last night

Last night there started this loud noise around midnight under my apartment. It is the laundry and facility room. Based on my engineer's sense or just common sense, I figured there must be something wrong with some part of the heating system. It was so loud in my bedroom that I had to move my mattress to the living room in order to possibly get some sleep. And I was thought about calling the office the first thing in the morning.

The fact was that I wan't really able to sleep. One reason was the noise. Another reason was that I had been having a hard time falling into sleep due to all the stresses. Anyway, around 3:30pm, I decided to call the emergency maintanence. A lady answered the phone and I told her the situation. Her response was that "we don't deal with noise control". Ha!

I repeated the situation and explictly told her that something must be wrong in the facility room. It's not noises from the neighbor I am complaining about! Then the maintanence guy asked me a few questions and confirmed that I was not ignorant of other sources of sound. I basically told him that I had been here for two years. This was the first time it happened. Yes, I have certain tolerance of noises. For God's sake, my apartment is facing the highway.

So around 4am the guy came over and found out one of the hot water pumps broke down. He said he could hear it screaming from outside the building. So why was I the only person complaining? Do all the other people have sound-proof walls? And the maintanence guy asked me to report this kind of problem as soon as possible next time so that less damage could be made. He said the apartments rely on people like me to avoid accidents. It was funny that he seemed to be interested in a long chat with me at 4am in the morning at my door, while I hadn't had any sleep.

After he left, I went back to my bed. It was so nice to have the silence back. I cherished it more than ever.