Living with noise

Noisy chickens live in a chicken coop along the railway line next to my condo.

A middle-aged man who raises them lives in a tin-roofed shack, the kind you see in slums.

In modern touchy-feely language, it's a 'community'. That's also the word they use in Thai, though in a Stalinesque touch they might call it 'Community No 2' after giving the name of the local area. But what they really mean is 'slum'.

Passenger trains roar past on the single line which runs past his place, and my condo next to it, every day. In peak times, they pass every 10 minutes.

They create a terrific noise, as the Railways of Thailand runs mainly old, run-down locomotive stock.

One train yesterday stopped about 20 metres short of the platform.

Maybe the driver was asleep. He had trouble getting the locomotive to move again, so did what all drivers do - just clamped his foot on the accelerator. The thing did not budge.

'Brrmmmmmm!' the train roared. The train still refused to move, so the driver revved the engine again, and again.

A man in a railway kiosk drops a wooden barrier across the railway line every time a train is about to pass, so cars know when to stop. He came out of his kiosk and stared.

'I can do a better job than that,' he appeared to be thinking.

Eventually the train moved on, and made it to the platform.

The birds in the shack only add to noise levels.

The man with the shed keeps up to a dozen birds there. The number keeps increasing, which is bad news. What happened to bird flu?

He might raise them for their eggs, or sell the birds for their meat when Chinese festivals roll along. Boyfriend Maiyuu reckons he actually raises them as fighting birds.

In any event, they make a terrific din. Someone only has to walk into that shed and they will start squawking.

I can hear the melee from the birds from my condo on the ninth floor. They compete with the noise from the railway, and is so loud that it is starting to drive me mad.

The third chief source of noise in my life, my inconsiderate Chinese neighbours, also causes me stress.

I can probably do nothing about the railway, as it is a public service. As for my Chinese neighbours, I have complained many times. What's left?

The squawking feathered ones are kept in dirty upturned rattan baskets under a tin shed with open sides. If the noise carries on, I might have to pay their owner a visit.

Will he be in a fighting mood, like his wretched birds?