So, while I might not be so poetic in my overall description, Niku's story about driving home from Dallas rendered memories of a little excursion I took with the family during our last stint in China.

I was working for Texas Utilities (TXU) and running their JV power plant in a eastern coast province about three hours south of Shanghai. As part of my job operating the plant, I was required to make almost daily decisions about purchases of coal, tons and tons of coal.

Of course, being Chinese, the coal vendors were always looking to work an angle to get a better deal and the one broker was a woman from a company in Shandong province. Soon after my family and I had returned to China after our summer vacation, the lady coal broker comes to my office and wants to know where I have been. I tell her we were in the US on vacation and she says that I have to promise to visit her offices in Shandong over the coming Chinese holiday at the beginning of October. She promised not only that but beautiful beaches, a tour of the coal mine, and a visit to Confucious old home. My wife immediately said she wanted to do it.

So, the stage is set for how we flew north to Shandong province to the city of Qingdao. That is where the broker met me and my family and where we stayed for a night and then under gray skys visited the Butterfly Pavillion early the next morning. See, the thing is, when the Chinese are footing the bill, they really do expect you to kind of enjoy yourself. So, the night before, me being a lustful man, I order FRESH OYSTERS from the hotel restaurant (believing that they come from the clear cold waters between Qingdao and Korea), 24 of them.

Well, in the morning when we were visiting the Butterfly Pavillion, I first began to feel the rumblings of what I knew could be a very, very bad case of food poisoning, but being positive, and loaded with Imodium, I figured this too would pass.

That was before the four hour ride from heck in the back of a CHinese mini-van dodging vehicles and bikes and burros. Along the way, we stopped here, there and everywhere, and while I could feel the growing pressure in my abdomen, there was no real feeling that I needed the facilities as of yet, but something about that trickle effect in my gut told me I was headed for a medical facility.

As we continued to drive, every bump in the road, every time the vehicle swerved, it felt like I was riding on the inside of a cement mixer with half a bottle of habanero sauce in my gut. The fire move around and a round, by rectum began to burn, and the backpressure that began to build had me twisting and turning to prevent leakage into my shorts.

On arrival at the OFFICES of the coal broker, we were sat down and they immediately decided that we should sit and drink warm coke. Now, I am not sure of the chemical composition of warm Coka-Cola is to cold but I am quite sure that vinegar and baking soda have the same reaction.

I asked for the nearest restroom (not most modern) and took the instructions and made a break for it feeling a teeny squirt release between my cheeks. Time was nearly up!!

As I located the RESTROOM, I had failed to consider two CRITICAL pieces of personal knowledge about China. 1) 99% of Chinese toilets are 'squatters' (small commodes that you drop trow, straddle, and squat over with your backside hanging over the 'drop hole'. and 2) that Chinese do not provide toilet paper in their toilets, and if they do, it is in the form of torn up newspapers.

Being as I was seconds from coating my levi's with a mixture of rotten oysters, bile, and other concotted bacterial wonders, I determined that returning to the brokers office to ask for TP, wait while they looked, and then make my way back to the head was not going to be possible.

Now, for those of you who haven't tried to squat and take a dump at the same time, it is an art, you can't just 'drop trow' and go, you have to drop your trow just far enough to allow your backside and other parts to clear your clothing, but not so far as to be in the target line for urinating.

I was in the process when the mental powers that had prevented the eruption of my bowels began to fail. I managed to get clear of my clothes, and to get into a half squat when what might only be visualized as a basketball size balloon full of golden colored baby food was pricked by a pin. The thin, yet highly viscous semi-solid exploded from my backside with a very audible 'pop' and percussion that was audible to all in the brokers office.

Now, with the pressure relieved, the problem was figuring out how I was going to clean up after the HAZMAT incident. With no TP, no torn up newspaper, I was stuck there straddling the squatter with gold goo all up my backside, up the wall, on the floor around my shoes, inside the comode, outside, and all over the inside of both legs of my levi's.

In a sink just outside the door, I found a small face towel, long ago forgotten and dried in a "U" shape from hanging over the sink. Of course, there was no water in the sink the pipes rusted out previously.

I continued to search doing the poo-waddle with my pants halfway down, my butt hanging out covered in doo-doo, and sweating profusely as the second wave began to build. It was about this time that I started to come to my senses.

I had my cell phone in my pocket, my secretary had come with us on the trip, so I simply returned to the scene of the crime for round two (what more damage could I do?) and sent her a text requesting that my sons bring some TP and a mop and bucket to the restroom.

Well, the request could have simply been granted, but the broker thought that I must have not been satisfied with her services, so she insisted that she make the inspection herself. On the knock to the door (assuming my boys were there), I opened it up and weren't we both surprised!!!

Needless to say, the kicker was the resonating secondary explosion which only expanded the scope of my chemical spill and now sent a mass of pollution heading towards the doorway as it tried to find the floor drain immediately behind the broker.

But, true to the nature of many Chinese women who survived the Cultural Revolution, she was a tough gal, and didn't seem as phased by the entire scene as she was that I was sick on HER trip. She immediately had her assistant fetch buckets from her house, demanded I strip and hand her my clothes, washed me down tossing bucket after bucket of cold water at me from the waist to my feet until I was clean then handed me a towel and a blanket and personally hand washed my jeans, under garments and socks in the aforementioned sink (which amazingly had water if you turned a magical faucet underneath an eve above the sink).

My wife stood by silently listening to my secretary translate the entire course of events back to her, and never attempted to intercede. She suddenly started laughing as my secretary translated the word of our frustrated host as she shook her head and asked "why didn't he just was for the modern restroom, instead of the NEAREST?"

But you know, I am sure I had worse days.. just not sure when.