Noise

I find that GoSocial and Meetup are great social networks. It’s an easy way of finding people to do things with, every single weekend. It means that rather than sitting in bars, listening to people talk, hoping for a fun activity, that is not drinking, to be mentioned, you can find a group to do things with.

The flipside to this is that you meet 12-25 people per activity. Sometimes you will meet the same people again, more than once, but more often than not you meet a new group each time.

At the moment I feel myself drifting away from Facebook because although I like seeing the hikes that people share and the potential groups I could join I do not like the leadership of that site. I also muted the two whatsapp groups that I follow from GoSocial because I want to go back to not using Whatsapp again, because it also belongs to Facebook. Finally although I liked the Threads community I feel myself drifting from that too, because I’m tired of seeing so much junk in my timeline. And now we get to the positive.

In the good old days noisy music festivals made sense, because technology was not what it is today. There was no choice but to build huge speaker stacks with huge amounts of power, to deafen an entire crowd of festival goers. It was also a different age, where attitudes to noise pollution were different.

In the 21st century, as people are crammed closer and closer together in villages, towns and cities, so the need to control noise pollution should increase. In summer, if you live Nyon there are two awful festivals. One of them is the Caribana and the other is the Paléo. Both of them make noise for four or five days, from the sound checks at lunch time to the concerts that go until 0200-0300.

In the 90s, people found it fun to share chain letters. At the time, this was something new to many of us, so we found them fun. We received and then passed them on, but over the volume of chain letters become a torrent of spam. The letter is fun the first time you see it. If twenty people forwarded it to 20 more, then we’re speaking about four hundred e-mails. We’re speaking about thousands of letters that have no productive effect on society.

When you live in town you have a lot of noise. You have the noise of cars, of construction, of buses, trucks and road sweeps. You also have the occasional people shouting, beeping and more. Logically this should make sleeping in town harder. It’s so constant that it’s like the sound of the sea or of a river. It becomes invisible because there are no really quiet moments. These noises are okay in town.

As the title indicates I’ve upgraded to the new version of WordPress and I’m trying it now. I’ll have to see what the great features are in this version. I know that they were having some last-minute problems with tags but we’ll see whether they resolved those. Aside from changing browser today I also started looking for an apartment as I am so tired of the noise made by drink fueled students. I’m not against drinking but I am against the noise they make every single day that they are at home. Why not have a bottle of wine between friends and chat for hours. Why does everyone have to lose grip on reality? Is life that terrible for them? Back to the upbeat stuff. Flat hunting as a solitary person is great for a number of reasons, firstly complete freedom. You have the freedom to live anywhere that interests you, without taking other people into consideration. Of course, I do look at everything according to tube lines and distance. The closer to the center I can be better. Another consideration, of course, is to find people whose company I enjoy living with. A good home is a perfect place from which to cope with the struggle that job hunting will be in the next few weeks and months, as they flow by. There are three flats that I am already scheduled to visit and I may look for a few more during the day tomorrow. The more I visit the more informed the decision. The first phone call is always the hardest. I was struggling so much in fact that I forgot about one flat and started sending out two or three e-mails in the hope that through the writing of applications I would clarify within my mind what it is I wanted to communicate. That served me well. Within three phone calls, I had already summoned far more courage and I’ll keep looking whilst I have the time. I need to draw up a list of the things that are important to me for when I get to the flat, to make sure not to forget something that would influence my enjoyment of this new phase in my life. I’ve got till the second but if I’ve got an agreement by the second of June I’ll be much happier. –I wrote this post whilst listening to Chopin. Second time in as many days that I listen to this. A change in personality or expectations? Time will decide.

I would love to go back to the countryside where I can sleep whenever I choose and wake up when I can. I love being around people, going out and partying but I also love being able to sleep and waking up to the sound of silence. It’s been hard these past few weeks with all the work I’ve been doing in the academic sphere. I would go to sleep between 10pm and midnight were it not for the drunks making noise till 3am and the cleaners and others making noise from 9am onwards. Six hours to sleep is plenty of sleep… theoretically. When you’re woken by the sound of others though and prevented from sleeping by the sound of some then the countryside’s pull is really strong. I’m day dreaming of getting out of the suburbs. They’re the worst of bost world. They’re crap because everyone commutes into town for work yet they’re not deep enough in the countryside to allow for the freedom to walk for hours without interruptions. I want silence. I’m exhausted at the moment, longing for nothing more than a full week of sleep cycles where nothing but my mind wake me up. The villager in me is stronger than the urbanite and that’s clearly visible.