Drilling

We are sitting down to lunch on the first day of a three day weekend. A drill from construction nearby starts to buzz. And buzz. And buzz. It is loud and annoying. Lydia asks Yang to complain to property management. Yang makes a phone call and the drilling stops a moment later. If I had only known it was that simple.

Living in an apartment complex in Beijing means you put up with a fair amount of noise. Most of it you just get used too. Cars driving on wet pavement, buses heaving, shutters opening, the occasional pipe making itself known. Construction noise comes from time to time too however the past 18 months it has been almost non stop from our neighbors’ apartments. By neighbors I mean next door, above, and below. It first stuck me in December of 2010. I was home, laid up with some kind of stomach virus. I could not sleep, think, or relax. Drill, drill, drill. As I spent the next year working from home the noises would subside for a few weeks and then pick up again. The only way I could get any peace was to wear headphones. It was a contributing factor on why I returned to a job in a normal, mostly quiet, office.

Technically, people are allowed to construct inside their apartment as long as they do it during the weekdays and during working hours. Weekends and nights are off limits. So there wasn’t a huge point in complaining. And besides our property management had a bigger fish to fry. Or at least to conspire with. Next door to out complex a hotel complex was recently torn down in order to build a new hotel complex. They’ve cleared out several stories worth of dirt and have started heavy construction. By heavy construction I mean I have no idea, but it is loud. Several weeks back our complex staged a protest against their construction noise and “won” a concession that they would only make noise during working hours. Apparently working hours include 8am on a Saturday. We don’t hear that noise because our apartment is at the far end of the complex from the hotel construction. But we do hear the drill, drill, drilling.

As a laid out for a nap at around 2pm the drilling started again. After about 15 minutes I asked Yang to ask property management to shut it down again, and so they did. It was quiet. I slept.

Later, at about 5pm I could hear the drill again. A very quick on and then off. On and then off. Trying to make the minimal noise possible.

I let it go.