Noise and quiet

-
On Saturday we decided to cycle into town. Our three year-old (coming on four) had her new bike, our three month-old hovered in her hammock in the Chariot cycle trailer. The sun shone and we rolled into Heidelberg happy and proud.

Then we went shopping. On a Saturday. It was of course very busy; we knew that it would be and planned for a nice hot chocolate reward in Schiller's. In our experience it had been an oasis of calm where one could take time to enjoy a nice or unusual (sometimes both) hot chocolate and a home-made cake. Unfortunately, Schiller's has become too popular. We were able to sit down and order, but the level of noise in there was unbearable. Our baby added to that by crying and not being able to settle for a feed. People looked at us, we looked at them. We paid for our chocolates and left as quickly as we could, not having enjoyed it at all. There was music beating in the background and conversation was stuck in a feedback loop of ever-increasing volume. Schiller's has become a victim of its own success.


Worse, the traffic on the way back was heavy but flowing; engine and tyre road noise accompanied us all the way back home. We did not enjoy a single minute of peace in that outing and that was stressful.

I've never had the ability to deal with much noise, always preferring to step out of parties for longer than just a breath of fresh air when I was younger; but I have rarely felt so stressed by noise. I hope we find some quiet again soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Brexit FMEA

-
Image
The Brexit pre-mortem: BFMEA Of all the engineering tools that I have encountered, the one that spans the widest spectrum of respect and scorn, hope and despair is the FMEA , the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. Developed by the US military and NASA and gradually adopted by the automotive industry from the 1970s onwards, it is intended to highlight things that could go wrong before they do; it's also a way of collecting and tracking the evidence (models, test reports, etc) that shows that the nuts and bolts have been proven before putting them on a rocket - or, indeed, jettisoning a country out of the European Union. At its heart, the FMEA is a "what if?" analysis. Other methods are available, like the Potential Problem Analysis from Kepner-Tregoe. But I'm automotive, and the FMEA is a requirement in our field, so I've sketched up how a BFMEA (Brexit Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) might have been constructed and eventually look like. W
Read more

So nearly no longer Inbetween

-
Back in February I posted about the challenges of being between jobs . Now, following a sequence of online first and in-person second interviews and a remarkably tough choice between two very different offers from very different companies, I'm just a few days (including a bank-holiday weekend) from starting my new job at Pepperl+Fuchs . It's an exciting prospect, producing an intriguing mix of thoughts, feelings and excitement that I would like to just briefly reflect on here. On a purely practical level, the nerdy part of me is most interested in the commute. I'm genuine in wanting to continue to avoid using the car to get to work, having commuted by bike for much of my career. Cycling directly to work is alas no longer a regular option. I tried the ride the other day, and it took me an hour and a half to get there. The route along the river is actually quite pleasant, but while I'm sure I'll be able to improve the timing, it's still long. My main mode for the
Read more

Dropping drafts

-
I'm a pretty good sketcher of words and ideas, but a terrible completer of posts: making sure that the ideas make sense and connect properly, trying to get the wording and the feel right, trying to draw conclusions and lessons from whatever experiences or thoughts I am trying to describe; sometimes even deciding which service to post things on (a ridiculous situation, in all honesty) - that's all hard work, and sometimes I just don't feel that I have the energy to complete it. As a result, my pool of drafts begins to overflow and prevents me from really finishing. So, in the spirit of draining the pool and refreshing my perspectives, here's a dump of my most current drafts, cross-posted on Blogger and on my Micro.blog instance! Rethinking which services I should keep, and why, is something for another day. A review of Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before created 2023-09-06 This is a most typically Umberto Eco book, of an unknown, uncertain narrator reconstru
Read more