Nothing makes you appreciate first-world amenities quite like having them taken away suddenly. For example: running water. I went to work this morning (as one does every weekday morning) and turns out the entire campus has lost water pressure. This is not because of any maintenance fault of the university, but rather the City and County of San Francisco. Our facilities staff had to call public utilities for assistance. I know you're staring at an enormous fiscal hole, San Francisco, but shortchanging SF State on water is not the way to save money.
When there isn’t enough water pressure to flush toilets, it becomes enough of a biohazard to send everybody home. Thank heavens for modern work safety regulations! (Apparently, OSHA states that if there are working bathrooms within a 10 minute walk, then it is okay to continue working.)The modern us have it so incredibly nice. Think back to when even the highest of kings and queens do not have access to such luxurious plumbing. We are literally living better than royalties of old. No amount of money back then could buy the standards we have now. It’s humbling to think about.
I greatly appreciate automatic hot water out of every faucet tap in the home (here in America) whenever I go back to China. There, it’s typical for older apartment buildings to only have hot water for the bathroom shower head. Can you imagine washing your face with cold water in the dead of winter? (I don’t have to imagine it, because that is exactly what I will be doing a month from now.) Meanwhile, here in the States we open the faucet and wait for water to get hot in the morning…
The living standards are pretty high here, and I think it’s useful to not take it for granted once in a while. And perhaps, to not be so wasteful of it either.
In nomine Patris…