as i write this it is a lovely, cool, spring day outside in taipei city and i would love to have every window open so that i can enjoy the refreshing breeze running through my house. but i am sitting inside with every single window and door closed, trapped inside a small, airtight, suffocating box. i also have rubber earplugs shoved way down into my ears, which cause pressure to build up inside my ears giving me earache, headaches and vertigo. why?
because on either side of my lovely little flat are huge construction sites. the buildings must be very important because the construction workers are happy to use pneumatic drills on concrete and electric saws on metal from 8 am - 5 pm, 7 days a week without taking a break. the construction site outside our kitchen window is so close i can almost touch it. my poor little flat actually shakes, rattles and rolls from the Noise they create. it feels as though they are pouring the concrete straight into my head and then drilling steel bolts into it. needless to say, this is not a positive force on my road to recovery, especially since my hearing is directly affected by the AVM on my brain stem and vice versa. in fact, it has often been the cause of hysterical tears when i am woken up at 8 am by the sound of huge bolts being driven into iron girders 'in my bedroom'. on the weekend, the cars of the foremen etc. are regularly 'egged' by a furious colin, with me 'egging' (tee hee?) him on. sometimes i switch on the old, loud air conditioner just to try and drown out some of the construction noise and also in the vindictive, but vain hope that the hot air will blow onto the construction workers and cause them some discomfort.
Another construction site
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this Noise is typical of taipei though. i used to try and escape it by going for walks with Dina, but around every corner there is another construction site! there are even construction sites by the park! you see, taipei is a 'city on the move'. they are rabidly tearing down all the old, crumbling buildings and erecting huge, shiny monstrocities in their place. it is 'the march of progress'. this malaise is common in many big asian cities and other areas of economic growth in asian countries. for example, colin and i were stunned when we went to an island in the phillipines, found the most secluded beach for our one holiday of the year only to be confronted with a huge construction site. "gotta build another hotel so that more tourists can come and stay!" this Noise makes me miss my suburban home in south africa where we used to complain if there was a dog barking! oh, and i had a garden! sure the house has been broken into a few times and you are paranoid of everyone around you when you walk the streets day or night, but at least it was calm, peaceful, quiet. i guess what i am trying to say is that i feel that i have a right to relax in my own home with my windows open. the Noise has become increasingly worse and causes extreme stress and unhappiness in both my and colin's lives. we have looked to move, but everywhere is just as noisy. so, in the interests of sanity and peace we have decided to leave our home every weekend and stay in a hotel, just for a goddamn bit of peace and quiet. what i really wonder is whether our taiwanese neighbours feel the same way we do or whether they have just accepted it by now.
