Noise and Liveable Flats

It’s only 130am therefore it’s not that late but I want to sleep and there is something that has been hindering this effort particularly strongly for the past three nights. Drunken people with no pitch or tone control when singing using their lungs and voice projection to full pelt.

It’s not that I’m against partying but I do believe in making noise during the day or away from habitations during the day. I would love to see the same thing happen in London as in Switzerland.

Laws that forbid noise after 10pm.

On a second note here are ways future halls and student accomodation may be improved to make a full night of sleep possible.

  1. Cupboards that don’t slam. When you’re living by a kitchen one of the most annoying sounds is hearing others close cupboards

  2. Solid doors that don’t bang. The main door to the complex is loud. Every time it closes you hear it. The doors to the flat make noise when you open them.

  3. Silent locks. The sound of a key pulling the latch is loud when background sounds are inexistent

  4. Soundproofed walls. being able to hear what’s going on next door is not always pleasant.

  5. Proper windows. When you’ve got idiots outside yelling at other idiots you’ll hear the entire conversation. That’s not what you want.

  6. A system of fines rather than bans. People get far more annoyed and take far more seriously a financial loss than a ban.  With a ban you may end up in a nice house or flat where you live in better conditions.

  7. Smart fire alarms. You’ve got security so if a fire is activated check the area with a heat camera. If there’s nothing out of the ordinary just go and clear the alarm after a visual check

  8. Free high quality headphones. Rather than have loud music blearing from every room why not provide students with nice headphones which they can use to hear their music in dolby digital surround sound…

  9. A noise fuse. The idea behind this device is simple. If you exceed a certain noise level all power is cut to the area where the noise levels are too high. In so doing disturbances would be far more limited.

10.  Quiet furniture. When you’ve got a concrete floor with no padding and chairs with no padding any shift of the furniture results in a lot of noise. Provide a quiet surface and life may be livable.

I’m tired of other people’s noise. I’d love for them to become reasonable and start being quiet. Once every two weeks is fine, but not every single day. Not all of us enjoy drinking at night and doing nothing during the day. Not all of us appreciate bad singing either.

Anyway worst case scenario I have another two weeks without sleep.

Best case scenario. New flat within a few days.

The Post Dissertation Was Great Fun But Now It’s Time To Get Out

I’m really happy to be done with university after three years where I was forced to be in one country rather than another but it’s time to get out of Harrow.

On Wednesday night we were all at the SU bar celebrating the end of the course from 2pm till two or three am and it was great. I hadn’t seen so many people from my grade in one place for months and months. Really refreshing to see.

It’s been a good three years and there are many good memories. It’s time to move on and I think the first step is to get out of halls as soon as Saturday and going back to Switzerland for some rest and recuperation before coming back to the big city for employment and such.

I can look for work from anywhere and flights are relatively cheap in contrast.

I’m going to have to re-think the title of this blog now

My Dissertation Is Finished, Handed In.

My dissertation had been finished and ready to print since yesterday afternoon but it’s today that i finally printed out the entire document for handing in to the university for assesment. it’s 10,800 words for some of the most highly produced work I have ever done. It feels good to have handed it in and never to have to worry about it.

Many of the others have handed in the work and it’s going to be celebrated tomorrow although the prospect of spending my first real day of freedom hung over does not appeal to me therefore I’m planning on not drinking.

Now what to do with all this time I’ve got. Find a place to live, find a place to work and more. Everything is there, absolute freedom to do anything at any time i want now.

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Too Much Academia Has Disconnected Me From World News

Too much academic research and concentrating on dissertations has cut me off from world news to such an extent that apart from tech goings on I had no clue. I hardly followed the French elections, hardly noticed the death of Yeltsin, hardly noticed the regional elections.

There are three reasons for this. England is a hard news vacuum with it’s slightly islandish mentality (don’t yell at me for this view, I’ve been here a fifth of my life), online news resources, (finding the news I want) and thirdly researching and writing my dissertation.

It’s been a break from the world and it’s coming to an end and I need to resynchronise with the Hard News world once more. It’s going to take a few days of reading news once the disso and work experience folders are handed but I’ll do it.

I also need to decide what to do, whether I stay in London, whether I go travelling and scuba diving to become an underwater cameraman or whether I go back to the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland where my social life is lived through a computer because I am so tired of the motorway to and from Geneva these days.

Another option is getting a motorbike license, getting the scooter and driving as far as I feel like on a daily basis and seeing place after place.

Time will decide of course.