Anti Social Behaviour

I had two contrasting bus journeys yesterday.

The first trip of note was on my daily commute home from work. It was just after rush hour and the bus was relatively full, warm and wet from the downpour outside. As I was listening to music and reading a great roar emerged from the back of the bus. It did not take long to figure out that the noise was coming from a large group of young teenagers that had taken to shouting ridiculous quotes, singing clichéd songs (re: Journey on a bus journey) and bellowing obscenities.

On the other hand I was on a bus very late last night coming in from an evening of revelry. I, like many of my friends was quite drunk and likely to look for a bit of fun to take away the draining agony of such a journey. We had jokingly thrown out a few clichéd phrases to some other people that we were acquainted with on the bus and it very quickly snow-balled into a loud and hilarious shouting match. I had a vague thought for the few people on the bus that did not seem to be enjoying themselves. I justified it by thinking that this behaviour is obvious and even appropriate on this particular bus.

I suppose the difference between these bus journeys is that in one case I felt there was a huge level of anti-social behaviour as ordinary commuters were disrupted by unemployed teenagers. In the second case the revelry seemed like a case of bus-wide pro social behaviour. Perhaps there is a case to be made for myself here and some guilt could be assuaged. At the same time, it cannot be denied that my behaviour was in fact, disruptive and I should not have two standards for similar circumstances.

I still however, maintain that we were much funnier!

-The English Student

The Sound of the City

We use all our senses to experience the city, not just our vision.

Any place offers audio sensation as well as visual ones. Our capital city is the perfect example of how sound can affect our experience of a place. Depending on what route we take through the city we can see different things and also hear different things. Certain bus routes have older buses. These buses will have a slightly different engine pitch. In certain areas different types of birds or animals are more likely to congregate and diffuse their noise through the air. Even different types of people can be found that speak with different tones or accents.

Of course we are often inclined to ignore this music of the city. We prattle on to someone about unimportant subjects. Or more frequently, we put in our headphones and drift off into our own personal store of music. In short, we do anything to fill what we perceive as the absence of noise when travelling through the city. We need professional musicians to provide us with a soundtrack instead.

But people, buses, trains, even bands and musicians on the street combine to form a soundtrack for the city. There is a different score every time we enter the capital, with different notes contained within it. This score is played by different instruments too. While we may be more inclined to force our own music onto the scene we should allow the music of the city to flow through us and enhance our perception of the city.

When we use more of our senses we gain more information and get closer to understanding our capital city.

-The English Student