Monday, May 19, 2008

Noise Pollution

After living in the City Center for a while now, here are 2 things that I vow I will NEVER do:
1. Go to a church that has bells for service.
2. Pay street performers

Why? Because they're both a source of noise pollution that is very irritating to people who live nearby. The churches here ring their bells for 2-3 hours every Sunday, like continuously. And on some days, like Monday night, they have bell ringing practices. That's right. People go and ring bells for fun. I read an article in some Cambridge university journal that was entitled "The Joy of Bell Ringing". I felt like writing them an angry letter telling them how annoying it is to hear bells ringing for 2 hours straight. What I really should do is find out how loud (in decibels) it is in my room when these bells ring and find out if it's over the limit to be considered noise pollution. I bet it is. I should do noise calculations for these people and show them that they're way, way too loud.

Same with street performers. Once there was this band, yes, a whole band, performing right under my window. They were loud and not very good. And yet, people crowd around, listening, and then pay them. Why would you ever pay for bad music? I don't think I will ever watch another street performance ever again.

1 comment:

yalu said...

should have dumped a pail of water over their heads and screamed at them in italian...that's what i always imagine would happen, especially in these cartoon representations with bad music

i'm starting to realize that where I live is very noisy. i think it's the fact that if any one of these girls bangs their doors on my side of the floor, 2 of my walls vibrate...also, having a hot room means you have to keep the window open, which means that it's loud outside. it's just so different from mike's place, which is silent at night. i guess i'm supposed to get used to it, but for some reason haven't gotten used to it yet.