Noise Pollution

Nights in halls are like nights out in the Savannah. Since the drunk party sound coming through walls is a given that’s the sound of crickets and frogs. It’s constantly there and theoretically you should eventually learn to sleep through it over time. Of course it’s not quite constant enough. Then you’ve got the sound of banging and shuffling from the kitchen. Now that sound is the thunder storms and rain that will come over and wake you, soak you and make you wish you had a friendly cave to crawl into for shelter. The third one are lions and hyenas, high up on the food chain and the most nefarious to your health should you not be careful. That’s the argumentative drunks often found before day break. With these there’s nothing you can do but make sure you’ve found somewhere safe to hide away, grin and bear it. Overall what these three elements mean is one thing, that a proper night of sleep is less likely than snow on the beaches of the South Coast of England.

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.

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.

There is nothing more aggressive or stressful than being woken up by heavy metal. There is nothing but some idiot yelling into a microphone and other idiots calling it music. It’s not music so much as noise to me. I’d prefer to be woken to the sound of seagulls or the waves than music created by the disenfranchised youth of a bygone era. In halls causes for being pulled from your sleep are numerous. On many occasions it’s people yelling from outside to windows, cleaning staff talking loud to each other, girls talking about subjects that would later embarrass them (hilarious though), and the clanking sound of kitchen utensils. There’s the sound of cupboards being opened and closed, of fire alarms, demolition, grating barriers and more. I can’t think of anymore but those are a great method by which to make me appreciate the countryside all that much more. Nothing but the sweet sound of birds and wind in the branches, storm clouds, and more. Any noise that is not the result of some selfish person I do not mind.

I’m only a few words away from the completion of the dissertation but over the past two nights I haven’t had as much sleep as I would like to have had, thanks one night to myself and thanks the next night, to the people I’m living with. It’s a problem when you’re kept awake till 4 am and sometimes I wonder whether I shouldn’t take a hotel room and sleep there every few nights, just to catch up on the lack of sleep. of course it’s a waste of money so I would prefer not to.