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.