To respond to James Ho's message, here I have a recording of 'Fixing glasses and door mesh (Xio1 li3 buo1 li2 sha1 chuan1 sha 1 men2)'-- a typical megaphone call from a kind of street vendors who do their business by driving a van around streets. However, it was not a close up recording. I am afraid that it might dissapoint Mr Ho. Nevertheless, I've found this sound interesting as a good example to reflect the recent social phenomenon. I thus post the sound here to share with you all.

The sound was an ambience collected from the 11th floor of a tall apartment in Danshui, Taipei. In the recent years, this town is developing rapidly with constructions going on in every corner. The long-term existence of the vendor's service of fixing glasses and door mesh poses a question-- As long as there is a house, there is a need of his service. However, since people are moving to higher and higher floors, how should he run the business?

To the local residents, his megaphone call is filled in the air of the community. However, where is he? No one knows!

This is an every day sound, but no one can locate its physicality precisely. As a result, the call always sounds very lonely and the broken glasses and door mesh of the local residents remains broken...

Until 2 days ago when I was recording Big Ben at 12am, I've been forgetting to share this report with you. Here I enclose the link and the sound I recorded!

Hope you are going to enjoy it!

ps. In order to have it available online, the sound is compressed and the quality is negotiated. Please accept my apologies.

The recording site: At the south bank opposite to the Parliament.

I've started teaching in my department from today. Although it last only one term, it is a start! The course is called Phonography.

It has taken me two weeks for preparation. When finishing the first lecture today, students' actions seemed to be fine-- when they left the room, they came to me to say 'thank you'! I guess that means that they'll come back again to my lecture, right?!

What an opportunity that makes me happy! I feel great! Hope you can share my joy, too!

Lets have a think, what sound has been a part of your job? What sound can represent the (sonic) image of your professional? Yes, every job has its sounds!

'Around 9:45pm, 500 somthing taxis were passing through the front door of Sheraton Hotel at Zhong-Shiao East Road. The drivers pressed car horns all together to express their complain. Later on, they drove to Far Eastern Plaza Hotel and Sunworld Dynasty Hotel to express their disatisfaction.

Because their action was not against the law, policemen did not ask them to leave. The chief of Taipei police Zhou-Jun Wang was at the frontline to control the order.'

Here are my thoughts:

1. It must sound great! What a rare sonic action art! I hope someone has recorded it!

This is exactly the interesting thing about sound-- in different era and environment, people's recognition of sounds are different. Taking this air-raid siren as an example, people in the past time would be scared to death while people nowadays simply whisk the machine with curiosity!

I  wonder if there are sonic artifects exhibited in this show...

For details, please visit this link. 

Here I would like to remind people something slightly relating to the subject... when listening to music with headphones, please do not sing aloud-- it does not sound nice as you think!

When I was 13 years old, I enjoyed doing it very much. Until one day, my dear brother came to my face and said to me: 'Sis, do you know that singing with the headphones on can cause very unpleasant sounds?'.... Since then, I have never done it again to make myself stupid! haha!

At last, after 3 months, this CD is finally completed!

For those participants who have not given me their correspondent addresses, please do so soon when it is popping hot!

Thank you very much for your support and participation. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it!

Noise makes people upset and anxious. Recently, a newspaper also mentioned about a survey that noise can cause troubles to those people whose hearts are not well.

I went to Notting Hill Carnival yesterday and experienced Caribbean party styled music-- big scaled speakers were overlapped to form a wall and the volume was turned to the maximum. The sound shook my body organs as the way the washing machine does my laundy... up and down, spin and spin and spin... It was sometimes quite scary to me as I could really feel my heart getting weak! Nevertheless, there were many people enjoying dancing in front of the speaker wall. They did not seem to be affected at all!

p.s. Thank Mr Yang for kindly providing the information about noise. 

Allow me to post the sound I owed Cheng-Hsian here so people can share it, too!

It was recorded in a factory in Tamsui, Taipei. Following a governmental regulation, cranes on move in factories need alarms singling. However, because there had been the b-b-b sound in the factory, the owner went to the manufacturer to order a different musical tone. Believe it or not, it was... My Home Sweet Home!

As the crane moved with interruptions, so did the played music. The sweet home was very much pieced... The sound surely created some amusement. However, after listening to it for a long while, I could not help sympethising the workers. They had to listen to it EVERYDAY!

The market for designing sonic signals for industrial usages should be large! Hope we can do something to transform factories into high-quality sonic spaces!

In today's Liberty Times, there is a report about people's views (1, 2) about frog croaking. Please have a look.

Also, there is an interesting website about frog sounds made in different languages-- here. 

I would like to invite all the sound enthusiasts to do something together!

It's about producing a CD! The theme is about having enthusiasts recording a piece of environmental sounds, between 1 sec and 10 mins, in anytime on 23 June at any place of Taiwan. The content can be natural or artificial, but no musical pieces. The computer effects such as flanger should be avoided but normalisation, amplifier and fades are fine to be used. There is no limiation on the recording equipment and methods, as long as the final sound piece can be saved as a wave, aiff or mp3 file.

Regarding to the method of producing the CD, because I don't have the experience (I have only produced 'personal collections' haha!), I hope that we can discuss possible ways to realise it. If we cannot release the CD, we can still use the method used last year-- having 'personal collections' for all the participants! Well, at lease the goal of exchanging ideas can be reached!

Whoever has the interest, pelase leave a messae! (I wonder if anyone bothers... haha!)

Waiting for your participation! Thank you! 

What interests me is that Taiwanese don't seem to appreciate this outcome. They consider that it cannot improve the surrounding noise pollution immediately. I personally think that the EPA should declair its planned usages when it announced the production of this map in order to gain people's understanding and support. For example, in order to improve Taiwan's noise environment, we need to consider the strategic approach instead of keeping ticketing whoever makes noises. To do so, the noise map is a very important guidance-- the governmental policy makers, architects, interior designers etc can all use it to plan cities, buildings and houses. For example, with a noisy road, they can consider expanding the area of trees, building noise barriers, making waterfalls or fountains or making the traffic go underground etc.

Many people in Taiwan have taken the installation of air tight windows for certain. It is a frustrating phenomenon. People are used to give up their right of listening to non-pressure natural sounds. They either close windows or play music. People, please wake up your ears! Have you heard birds chirping today? Were you waken up by the alarm clocks again rather than the birds? Have you heard cicadas of this summer ni-niing yet? Do you know they have come out of the earth?

Hopefully people have the awareness of the sonic-environmental protection. Please don't give up your right of listening to good sounds!

In the past, I introduced London's noise map in the blog of Taiwanese Soundscape. I also mentioned the connections between sound design and city planning. If you want to know more about these two aspects, please visit the archive of this blog.

To be honest, I really envy these railway enthusiasts and hoping that I can record sounds of Taiwan with similar enthusiasts to release an album, too!