Tag: car

Impressions on New Hearing Aids [en]

As the founding editor of Phonak’s community blog “Open Ears” (now part of “Hearing Like Me“) I contributed a series of articles on hearing loss between 2014 and 2015. Here they are.

As promised, here are my impressions of the Bolero hearing aids I’m currently trying out (hoping I don’t get any of the technical stuff wrong here, do tell me if I did!). They have open tips, like my Widex ones have, but are BTE (entirely behind-the-ear) rather than RIC (with the receiver, the part that produces sounds, directly in the ear canal — this would be the Phonak Audéo model, which I might try in future). My Phonak audiologist Jennifer tells me it doesn’t change much, acoustically: a RIC just moves some of the technology away from behind the ear, allowing the part that sits there to be smaller — important for those, who, like Steve, appreciate when their hearing aids are invisible.

Phonak Bolero Q90

The first thing that struck me with these aids was that there was less ambiant noise. Or less operating noise. Or different. I had the strange feeling I wasn’t really wearing hearing aids. There was probably a little less amplification than what I was used to, but clearly something in the sound texture too.

Voices felt a little tinny/reverb-y at first. Mine, Jennifer’s. Not unpleasant, but a little bit weird. Jennifer told me it was probably due to SoundRecover, which compresses high frequencies into a lower frequency region so we can hear them better. She warned me it would take some time getting used to. I don’t notice anything strange with voices nowadays, so I guess I did indeed get used to it!

I discovered that with Phonak there is a whole list of programmes the hearing aids can switch back and forth from, and which can also be set manually. I left my “main” channel in automatic mode to see how that worked, and for the other ones picked StereoZoom, which is optimised for speech in noisy environments, with a lot of noise reduction and a very narrow beam for amplification, speech in wind (for sailing), and a phone programme (right ear). The last position is a “mute” mode (indispensable for me).

The buttons on both aids have different roles: they can either be used to turn volume up or down, or switch programmes. The catch is that the left button is the “volume down” one, and the right button “volume up”. So as I wanted a “volume up” button, I had to have my programme switch one on the left — whereas it would have made more sense for me to have it on the right. I’m right-handed, and switch programmes more often than I increase volume. Oh well.

I can’t say I’ve used the phone programme much. I tried it, and it works, taking the sound from the right ear (the phone one) and channeling it into the left ear too. It’s pretty neat. But it requires positioning the phone in such a way that the hearing aid catches the phone sound (takes some getting used to) and pressing the phone against my ear with the hearing aid in it ended up being a bit too uncomfortable. So, for long planned calls I’ve reverted to my trusty earbuds. For impromptu calls I still tend to switch to mute, because background noise sometimes interferes with the phone mode (i.e., gets amplified too) and I don’t really feel like experimenting with acoustics when I’m on a call. I guess I should probably run some test calls to really try that mode out.

Given the lousy weather this summer, “speech in wind” has also been largely left aside, as it’s the programme I was planning to use when sailing. I like StereoZoom, though I sometimes have trouble determining if I should use it or leave the hearing aid in automatic mode, specially as automatic mode has a whole bunch of different programmes it can switch to and even blend.

While it’s nice to have a hearing aid that recognises the acoustic environment and chooses the best programme suited to it, it’s sometimes frustrating in practice. I’ll be in my car talking to a friend, and suddenly the quality of the sound changes and I have more trouble understanding speech. And then it changes back. Or I’ll be listening to music in the car, and one ear seems to be treating sound differently from the other. I find the whole concept of a hearing aid intelligent enough to know what it’s listening to fascinating, and would love to know more about how to the tech/programme works, but the control-geek in me would like to be able to have some kind of indication telling me which mode I’m in, and an easy way to override it.

I haven’t yet put my Widex aids back in my ears, which in my opinion points to how comfortable I am with the Phonaks. There’ll be a little tweaking to do next time I go to headquarters and see Jennifer (one ear is slightly less-amplified, and maybe I need a smaller size tip in one ear, we’ll see), and I’ll probably change my selection of programmes, including at least the music one.

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The Price of Freedom [en]

[fr] J'ai une voiture. Le prix de la voiture c'est pas juste le prix de la voiture, c'est aussi le prix de la liberté de monter au chalet quand je veux avec mes chats sans avoir besoin d'organiser tout ça à l'avance. Mon monde vient de s'agrandir d'un coup.

Last week, I bought a car.

Pam

I’ve been car-less since spring 2007. Freelance, I didn’t need it anymore to go to work each day, and 500CHF a month that I wasn’t spending on a car I didn’t use was 500CHF I didn’t need to earn.

My life has changed quite a bit now. My family seem to have all chosen to live in places that are hard to get to with public transport. My brother has children. I have two cats that I want to drag to the chalet more often.

