A to Z 2013: Quiet

For the month of April I will be blogging alphabetically with the theme of Winnipeg versus Davao City. Not to prove a winner but simply to explore the differences and similarities between my home town and my current location.

Q is for Quiet!

City art near the Millennium library in downtown Winnipeg. A place to be quiet.

I used to sleep with ear plugs. Every night. The tiniest sounds would keep me up or wake me in the middle of the night. I'm not sure how this works, but where we are now, there is so much noise all the time that I think I've become immune and no longer require ear plugs.

As I write this there is a balut guy honking his bike horn as he goes up and down the street. Dogs are barking. We can hear the spoken conversation of people walking by. Any minute now I'm sure we're hear the piercing double trio of honks that means one of our neighbours is home and needs someone to open the gate. This happens every night.

Early morning we get the guys yelling out that are collecting plastic, cardboard, metal... (excited birds) they seem to keep going all day and are added to by the sweet corn and ice cream vendors as well as the knife sharpening guy.

Elections are coming up in about a month so a few mornings we have been woken by campaign vans blaring music over loud speakers. For about a month and a half leading up to Christmas we had carollers singing at our gate. 

See, here in Davao, the houses may be built with glorious soundproof concrete but the windows are all jalousies. We are thankful that our house has a lot of windows so we have great airflow but we hear EVERYTHING around us. And loud means your are having more fun in the Philippines.

Jalousie windows. Yes, they are dirty. Lots of dust gets kicked up on the street.

My old apartment in Winnipeg was kind of loud. We could hear the people upstairs moving stuff around and having arguments. My bedroom window was over an ally with a dumpster which seemed to attract drunk people at all hours of the night. This is when I started wearing ear plugs. After my husband and I got married we found a new place together and it was very quiet!

The noise we deal with here in Davao on a daily basis would warrant a complaint with the landlord or local police back in Winnipeg. Here it is just a way of life. We are just thankful no one near us has rooster. Yet. But still... I don't need ear plugs anymore.

On this item, Davao and Winnipeg are worlds apart!