OK, another cultural entry.

This is a UAE/regional thing that is pretty much unknown in the West.

Drains in your kitchen floor. And your bathroom floors.

About four inches across. With a shiny silver cover that sits in a recessed position, but can fairly easily be kicked loose, by accident … and is able to carry away water from any sudden flooding, even when the lid is in position, because it has a clipped out area about the size of a fingernail.

It’s weird in this sense: In every room with running water, you have this thing in the floor that opens up pretty much onto the sewer.

The top of the lid may be shiny silver, but the underside … not so shiny. And maybe it’s just an American thing, but I don’t want to be able to bend over, while preparing dinner, and pick up the top of a drain and stare down at waste water and perhaps algae, etc.

It’s handy in this sense: If you have some sudden flood, much of the water  will reach the hole in the floor and drain away there.

Thus, if the shower sprang a leak, most of it would run off right there in the bathroom. (They also tend to build in ledges of at least a half-inch at the entrance to bathrooms, further limiting the damage of a bathroom flood.)

As I recall, Hong Kong, where we lived for four months five years back, has a similar system. Drains in your floors. Maybe it’s an Asia thing.

One possible explanation for this, at least in the Muslim world, is the washing that comes ahead of the five prayers.

If you don’t have a shower-like facility in your home or at your place of work, that leads to guys washing their feet in sinks, and a lot of water on the floor — which then drains away fairly quickly.

But, yes, it takes some getting used to. The holes in the floor.

“Why do I have a hole in my kitchen?”

For the drain. Of course.