apparently it’s international noise awareness day today:

stop. sit still. open your ears. what can you hear?

if you’re in an office like mine, there’ll be several phones ringing (at least one of which will be a mobile abandoned on a desk), the rattle of keyboards, the hum of the air conditioning and the burble of half-heard conversations.

it’s not the burble that bothers me, i’m pretty good at cutting out background noise, though i do wish more people realised that mobile phones are a) mobile and b) silencable. it’s the people who talk at a volume way above the background noise level and don’t seem to realise that everyone within a three mile radius can hear their conversation who bug me, or perhaps they do realise and just think we all want to know what they think.

i find it a worse invasion of personal space than the guy who sits next to you on the train when there are acres of double seats going spare. i need my own personal noise space and i want you to keep within yours.

when is international noise non-awareness day when we can all be unaware of each other’s noise?