Feb 4th, 2008 - The Sounds Of Silence

I guess I haven't told you about the noise in the street yet. All day and night you can hear the traffic outside. Car horns, people yelling at each other, and because it's getting close to New Year's, random explosions can be heard. It's probably just firecrackers or bottle rockets, but some of them sound like car bombs, and they are really close.

Last night we went to bed early. My wife was feeling sleepy all day - I still think we're getting used to the 16-hour time difference. It's kind of weird. As I write this, it's Monday morning, around 7:30 am. But back in Vancouver, it's Sunday afternoon. It's a strange feeling, like I'm living in the future, and Doc Brown is going to jump out of a closet any second. I always thought that Christopher Lloyd was in the closet, but that's just my opinion.

I woke up suddenly at around 5am and something struck me kind of odd. There was complete silence outside. I could only hear the faint breathing of my wife lying next to me. No cars, no horn honking and not a single bomb-blast. It was really peaceful.

Then I thought I was probably dreaming, but my back started to hurt, so I was pretty sure I was awake. I think the unfamiliar bed combined with going to bed early. I usually only manage about 6 or 8 hours of sleep at home, but I was getting close to 10 now. I kept on listening for some sign of civilization, but it was completely dead outside. Maybe I'm not in Harbin anymore... Maybe I'm deaf! Yeah, that's it! I musthave lost my hearing. One of those firecrackers probably deafened me.

I keep my mp3 player on the night stand because I was listening to a book on tape the night before. The Catcher in the Rye. It's a really good book, but that's not the point. I guess I fell asleep while listening to it last night and it kept playing way past the end of the book. I had some music on there too, but I can't remember what. I put on the headphones to check if I was deaf, and I nearly pissed myself.

It was The Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel. No word of a lie. I put the whole album on there because I really like the songwriting, but this was incredible. I listened to the whole song, then skipped back and listened to it again. The sun started to peek through the curtains and I let the whole album play. I'm definitely not deaf. In-deaf-initely?