Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Public Annoyances

You know, I've had some time when I really want to tell off people on a bus, or in shopping centres because of how annoying they are; or their kids.  Well, it happened again last Saturday while traveling on a bus into the city.  I was traveling on the first bus and a man got on, bought a ticket and we found his phone was making a noise.  I thought it was his ring-tone - as he pulled it from his pocket - but he just held onto it for the whole ride to Garden City as it sang and whistled a Middle-Eastern song.  He had it up full blast and for the next twenty minutes, it's all we heard as the bus drove along; as the driver didn't have the radio on.
This kind of music is okay if you're from that part of the world and you're used to hearing it.  However, seeing I've been brought up in Australia and I don't hear it all that often, it's most annoying when people bring out their hi-tech equipment, switch on some strange music that nobody around them wants to hear and fail to realise that that's why the headphones came with the iphone or iTouch in the first place.
Now, I'm not innocent in this. I do own an MP3... something which carries music. My phone has a loud-speaker part to it; which I don't use in public; because I know it would annoy the crud out of anyone nearby.  So, why is it that others think it's funny - or better still - that we can't hear them when they have their music up loud?  I have asked people to use their headphones, that I don't wish to heard their music.  And they have said they wish to share their music; but they don't know that I hate rap, hip-hop and the Middle Eastern music; but if they accept - and assume - that I don't like it and plug in the headphones straight away, they won't be ruffling anyone's feathers.  
This doesn't mean they need to have those speakers up so loud we can hear the beat coming from their ears; and it causes irreparable damage to their hearing for the rest of their lives.  I just means to enjoy listening to their favourite songs at a level where they can hear another person walking beside them, cars driving around and know what's going on in the world around them.  I have had the MP3 player plugged into my ears, but it's not up so loud I can't hear a person next to me ask me a question.  It's amazing how many people assume I have music blasting into my eardrums when really I don't.  Yeah, my ears ring, but that's from years of nightclubbing in my younger years; not what I'm doing now.
Another thing that annoys the crud out of me is when you're sitting on a train - or a bus, but more likely a train as they have the carriages of people who do this - and you're reading.  The whole carriage you're on is reading something in some way, shape or form; be it a newspaper, magazine or a book, and a group of school kids get on, sit around you (as you're the only one sitting on your own - of course!) and begin gabbling on about whatever's going on at school/in magazines/at the movies.  This has happened to me while I traveling into the city to see a doctor and I asked them to move on to the next carriage.  They wouldn't; telling me that they just sat down.  I closed my book and told them off (after all, I did tell them to move politely and nicely the first time around).  But they still wouldn't move.  So, I said for them to observe what was going on around them; and they said that everyone was reading - and looked at all of the people as though we had some kind of problem - but they still didn't move.  The conductor came around to check tickets (this was before the Go Card came around) and I said I needed some help; and he said he knew so.  After he clipped my ticket and the girls' tickets, he ordered them, in a loud voice, to move; following them into the next car so they didn't return.
So, now, you know what ticks me off to no end on public transport.  What does it for you?  Why is it people don't seem to understand that a nice, quiet trip for some isn't a good place to interrupt it with their brand of music.  And on the other end of the scales, when people are trying to do something - like read or write on a train - why is it that others think it's okay to annoy the crud out of them enough to make them stop doing their work?  It's a type of bullying that goes on; when really all we need to do is turn to those people and ask them to stop bothering us; however when we do, they think it's funny and do more of it just to see how far they can push us.  Until my next post, take care, keep warm and safe and remember, I'm always here. 

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