Sunday, September 25, 2005

Fathers Not Welcomed in Suria KLCC

I was in KLCC Suria recently with my 3 children - including my youngest one year old son. My wife was away and I thought I could go hang out with the kids. I packed the diapers, the feeding bottles, change of clothings, milk...the works for my son. My daughters could manage as they are already eight and nine.

After several hours there, I realized that I had to change my son's diapers. He did his "big business". I followed the sign which was suppose to lead me to a diaper changing room. There was just one problem - ALL such rooms are in the WOMEN's toilet! I went over to the "premium toilet" - you are suppose to pay RM2 to use the toilet but the only diaper changing room is in the Women's room.

I started to panic as my boy was starting to smell ... you can imagine the rest. I needed to go change and clean this kid up - desperately! While there were some these attempts by the cleaners to help me none of them worked:

1. Move all the ladies out of the toilet while I go change my little boy. Of course this was difficult and the ladies did not cooperate.
2. One of the cleaning ladies decided to offer herself to take my son and change him for me. After all the horror stories of children getting kidnapped in shopping centers, I was not about the take a chance.

I was growing frustrated and I began to wonder what KLCC was thinking when they designed the building. How do they see Fathers and their role? Did they expect mothers / a lady to company men with their children everytime they want to take children along?

Fortunately for me one of the staff told me that there is such a room - for fathers - in the baby section of Isetan. I finally got to the room and changed my son's diapers. Even then - most of the time (almost) its all ladies inthe room.

I finally got my son cleaned up.

I visited ALAMANDA and it was the total opposite - there their facilities were complete and babies with their fathers could enter and do what needs to be done asap.

I hope the Suria KLCC will really make such facilities and really care for their customers.