But I was reluctant. My life is simpler without a car. I just take public transport. I don’t wonder whether it makes sense to take the car or not. That’s a decision I’m spared. When I had a car previously, I used it all the time, even to go to the shop 2 minutes away. I don’t want to start doing that again.

I also wondered if it was worth the expense. Would I really use it that much?

But by having a car, I’m not just paying to have a car. I’m paying to have the freedom to go to the chalet with my cats without having to organize transport beforehand. I’m paying to have the freedom to go and see my nephew and niece without having to ask my brother to pick me up and bring me back to the train. Same for eating at my Dad’s. I don’t have to worry about when the last train runs.

It’s like people who buy the “abonnement général” — a yearly pass for public transport. They might not actually travel that much, but it gives them the freedom to hop on the train whenever they feel like it. Like I do with my bus pass, actually. I’m sure there are months where I don’t do 70CHF worth of bus travel. But I like not wondering if it’s worth buying a bus ticket.

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Deux semaines en Turquie [fr]

[en] As the editor for ebookers.ch's travel blog, I contribute there regularly. I have cross-posted some of my more personal articles here for safe-keeping.

Cet article a été initialement publié sur le blog de voyage ebookers.ch (voir l’original).

Depuis plusieurs années, mon père part chaque été faire de la voile en Turquie avec des amis. Cette fois, il y est retourné pour un séjour de deux semaines dans les terres, avec son amie.

J’ai profité d’un après-midi dominical en leur compagnie pour recueillir leurs impressions, vu qu’ils étaient tous deux rentrés ravis de leur voyage dans ce pays que je ne connais pas du tout.

Ils ont choisi une formule assez souple de voyage en car semi-organisé: des cars circulent sur un circuit “hop on, hop off” traversant divers points d’intérêt. A chaque étape, on peut rester pour la nuit et reprendre le car, ou s’attarder un peu et prendre le car suivant, quelques jours plus tard. Logement et visites guidées optionnelles sont inclus dans le tour. L’idée me paraît séduisante, à mi-chemin entre le voyage vraiment organisé et l’aventure complète.

De qui m’ont-ils donc parlé? D’abord des gens, qui sont accueillants et sympathiques, sans être envahissants. On peut se promener de façon détendue sans se faire harceler par des “marchands de touristes”.

Ensuite, Ephèse. Etape incontournable, cette ville lumineuse et claire perchée sur une colline contient des ruines extrêmement bien préservées. Dans l’antiquité, c’était un port grec puis romain (check!!), mais l’accumulation des alluvions fait maintenant qu’elle est un peu plus dans les terres.

Ephèse.

Les sites archéologiques sont protégés par des structures fermées — on se promène donc dans de grands espaces “intérieurs” qui contiennent plusieurs maisons ou constructions. Les archéologues y travaillent sous vos yeux, rassemblant par exemple des puzzles antiques, plaques de marbre brisées par les tremblements de terre.Ephèse.

En Cappadoce, il y a près de deux cent villes souterraines, utilisées entre autres par les chrétiens grecs du quatrième siècle, victimes des persécutions romaines. Une dizaine de ces villes ont été excavées et rendues accessibles au public. Les autres… oh, y’en a tellement, vous savez!

Pour les filles, on me recommande les bains turcs en Cappadoce. C’est gai, c’est féminin, plein de bulles de savon, détente, massages (et “joyeux anniversaire” chanté en turc pendant deux heures si c’est justement le jour!)

A voir également, Pamukkale: des sources d’eau très calcaires ont déposé sur le paysage une couche blanche qui rendrait presque le paysage enneigé, parsemé de petits étangs d’eau bleue, ce qui en fait un haut lieu des photos de mariage.

Pamukkale.

Pour terminer, il paraît que dans de nombreuses villes, on trouve à côté des places de jeu pour enfants des sortes de “places de fitness” en plein air. On y aperçoit donc des femmes en habits de ville, pantalon bouffant et foulard, piétinant sur des steps hypra-modernes peints de couleurs vives et placés face-à-face.

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Back Home [en]

Back home in Switzerland. Got the cat back, but not the cellphone.

Switzerland is grey and dark and cold. No colours, no sun.

I’ve got my cat back (with a bit of extra weight, just like his mistress who now feels a little tight in her trousers), my brave little car started at the turn of the key, only one of my plants has died (it was already on the way down before I left), but my cellphone has been blocked.

I feel a bit dazed. The change has been brutal. I feel disconnected, as if my presence here wasn’t completely real — or worse, as if India was just some kind of weird dream, a sensation I sometimes have when I am over there. Something else I need to sort out at some point, I guess.

I’m not too sure what I’m going to do now. There are lot of things to unpack, an extra CD/DVD-rack to buy (!), a few things to type up, and lots of photos and videos to upload and organize. The flat still needs work, too.

I think I’ll take a Lush bath.

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