Quiet!!!

Nowadays, don't you just find yourself not being able to find a quiet place when you want some peace and quiet?

I remember back in grade school, being the class beadle, I used to shout on top of my lungs "quiet!!!", mimicking how our teacher attempts to pacify her rowdy students. Somehow, my shouting seems to have the effect of knocking my classmates back to their senses and return to proper deportment while inside the classroom. Of course, I soon realized the irony of that yelling technique of mine (and my teacher) as I got older. Now, I simply helplessly sigh whenever I want some quiet and couldn't find it.

Lucky or unlucky, I think that relatively, I have a more keen sense of hearing that others. When watching a movie inside the Shang Cineplex, I realized I was hearing MRT trains speeding by. None of my companions or other friends who've been inside Shang Cineplex seem to have noticed that. While listening to music using earphone, I realized that my preferred volume is way too faint for my friends. And speaking of earphones, I do listen to music on my earphones just to drown out the noise in the office. Noise versus noise.

Lately, however, I frequently find myself asking, "Ha? Ano? I beg your pardon?". Yikes.

In the office, wherein the set up is open cubicles and no walls, I have no choice but to endure noise coming from officemates who are chatting, grumping, or as simply conversing at the same time. Thankfully, we are way beyond the age when dot matrix printers jabber like jackhammers so office equipments do not cause much noise nowadays as before. I am sometimes delightfully surprised whenever I leave my desk, with a slight headache, and enter the restroom and find myself smiling at the discovery that the most quiet, serene place in the office is the REST room - yes, rest for my abused, battered ears.

(Sometimes, I miss having my own office like the one I used to have in my former job at the law firm. We have our own, relatively spacious rooms and a solid door at that. I miss that kind of privacy and it certainly was very conducive to concentration which was much, much needed back then - with the humongous workload and endless flurry of deadlines.)

At home, where each room has its own television set, I have no choice but to either select which program I have to watch or bury my head under pillows to try to delude myself in vain that the only noise in the room is the noise of the airconditioner. It was actually a big relief and a delight when I was finally able to clean my room and make it habitable because I now have a place to stay on weekends where I have a choice if I want to watch DVDs (I need not turn up the volume because there are subtitles, of course) or simply doze away with the sound of bird twittering in the background, enjoying themselves in our lush mini garden, the greenest in our neightborhood which is traversed by a national road (yes, ten wheelers on their way to or back from the province pass by in front of our house on a daily basis, not to mention almost every rampaging firetruck on its way to just about every fire emergency in the western and eastern police district jurisdiction).

Just this Sunday, my mom and I attended the birthday party of my inaanak at Jollibee Taytay. As we came in early, we waited outside the party area and endured the loud (as in really loud) music being played by the staff. I even saw the store manager himself turning up the volume when Ang Huling El Bimbo was played. Quickly, my mom and I caught a headache and needed to shout just to be able to converse. This isn't the first time I stepped into a Jollibee store and attended a Jolly Kiddie Party and experienced hearing abuse. In fact, many fastfood restaurants nowadays play blaring music for reasons I do not comprehend. Is it because their staffers are deaf? Is it because their staffers are young and young people like their music loud?

Geesh, I remember less than ten years ago when you only need to speak loud or move closer to your date's ear if you are in a disco. Now, anti-conversation venues seem to be the norm rather than the exception. I wonder if indigestion inducing noise is deliberately inflicted on diners to make them not feel they are full and so they will order more? Okay, I'm being malicious. Drop it.

Thankfully, there are still places where you can have some relative peace and quiet while eating - it's just that these places are relatively pricey compared to noisy fast food outlets. Some establishments however have bad acoustics so that normal conversation by its customers are amplified and seems to reverberate around. I particularly noted Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Greenbelt 3 to be a noisy place as it seems to multiply the sound of chattering customers. Seattles Best and Starbucks certainly outdid them when it comes to being more date friendly, giving justice to the "Let's have coffee" line.

Actually, I didn't realize that my addiction to the spa and other wellness centers was due to my need to have a rest, which essentially is putting all my senses to rest. I wish they could invent something less uncomfortable as earplugs (they caused me ear infection sometime ago) to minimize the perception of noise without in turn creating noise. Or perhaps, an anti noise foundation should be set up to, among others, put up signs in establishments to signify if such establishment is ear-friendly. Maybe soon, establishments will offer services wherein you will pay to have a few minutes of peace in quiet even in the middle of a mall, in the midst of a busy metropolis. Afterall, buying water for drinking was unthinkable a decade ago.

Bugs and Glitches

I am fond of Mozilla Firefox, and definitely, it is my preferred browser over Internet Explorer (is Netscape Navigator still around?). I particularly like Firefox because it allows tabbed browsing as compared to IE which would open a new window each time you need to view another page. I have recently found the google toolbar really helpful because whenever I need to search, I need not open a new tab to go to the google homepage - all I need is to type the search word/s in the search window which is always available at the upper left portion of the browser.

