::A Geek in Korea::

Huzzah! Our new toilet seat electronic bidet has arrived!

My wife had spent several hours researching different brands, and was trying to decide which online shopping mega-site  had the best deal. She called the company that made the bidet itself, and they offered a better deal than any of the resellers at GMarket. She was annoyed that she had to spent a long period of time looking for a great deal only to order directly from the company, but she ended up getting two years of filters for free, a substantial discount on top of the free stuff, and next day delivery.

We had a premature installation attempt yesterday. The delivery person had to set up the system, but after unpackaging the seat he discovered he brought the wrong type. Our seat was supposed to have a “dryer” feature which the model he brought lacked. Also, his delivery note had no mention of our extra two years of water filters. He repackaged the bidet with no worries and said he’d return with the proper delivery.

The package arrived today, and after a five minute pro installation it was ready to use. The bidet seat sits on top of the normal toilet bowl. It draws water from the sink line pipe, then filters it. The bidet installer told us that the person that did the electric work gave us a steep discount. He was impressed we were able to get the electrical plug installed as cheaply as we did.

There are fifteen buttons, and an entire guide book dedicated to it’s operation. My wife read through how to use it in Korea and gave me some directions as to what most of the buttons did. There are buttons for water strength, water location, tempo, sensors for using the seat, woman and child settings, a fan for drying afterwards…etc. I knew all but one or two buttons after she explained it to me. It’s an incredible feat of engineering to squeeze all this in such a small space. You can customize the water stream exactly how you want it, or you can go with some of the preset features.

It’s important to know which buttons is which however, and despite the helpful illustrated buttons I had a few problems with the operations earlier in the day. The first time I used it, I went through the trouble of moving the stream with pin point accuracy. I decided that was a lot of work for every time I needed to sit down. I thought I’d just try the automatic “macro” key instead the next time I needed to get clean.

I thought I had hit the “macro” key so that I got a water stream, then a dry, but instead got hit with a powerful blast of water that felt like a jaccuzi jet aimed at my ass. It was strong enough that I considered getting up and risking get shot in the back if the seat sensor didn’t shut down the water in time. Eventually I got control of the proper keys to back down the intensity to a more comfortable level as I had before using the manual controls.

My wife told me I must have hit the “enema” button instead of the “macro” button next to it. Whoops. Next time I’m going to be extra careful before I press a button, it’s my ass on the line.