My neighborhood is noisier than yours

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

… when the deaf 80 something year old that lives in a tiny inside alley shouts angrily at the neighbors causing the noise!

I can live with the jackhammers. Normally, if they try to start their business early, someone will call and pull the plug on their business pretty quickly.

I can live with the other normal traffic noises, though it always baffles me how come every night at 8:30 sharp, this guy flies into our one way alley in his beta up scooter -I’m waiting for his brakes to fail- and sounds the claxon as if he was on fire. I can even bear the veggies and fruits trucks struggling to find a space to park amid the cars and bikes and scooters, and the arguments between neighbors derived thereof.

It is the mother screaming at the top of her lungs, nagging her kids to do their homework, from 7 pm to 11pm, Monday to Sunday, what really gets me. It is a good thing that WMD control is so severe in this country, otherwise either yours truly or the kids would get her -though she has pissed so many neighbors, we would have to take a number and stand in line.

It is the doggie barking every day. It is never the same dog, but there is always some barking.

It is not the majong game going on until midnight, but rather the water pump’s engine vibrating like a small earthquake and turning on and off all night long.

It is the party next door -rats, they never invite me- in a house as small as mine -how do they squeeze at least 15 people, I wonder? Or it is the party across the street -also, not invited- all those guys together, only guys, what are they doing?!

Funny thing, this all happens on weekdays. Thank God Saturday and Sunday everybody toes the line. Silence rules.

2

My ‘least favorite noise’ comes from a rather unsightly young lovestruck couple who come home every night giggling, then close their door and …

Grunt, thud thud, grunt, thud thud …

Thank god it only lasts for thirty seconds!

3

[quote=“Thelonlieste”]My ‘least favorite noise’ comes from a rather unsightly young lovestruck couple who come home every night giggling, then close their door and …

Grunt, thud thud, grunt, thud thud …

Thank god it only lasts for thirty seconds![/quote]

I’ll take that “logical” noise over the BUMP BUMP of someone nailing something to the wall at 3am…

4

OK, you win, Icon.

Years ago when Kai Tak airport was still THE airport in Hong Kong, I visited a friend who lived VERY close to Kai Tak.
He had a neighbor that was much like the German lady in the Austin powers films . . . only shouting in Cantonese.

What a combo of jets and screaming. He didn’t seem to notice. After years of living in Taiwan, I probably wouldn’t notice either.

5

Renovations… seems like there are always renovations, not the same house but there are always one. One time I heard jackhammer from 8AM to 9PM. If only construction workers worked this hard in America…

scooters… not only they always almost run into you when you’re out there they make a lot of noise too.

6

Even a hambeast being nailed against the wall at 3am? It’s my imagination that’s the problem - in my mind the climax looks like this … :cookie:

7

Try being woke up by sounds of terrible, nasty violence. Walk to the window and sure enough another gang of losers are murdering someone with baseball bats/knives, or a single man is knocking a woman down again and again. The other thing they seem to really enjoy doing is having races with their loud POS scooters while all the other loooosers honk the horns and cheer, and of course the police impersonators will not do a darn thing.

I have no problems with the constant fireworks, dogs, parties, loud kids, and construction, it’s the damn violence that rings the loudest. The sound of bones cracking from being struck with bats, and/or ladies crying/screaming, now that’s noise. I can’t even sleep when its silent sometimes because of what I have seen/heard.

I seem to have scored a job/apartment in the worst part of the worst little hole in central/southern TW.

8

I used to hear / see the same stuff when I lived in Pingtung. I saw men beating up on women several times, right out in the front of the building (and the security guards at my building doing what they do best…absolutely nothing), and numerous fights with baseball bats. Once a pissed off guy who was chasing another guy around with a bat but couldn’t catch him, so he decided to smash up the cars parked there instead. And I lived in the nicest part of Pingtung, in a nice, new building.

They used to race a lot on my street too, because there was very little traffic. They would hoot and holler like children. A few times, there were crashes into the scooters and cars parked there. Fun fun. Gotta love 'em.

9

[quote=“Thelonlieste”]My ‘least favorite noise’ comes from a rather unsightly young lovestruck couple who come home every night giggling, then close their door and …

Grunt, thud thud, grunt, thud thud …

Thank god it only lasts for thirty seconds![/quote]

Ha! When I lived in San Diego way back when, there was a young couple who lived above me who used to keep the windows open during their amore sessions.

I used to refer to the guy as “The Minute Man.”

Noise in Taiwan is a part of life here. I’m numb to it, like most locals. I don’t think white noise machines would sell very well here.

10

Today’s topic is:

My neighborhood is smokier than yours!

And the noise comes from the smoke detectors… (by teh way, teh batteries are dying in one and the other one… I think it’s dead!)

