I was in Seoul for KHF 2024, a healthcare event, staying at Hotel in 9. The hotel was great. The toilet was hi-tech.
Perhaps a bit too high-tech for me. I couldn’t figure out how to let the water through on the sink.
After 15 minutes of a hard struggle, I finally asked ChatGPT “How do I open the thing that’s closing the sink to allow the water to go down?”
Here’s the thing with “maturity” (aka age, wisdom, experience, grey hair). It took me 15 minutes to realize I could use an LLM to solve this problem. Despite me supposedly being an “LLM psychologist.” I suspect the school children of today won’t waste even a minute before checking ChatGPT.
On the other hand, if you DO know the answer to my question (without asking an LLM — since ChatGPT gave me the perfect answer at a glance), I bow down to your wisdom and experience!
To open the sink drain in your image, you might have a pop-up drain stopper, which operates by pressing down on the stopper itself to toggle it between open and closed positions. Try pressing directly down on the stopper; it should click and either pop up or pop down, allowing water to drain. If this method does not work, there may be a lever or knob elsewhere on or near the faucet that controls the stopper’s position.
Next, I accidentally pressed the emergency button in the toilet.
I was smarter this time, unlike earlier.
I asked ChatGPT which (unhelpfully) told me:
The panel in the image with the label “EMERGENCY” appears to be an emergency call button in a bathroom, likely designed to alert someone in case of a medical or other urgent situation. Typically, these buttons cannot be turned off as they are meant to be always available for safety purposes.
If the emergency system has been triggered accidentally or is malfunctioning, it is advisable to contact the maintenance team or property management to handle the issue. If it’s a false alarm, they can reset the system and ensure it’s functioning correctly for actual emergencies.
I called the reception who couldn’t understand a word of what I said. “Do you want water?” they asked when I told them “I pressed the emergency button in the bathroom.”
So, I went to ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode (I’m so grateful it was enabled last week) and said, “Translate everything I say into Korean.”
Then I said, “I accidentally pressed the emergency button in the bathroom. I just wanted to let you know that there is no emergency.”
It very happily spoke out, in bold, loud Korean, “화장실에서 응급버튼을 실수로 눌렀습니다. 비상상황이 아니라는 점 알려려 드립니다.”
The receptionist laughed, said, “Ah, OK, no problem.”
The joys of AI!