The Septimus Notes

Thursday, May 29, 2008

|Hey, hey, what's that sonnerie?|

There are a lot of new sounds here in France. Like so many things you can grow accustomed to and then take for granted at home, I don't think I realized in New York just how much my life was regulated by sound.

The sounds of my phone that tell me when I'm receiving a call, when someone has left a vmx and when I've received a text message. I know the sound a truck makes to signal that it is backing up. I know the sound an elevator makes to tell me when it's arrived at a floor. And I know the beep my CO detectors makes to let me know that asphyxiation is probably not in my immediate future.

The sounds are different here. I don't recognize them. And (perhaps worse still) I don't regard them.

Everytime my work phone rings I miss the phone call because it isn't until the 3rd refrain of the "doodleydodoop!" that I realize it's a phone and mine.

Two weeks ago when a friend was visiting me from Madrid, on a Friday morning, he was messing around on Facebook and I was getting ready to go to work, when there was a weird sound. He asked, "Hey, what's that sound?" I said, "Eh, I dunno, there are weird sounds here. Just ignore it." Three minutes later it sounded again. And then I said, "Actually... could that be the doorbell?" I didn't even know I had a doorbell (I don't think I do in New York).

I went to the door and opened it (no peep hole here) to discover a middle-aged Sri Lankan man wearing a NY Mets baseball cap with a couple of white ouvriers in tow. He said he was there to replace the couch -- evidently the one I had wasn't stylish enough.

Oh, and to wash my dishes; clean the bathroom and the water closet; and wash and replace all of the towels and linens. Oh, and he also took out my trash.

Yay for strange new sounds and the surprises they bring.

promulgated by SWS2.1 at 06:37.
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