11

Since moving out of dirty old Taoyuan to a spot on a hill overlooking Longtan, my neighborhood is in the running for the least noisiest. Apart from the odd Army helicopter, usually all I can hear are dogs barking about a klick away, kids five doors down practicing their music, and the occasional grunt of a neighbor from a location not easily identified.
It scared the heck out of me for the first six weeks, this eerie sound of silence. I should have moved up here 5 years ago. It’s done wonders for lowering the continuous aggravation that come with high levels of noise pollution. I pity the sad sacks still stuck in the shitty.

12

Nice move, but you can never escape those mutts. It’s all I can hear here at the moment. Some dog, somewhere. Barking. Again. Like last night. And the night before.

13

Ditto.

14

I’m typing next to my open window, there is a slight breeze, and all I can hear is the sound of crickets. Seriously, if the noise of the city is driving you insane, consider Lotus Hill, or a gated community like it :thumbsup: !

15

Ditto.[/quote]

Being rather much of a dog myself, I have no problem with mutts barking (it gives one camraderie when barking at the moon)… Provided they are not of the puntable lapdog yipping-yapping variety.

16

I’m at the end of an lane right by the river. The birds bother me more than anything right now. Damn mating season.

I used to live by a high school and would be woken every Friday morning to the sound of the band playing Tequila. That was followed by the military officer doing drills.

Taiwan can be as brutally noisy or as quiet as you like.

17

I’m being driven round the bend by two dogs that are chained up directly under my window. They bark at EVERYTHING. Last night I lay in bed listening to them for hours, grinding my teeth together…

It’s like chinese water torture. The same two tones over… and over… and over… and over…

RArf Rorf… RArf Rorf… RArd Rorf… etc etc :fume: :fume: :fume:

I’m thinking about moving somewhere else. It’s really doing my head in.

18

I’ve have lived in a lot of different apts in my time here

1st place- 1st day in Taiwan, woken up by the school sports day at local time 6am, later found out to my horror school sports week, everthing starting off with rousing renditions of national anthem with full school band! (combined with jet lag and absolute culture shock, you can get the picture)

2nd place- Pack of stray dogs did the rounds of neighbourhood, woken up EVERY night at 3am by the local dogs facing off with stray dogs, threw water at them, comtemplating numerous means of murdering them, had to move to an inferior room in the apt. to try and get some sleep. Of course the dogs were fed by a local dogooder Buddhist…I never heard anybody else in the neighbourhood try to do anything about those dogs.

3rd place- Dogs and cats constantly barking and meowing thru the nite, locked in small cages on the balcony. My roommate contemplated either them or the owner to put them out of their misery, would scream obscenities at the owner anytime he went on the balcony, it was certainly a clash of cultures right there (seems he had asked the guy to let them go but he said was was looking after them for somebody…)!

4th place-Unusual, blissfully quiet at night although in the middle a dense neighbourhood. The air con was old and real loud so had to use airplugs in summer.

5th place-Scooters slowing down and accelerating around the curve in the road where I lived…more sleepless nights (added to by the streetlight that directed light into my roon until I blocked it by double thick silver sided curtains). Got some ear plugs to deal with the noise and fan for white noise, helped a little

6th place-Noise of MRT coming into depot used to keep my agitated in early morning (funnily enough I got pretty used to it now and as I know that it will turn off at a set-time I wouldn’t get worried about it). The temple nearby bangs bells at midnight on special occassions and chants but again I’ve adapted just enough to mostly ignore this as it is not too loud. There was a funeral that went on a month every weekend (seemingly Taiwanese need 4 weeks traditionally), starting ceremonies at 6am and going into the night. The usual scooters and cars revving but not too bad. The worst part was the public sewer system spent a year tunneling through the neihbourhood, then the MRT decided to build a new depot (going on 2 years of continuous major construction EVERY day of the week and year except for chinese new year for a few days, nuts!), along with renovations of old apartments all around, about 1 a mth. Nice! (obviously we are moving very soon…)

Basically if you live in the city it’s very difficult to escape unless you live in a very upmarket neighbourhood. Move up to the hills and you might acheive less noise if no stray dogs around.

19

You could be nice and feed the dogs… with whatever you think will end the problem.

20

Another night and Im sitting here going out of my mind. Surely other people in this building can hear it too? Am I the only person going insane?

There is a cafe downstairs and they own the dogs. I’m sure they were very cute puppies once upon a time but now they are full grown, adult dogs that are chained to the wall by about a metre of chain.

I’m going to tell my boss. Her sister in law owns this place. If they don’t do something, I’ll report them for animal cruelty. This shit has got to stop :noway:

I’m going to record it tonight as proof - with timestamps.