Recently, however, I noticed that some of my favorite sites have been deleted from the favorites list. Some of these sites are for personal use while most are for research so it was really inconvenient. I initially suspected if anyone from our office network has been tinkering with my computer via the shared network. I noticed that even if I un-share mg files, it is always on share mode the next time I restart. Nonetheless, I just diligently unshare my folder to shield it from prying eyes.

Yesterday was different. In the middle of looking at sites on Chinese labor laws, my Firefox asked me to change my profile and after one big clicking mistake, I found my Firefox totally devoid of my password, my favorites, my history - plus, the Google toolbar is missing. While searching the net,,I discovered some sites critical of the Google toolbar, attributing certain bugs and glitches on it which can potentially erase data such as favorites from the browser. So that was it! Sigh.

Oh well, I am a Google addict and I realized I couldn't really work with a browser without a Google toolbar. So I uninstalled my Google-less Firefox, downloaded the latest Firefox with Google toolbar and installed it. And so, I'm back with my Google enhanced Firefox, having in mind that I should take note of my favorite sites independently and not rely on my browser.

Oh well...

Incidentally, I found out that this site is best viewed using Firefox as the right sidebar is pushed down after the main box when it is viewed using IE. There is a solution but some tweaking has to be done. In order to view this site properly in IE, you have to view this site and then right click on any portion of the page. A menu will appear. Click "Encoding" and choose "Western European". That fixes the problem.

Going to Cheung Chau

Literally, Cheung Chau is the Cantonese noun which means "long island". Nope, I'm not going to NY because Cheung Chau is the tiniest island in Hong Kong which is shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle, post war era. In fact, I have recently been to it -- in thoughts only though.

Despite visting Hong Kong over two years ago, I have not heard about this tiny Hong Kong island, off the coast of Lantau Island - yes, the airport and Disneyland island, even though I've read about Lamma Island whose beaches, my friend says fell short of his Boracay white sand standard. It is only when I came across an advertisement in Businessworld for the Hong Kong Tourism Authority, soliciting entries for an essay in answer to the question did I came to know about Cheung Chau island. The question goes, "which of the four festivals during the Culture and Heritage Celebration would you like to see and why?" In the same ad, it was stated that the four festivals are the Birthdays of Tin Hau, Buddha, and Tam Kung, and the Cheung Chau Bun Festival, all of which are to be held between April 27 and May 7 this year. I quickly searched the net to know more about these festivals. Since the criteria for judging were creativity, impact, originality and cohesiveness/knowledge of Hong Kong, I read the write-ups posted at the HKTA website and then veered away from what I perceived were typical sites which would be read by would-be contest participants like me.

And so, this morning, I wrote my not more than 10 sentence essay in answer to the contest question which goes:

The Cheung Chau Bun Festival - the mere privilege of being a spectator is an experience I am most certainly looking forward to when visiting the "Fragrant Harbor."

Legends abound that Cheung Chau island, less than an hour away from Central via ferry and off the coast of Lantau Island (famous for Po Lin Monastery and its Giant Buddha and recently, Mickey Mouse's abode, Disneyland) has hidden treasures from pirates' booty, whose excursions to Cheung Chau was put to an end only after the rise of the temple in honor of Pak Tai, the Taoist God of the Sea. While digging is most certainly forbidden in the island, Cheung Chau's secrets caves with neolithic carvings, cradles artifacts of an ancient civilisation - its rich cultural traditions and the community's peaceful existence are like an enchantress which mesmerizes one to cease resisting the urge to take a dip and wade through the experience that is Cheung Chau. For such a tiny, seductively shaped island, it is a gastronomic paradise seeping with culture which intoxicates visitors to forget the fast-paced grind of the industrial world and submerge in its environ surrounded by inviting shops, ubiquitous sampans, windsurfing beaches and magestic temples. And as if it is not enough that the island itself is a beauty on its own, the weeklong Bun Festival, promises to bring to life the word "festive" in all sense of the word, rivaling any other cultural celebration for its vibrance, color, people and pomp. The bun race at the end of the festival calls to mind the palo sebo in Philippine fiestas where townspeople race to climb a greasy bamboo pole for a prize, only that the prize found at the end of the poles in Cheung Chau are buns, which are gastronomic delights in their own right. Children clad in colorful costumes, heart-thumping parades, and traditional Chinese opera are sights which I look forward not to miss. The mere thought of experiencing the Cheung Chau Bun festival floods my entire being with excitement. The food, the island, and the enveloping festivities permeating the air during the Cheung Chau Bun Festival is truly a hypnotic spell worth giving in to.

It would be nice to win the prize which is a 3D/2N Hong Kong package for two, inclusive of hotel accommodations, airport transfers and a half day city tour (hopefully no expensive portraits on ornate plates!). Still, the whole experience of discovering that peaceful tiny island in Hong Kong brought my thoughts back to planning a trip to Hong Kong. Afterall, I know now that I have other choices other than the staple and sole-ripping shopping, always on brisk mode streets and endless sightings of Giordano stores.