Noisy mamaks

What is it with Malaysians and loud noise.

I was at a 24-hour mamak stall last night with some friends, one of those corner shop affairs that would set up its chairs and tables al fresco (under the open sky) after dusk. Nowadays its becoming fashionable for mamak shops to show soccer matches on a large screens placed outdoors, with sound system cranked up loud. Except this wasn't the only source of entertainment for this shop.

Inside the shop, they were showing a movie on two large screen tvs. The sound was pumped though a home theater system which you can hear from half a block away. On top of that they had Hindi music playing from a cheap cassette player sitting behind the cashier, the volume pushed up to pierce the mighty home theater with its shrill tinny sound. And all the speakers were strategically aimed ar the crowd of 15-odd tables outside.

So there we were sitting in the middle of the crowd. I was struggling to hear the conversation above the din bombarding us from different directions. I could not hear myself think. For much of the night I just sat there paralyzed, having one teh tarik after another.

Surprisingly nobody was bothered by this very loud assault on their auditory senses. Everyone was happily shouting and laughing at the top of their voices.

This noise cocktail reminds me of hot drink mixes popular here like cham (tea plus coffee) and Neslo (instant coffee plus milo) except that this is closer to strong tea, coffee, milo, coca cola and fanta grape mixed together with condensed milk and a spoonful of salt.

Or maybe its just me. I am unlucky enough to be born hypersensitive to sound. In school I could never understand how people could study with Bon Jovi turned up at full blast. Nor could I figure out how my old roommate could play mp3s on winamp, play a noisy computer game and watch tv across the room all at the same time. My brain just jams up when it tries to process too many sound inputs all at once.

Back to Malaysians. Has anyone noticed that tv sets have become mandatory fixtures at tom yum stalls. To stand out in the crowd the stall operator would try to drown out the neighbour's tv volume, usually with the help of a powerful home theater system and strategically placed speakers. To double the attraction of his stall, he turns on a CD player and cranks it up to compete with his own tv set. To triple the attraction, he sets up a third sound source, maybe local talk radio, to compete with the first two. To quadruple the effect... well you get the picture. All this emanating from a stall no larger than 3mx3m. And from the looks of it the patrons seem to love not being able to tell when one song ends and another begins.

And its not just food establishments. I took a 5-hour ride in a bas ekspres once. In his infinite wisdom the bus attendant decided to turn on the "in-flight" entertainment so that the passengers can enjoy two Hindi movies back to back on a high mounted tv. The volume was cranked up until the speaker crackled. It didn't matter to him that it was 11pm and that some passengers might actually be desperately trying to catch some sleep. I think the expectation is for you to just sit down and take whatever's dished out to you.

If you think this only happens in hawkers and cheap express buses, you're dead wrong. How about the flying mamak express. On a couple of international MAS flights, I got so annoyed with the overly loud (and cheesy) music they played during descent that I flagged the steward and asked him, "Excuse me, isn't the volume a bit loud? I didn't know we're a flying disco." He just smiled and guess what. He disappeared to the galley and did nothing. Only after I called him a second time, took down his name and told him exactly what I would do if he didn't lower the volume did he lower it.

Trust me, when you're thrown about by turbulence and your eardrums are struggling with cabin depressurization, the last thing you want to be is drowned in loud music.

This obsession with shoving loud sounds down people's ears permeates in every level of society here - from village warungs to taxis to 5-star hotels. Why? I haven't the faintest idea. I suppose its one of those things that makes Malaysia uniquely Malaysia.