iPods are making noise in New York

Finally. New Yorkers have proven that I am not a grumpy Singaporean who complains renlentlessly against loud music on public transportation.

Yahoo! News reported that a passenger silently fumed (most of us do) as the man seated beside him on the plane blasted techno music on his iPod at full volume. When I wrote about noise level in the subway ('Testing mobie ring tones in the train. What's wrong with People?' & 'Chipmunks singing in the train'), they were incident relating to communters playing music aloud from their mobile phones. For a music from somebody's headphones to be audible to the surrounding people, it must be on its highest volume. There was a lady who requested an iPod-user on the NY's subway to lower the volume, only to her dismay that she was ignored. I can understand the iPod-user's insensitivity to the fellow communters, but how can one be insensitive to their own eardrums? The only logical answer is that their headphones are working fine but not their ears. And that probably explains why they are oblivious to the loud music that their neighbors are hearing.

iPod-users have their 5-minutes of fame on the NY's subway too. Some are either practising hard for the American Idols and singing along their playlist, while others are talking excessively loud with their ear buds on like in a political rally. Such scenes are not uncommon in Singapore's train. Once, I saw a karaoke crooner on the train who sang with such fervor that with a little bit of imagination, I could be picturing her as Beyonce from the movie, Dreamgirls. I find such clownlike performance amusing and thus entertaining. However, loud speakers who thought that they are at Hyde Park are simply irritating.

I can't reprimand communters who risk hearing impairment to share music with me but I am crossed at those who blatantly share their music on the train without the use of headphones. For Pete's sake, I don't like your 'sexy back'; I like 'It's oh so quiet' by Bjork. So keep your favorite to yourself because it is likey that they are not ours.

Some may think that I am too unforgiving in embracing music on the go. But is music the only noise level in the train? Just to name a few - teenagers' giggles, office gossips and aunties and uncles yelling in dialects over their Jurassic mobile phones. When the train is already a rojak* of commotion, we don't have to add in chilli.

*Rojak - a Malay word to mean mix. It is also a fruit and vegetable salad dish commonly found in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.