Noise-canceling Bose headphones. I lived in a Chicago loft, where I had psychotically noisy neighbors. The headphones were well worth the investment.
Invite them to watch a movie
Inviting your roommates to watch a movie can be just as distracting.
If you want to watch a movie with me, my very big rule is no cellphones. Light pollution is just as bad in a living room at night and I dont want to hear..click, click, click , click…as people text and cant be away from Facebook. If you cant unplug from your cellphone for 2 hours or less, you are addicted and it is not healthy. I use my viewing time as an escape into a fictional world for a short time and I dont want to be reminded about the stress of work or drama that others create.
Inviting them to watch the movie would be awesome if there was any chance they’d be interested in the movie. With my taste it’d be hard to get a person raised in America interested in watching a film with me, much less two people raised in India one of whom doesn’t speak English. (And my other roommate who was raised in America is always watching sitcoms and daytime talk shows when I see her.)
The noise canceling headphones are a good idea.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
I picture the guy asking-
When are the songs and dance numbers coming? This movie is broken!
Jirin
I’ve got roommates right across a very thin wall who are constantly chattering to each other. Most of the time it isn’t so bad, and it doesn’t interfere with the watching of films heavy on noise and dialog at all. But, when I try to watch a very quiet film like Jeanne Dielman or The Sacrifice, it becomes incredibly hard to focus on the film and not their voices.
I can’t blame them for talking a lot. She doesn’t speak English, so can sympathize with being lonely enough to constantly wanting to talk loudly over the web to people back home in India. I can’t really ask them to be quiet without being a jerk. Does anyone have any tips on how to watch very quiet movies with a lot of distracting noise?