Should the gleeful homicide of a jackhammer operator be considered:
- a felony
- a misdemeanor
- a public service
0 voters
What do you think?
Is something missing from my DNA that would otherwise help me to appreciate them?
Nextdoor, 7:30AM, Sunday morning.
Feel the love!
I love the sound of jackhammers in the morning. Not.
A necessary evil. That’s what they are. A necessary evil.
It’s not necessary to use them at ungodly hours though…
They do it at 9 AM on the rooftop to add an illegal suite, no doubt. But I went up to see and there wasn’t much that seemed like it needed to be jackhammered.
Honestly? I think the dudes just like to feel the vibration. Sick slutpuppies.
You got to join The War on Noise.
War on Noise
I woke up to the sound of a jackhammer,
I woke up to the sound of a jackhammer,
I gotta fight back,
Against this sound attach,
I woke up to the sound of a jackhammer,
That noise
And drills.
- Drill noise that sounds like that mole thing from Thunderbirds is coming through the wall. I don’t understand how you can drill the same wall on and off all day for nearly two weeks.
Not two days after this stopped, the bleedin’ house across the way started doing the same thing. Again this lasted for a week or so.
Now they are building something on the roof over the way. A platoon of jackhammers has taken up residence. I can’t believe it.
Not only that, they knocked down the old building on the corner of my street and they are driving piles into the ground at 0730 sharp for construction of the new building which will take the old buildings place.
If I wanted to live on a construction site I would have joined a bloody road crew.
Slaughter them all with sound-proof insulation.
They are building a new apartment in my alley. In the week when I need to wake up at 8.00am, they are like ants. Busy as hell, but so quiet.
Saturday and Sunday morning 8.00am…bring out the heavy machinery!
And what about those motorcycles riding around screaming about recycling or selling mosquito nets…also very loud, very early.
And then the neighbors tend to complain when I play my music loud at 8pm on a Saturday…or walk loudly.
With each and every home I have lived during the Taipei phase of my time in Taiwan, a neighbor has decided to rennovate within one or two months of my arrival. After the fourth time, I finally gave up and learned to sleep through it.
It invariably happens: as soon as one neighbor has finished jackhammering their apartment, another neighbor starts doing the same. And it always has to be done bright and early on weekends, instead of during the day on weekdays when everyone’s at work.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!
[quote=“Chris”]It invariably happens: as soon as one neighbor has finished jackhammering their apartment, another neighbor starts doing the same. And it always has to be done bright and early on weekends, instead of during the day on weekdays when everyone’s at work.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell you![/quote]
It’s part of the government’s plan to attract foreigners to retire in Taiwan.
I’ve had my share of yelling, gesticulating, mouth-foaming rows with neighbors over their blasted jackhammering. I’ve never succumbed to the urge to drill holes in their heads with their own evil tools, but they certainly would have deserved it if I had.
Needless to say, there’s yet another of them shattering the peace as I type. It’s several hundred metres away on the top of a hill, but it’s still bad enough even with my study window closed tight. (One of the advantages of aircon in the summer is that it helps drown out the noise of the jackhammers that aren’t being wielded immediately adjacent to the sides of one’s own concrete box.)
Strange that the Japanese “long-stay” couple who fled from Puli didn’t mention the jackhammers.
[quote=“Omniloquacious”]I
Strange that the Japanese “long-stay” couple who fled from Puli didn’t mention the jackhammers.[/quote]
They thought it was Taiwanese “New Wave”…they didn’t understand the lyrics but they liked the beat so they gave it a “7”…
In sane countries, people call the painter when someone moves in.
Here they jackhammer away the walls and rebuild them.
Taitaitaiwan
The greatest quote of my summer came from a shy student who I am teaching this year in my 4th grade class…
There has been construction going on in the 19+ story apartment building that is going up and this summer, in one of the apartments on the floor above my school, and where they were continually building and destroying the sidewalk out front (and this was before they had even started the construction on the Xinyi line on our section of Xinyi Road). I was teaching a full-day class of elementary school students in a summer enrichment class for June and July. Every day, usually from 9am until well after 3pm, I had to conduct lessons over the jackhammering and pounding and other construction racket.
Well, one day, being the incredibly gifted construction workers they are here, they managed to knock out the electricity for a whole block…in the middle of July. We tried to keep class the same as usual, thinking that it would be temporary, but as the heat rose, patience began to dwindle. My boss so graciously brought in fans since the air con wasn’t working until I pointed out that you needed electricity to run a fan. 
I tried to get my kids together for our pre-lunch circle time, trying to keep to the routine. They were fanning themselves with mats, but they were still hot and beginning to sweat and wanted to only talk about the power outage. As I struggled to see any good in any of this day , one of my third graders pointed out, [color=blue]“At least there’s no more jackhammering.” [/color]
There was absolute silence as everyone listened to the absence of noise pollution before we all burst out laughing. Our moods were visibly lightened.
After lunch, I took them to the park and bought them cold water and we even got sprinkled on by rain which made the heat more tolerable. Then their parents came to pick their kids up two hours early and we got to leave shortly after that.
That girl still surprises me with her wit and astute observations, 8 months later.