The sounds of silence

First of all: I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

And for those of you who didn't understand what I mean by that, I've moved back into the city this weekend, meaning I can get back to watching Home and Away, enjoying showers that have water pressure high enough to actually penetrate my hair and reach my scalp, and not have to worry too much about train timetables. In short, the things I wrote about when I left the city the last time in this old blog post, are back in my life. (Except I may have missed the boat on the Home and Away front since it'll go on a break over Christmas / New Year's, leaving me to watch something else in its stead, most likely The Biggest Loser if last year was anything to go by.)

During the move though, I discovered something quite interesting about my dad: he can't hear some common high-pitched noises.

As we were both waiting in my new place for the movers to come along with the rest of my stuff, we got to playing-around with the glass-top (or maybe it's some kind of ceramic?) kitchen hob. The buttons on it are touch-sensitive, and as I discovered how to turn it on, my dad read aloud the passage in the instruction manual that said that each press of a button is "...accompanied by an acoustic signal." ie: a beep.

"So where's the noise?" my dad asked.
"There," I said, pressing a button, "can't you hear that?"
"No."
"OMG WHAT?"

I continued to press buttons to try evoke some oh-yeah-I-heard-that facial expression from him, but he could not hear the thing! I brought this up with the rest of the family at the next lunch, and my brother was equally shocked. My mum wasn't however, and regaled us with a tale of how he tried to search for his watch while the thing was beeping and driving her crazy, all while he was unable to pinpoint its location with his ears.

In his defence, my dad blamed years of New Year's fireworks celebrations in the Philippines (a valid excuse if you ask me: if you've ever been to the Philippines at New Year's, it sounds like being in a war zone, or at least the war zones that movies and video games have been presenting me).

As for me, I've been reminded just how fragile these ears of ours are, and will be ever-more vigilant with the volume of my mp3 player and computer headphones, so that hopefully, by the time I reach my dad's age, I can still recognize when my appliances are trying to get my attention.