably the one most British people would fly into. But the capital is Washington DC. Not to be confused with Washington state over on the West.

Washington DC was chosen as being not he borders or the north and south, so as to avoid flak from the side not chosen if one side was chosen to have the capital. The result was the building of a new city.

Washington DC has lots of tourist attractions. The huge Smithsonian Museum complex. The monuments to the presidents.

Australia is much the same, a new city became the capital. Canberra. It has a fine museum to the war. And another museum. A Parliament building. I visited them on a day trip by coach from Sydney. But that's the problem, I sort of remember, but that's all. They were worth visiting.

However, all the history is in other places, notably Sydney. You see far more attractions and character in Sydney, photographic, identifiable, memorable landmarks: the bridge, the opera house.

New Zealand presents another problem.

In my previous post I listed the countries of the world and asked you to list as many cities as you could. How did you do.

(If you haven't tried that, do it and come back.)

You are not competing against me or anybody else. You are competing against yourself, trying to increase your knowledge and your score.

Here's what I guessed:

I looked at the list of countries, then went to bed and tried to remember countries whose capitals I knew well.
I wrote the letters of the alphabet vertically. I folded the paper vertically to make two columns, and wrote the countries on the left and the capitals on  the right. I filled in these:

Afghanistan - ?
Algeria - Algiers? Not currently a major tourist destination.
Australia - Canberra
Austria - Vienna
Bangladesh - ?
Belgium - Brussels
Belarus - Minsk
Bolivia - ?
Brazil - Brasilia (not Buenos Aires)
Bulgaria - ? Plovdiv?
Cambodia Pnom Penh
Chile - ?
China - Beijing (but my favourite city is Shanghai)
Czech Republic - Prague
Denmark - Copenhagen
Egypt - Alexandria
England - London
Estonia ?
France - Paris
Germany - Bonn (But Berlin, former capital of East Germany? is now a great attraction.)
Greece - (My first thought was Athens. But I remember going to Thessaloniki? I'll go for Thessaloniki. (But I'll guess that Athens is the bigger city and the main tourist stop.)
Hungary - Budapest
Isle of Man - Manx?
Israel - Jerusalem. But tourists fly into Bauhaus (art deco) Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is new, founded in 1909.
Italy - Rome
Japan - Tokyo (Not Osaka?)
Jordan - Amman
Latvia - Riga?
Lebanon - ?
Lithuania - ?
Mexico - Mexico City
Morocco -
Nepal - Kathmandu
Netherlands - Amsterdam is the main tourist area. Is the capital Rotterdam?
New Zealand - Wellington?
Norway - Oslo
Pakistan - (Lahore, pretty city on the coast in the south?)
Peru - Lima
Philippines - pass. I've been there. The capital escapes my mind. I've been to the capital of the south island too. Maybe that is the admin capital.
Poland - Warsaw. (Previously Cracow)
Portugal - Lisbon. (Previously Porto?)
Romania - Bucharest
Russia - Moscow. (Previously St Petersburg; Stalingrad.) Scotland - Edinburgh.
Saudi Arabia - (Mecca and Medina are both religious tourism attractions.)
Scotland  - Edinburgh (both the capital and the historic city). Edinburgh has the castle, the Tattoo, literary trails. Industrial Glasgow is larger with good art museums.
Serbia -
Slovakia - (Dubrovnik? Mostar?)
Slovenia -
Singapore - Singapore (city state)
Spain - Madrid (certainly a major city, but is the admin capital Barcelona?)
Sweden -
Switzerland - is it Bern? Not Geneva nor Zurich?
Syria ?
Taiwan - Taipei
Tunisia - Tunis
Turkey - Ankara. (Istanbul is the main city with the Blue Mosque?)
Ukraine - Kiev. (Another main tourist city is Lvov on west the border, a third, south, is Odessa.)
Venezuela - Caracas?
Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh city and Saigon?
Wales - Cardiff

I have not included: P a r a g u a y; U r a g u a y; Uzbekistan; Turkmenistan, Caribbean islands; Pacific islands, Mongolia.
See previous posts for lists of capitals and countries.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.