OMG STFU PLS FFS THX

As I write this entry I can hear a hammer hitting a steel girder from the office above ours, three customer service agents talking on the phone at a normal level, one customer service agent talking on the phone at an unnecessarily loud and belligerent level, a lot of fingers hitting a lot of keys, and the superfluous, tinny, yet overwhelmingly distracting overtones of my closest colleague's choice of death metal emanating from his vastly expensive yet utterly useless sound-isolating headphones.

I cannot even hear myself think. If I would like to gain enough focus to actually be able to do my job without the onslaught of this aural distraction I must arm myself with my own pair of sound-isolating earphones (Shure E5Cs to be exact) and drown out all the surrounding cacophony with some of my own music.

Short of bringing some industrial grade earplugs with me to work, this is about the only solution I am able to come up with. The earphones also offer protection from the noise I encounter wherever I am, be it from the rushing noise of the tube on my way in to work, in the supermarket dodging screaming toddlers in trolleys, or practially anywhere I can think of in London - apart from the very middle of Green Park. And even there I usually have the unfortunate knack of attracting whichever rowdy group of kids like to play their music from their mobile phones while sitting on the grass that day.

When I get home, I usually have about half an hour of peace and quiet before the upstairs neighbours arrive home and literally stomp up their stairs - which are positioned next to my bedroom - as loudly as they possibly can, before slamming their front door shut and stomping around their house barefoot for the rest of the evening and, frequently, well into the early hours of the morning, on their heels.

My inconsiderate neighbours are then usually followed shortly by my housemate, who likes to wind down from her day by listening to loud country "music" on her trebley "hifi" in her room - until an hour after my bedtime.

I sleep with earplugs in. I frequently miss the sound of my morning alarm.

</RANT>