Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Fear and Loathing in My Left Ear

Today I got a digital hearing aid. I was warned that it was going to be a big change and would take some getting used to.

Since I was 11 years old when I first got a hearing aid, I have assumed that if my hearing had been normal everything would be louder, just how things were with my hearing aid.

The digital hearing aid is far cleverer than a real ear I imagine, it adapts to my surroundings, it quitens in loud places and can make voices clear even with a lot of background noise.

But it feels really strange. Going to work straight after my appointment this morning was a weird experience. Certain noises were oddly loud and making my hearing feel very trippy. Plastic bags I don't like. Toilet doors locking sound really sinster, I felt as though I was in a horror film! And the first task I had to do at work, sounded so unnaturally loud. Stamping coursework made a horrendous noise that echoed loads...

I'm hoping that things will soon feel more normal to me, I'm struggling to get used the fact that although sound in my left ear feels really quiet, I can hear just as well as I could with my old hearing aid. I just need to have a bit of faith in what my new hearing can do.

One thing I do like though, is that with a analogue hearing aid when the battery ran it out, things would get slowly quiter and quieter. The digital one though bleeps at me :-)

Bleepy, bleep.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

New Bookie...

Today during my lunch break I very excitedly went to amazon uk hoping to order Haruki Murakami's new book, After Dark. Irritatingly it seems that first edition hard back version was only on limited release and I would have to wait a month - a whole month to order the next edition which has a much less interesting cover.

"Fuck that" I thought and off I went to amazon dot com, thank god that either America gets more copies of the book or they have not yet discovered just how wonderful he is (me loves Mr
Murakami, he is the bestest writer in the whole world... Ahhhhh.).

Sadly amazon dot com estimates that the book can take anywhere from 4 - 22 days to arrive.

If there is a book god out there, please make it arrive quickly.