The rooster says...

We have a new addition to our neighborhood--a rooster. He crows loudly every day, starting at about 5 a.m.

I hate him.

If we lived near a farm, in the country, roosters would be an accepted part of life. We live in a ritzy suburb. Our neighbors drive Jaguars and BMWs. There is no conceivable need for an effing rooster. You can afford a Mercedes, buy a bloody alarm clock.

There is one major cultural difference here that I just cannot get used to, and it's that there is absolutely zero common courtesy when it comes to noise pollution. Thinking about it, though, why should there be any? There are no laws or ordinances regarding noise--at least none that are enforced.

Our neighbors across the street and down a few houses (not the ones with the rooster, I don't think) have three or four dogs. Their maid lets the dogs outside every morning at about 4. They bark. And bark and bark and bark and bark. At everything-leaves, other dogs, blades of grass, bugs, themselves, the wind...it's great. Yet it doesn't occur to these people that hey, people might be trying to sleep, seeing as the sun isn't even up yet. At home, people who are inconsiderate enough to do this are usually hit with hefty fines.

The house next door to us is getting completely renovated. The construction workers show up at about 7 every morning and work until almost 7 every night. They have completely destroyed our shrubbery along that side of the yard, and think nothing of scraping up the side of our house with bamboo scaffolding or dropping broken shards of glass and brick into our yard. Hey, it's not their house! There is nothing we can do about this, other than to occasionally go outside and play the old "intimidating white person" card.

Occasionally the people across the street will make the wise decision to blast dangdut music at top volume, starting at about 11 p.m. Dangdut is a type of local music, and it's sort of beyond description. Remember those silly little Casio keyboards from the 80s, that had the buttons you could press for different synthesized beats in the background? Imagine the most irritating beat from that, combined with circus music and the theme song from the most obnoxious kids' cartoon you can think of. Then imagine all that on heroin. That's dangdut. It's amusing for approximately two seconds, then it starts killing brain cells. It's fantastic when people decide to play it for the whole neighborhood in the middle of the night.

There doesn't seem to be much sense of common courtesy. I can only assume that it comes from the fact that there are no laws regulating noise. My irritation with it, with having my sleep disturbed and my lawn destroyed, probably comes from my own cultural sense of entitlement.

Americans (well, westerners in general but particularly Americans) feel a very strong sense of entitlement. We feel we are entitled to a good nights' sleep, undisturbed by obnoxious neighbors. We have a right to a nice yard, and if people litter in or destroy parts of said yard, we feel our rights are violated. We're ridiculously litigious--if someone violates our rights, we have the option to sue or complain to the proper authorities, and when we complain we expect that these authorities will help us without expecting bribe money.

What I wonder is this: am I entitled to be irritated by this? I may have these rights at home, but I'm living here. My neighbors aren't doing anything that's out of the ordinary for them. Am I just being a stubborn American, or are they just being inconsiderate? To what extent can this sort of thing be excused? Where's the balance?

I don't know.

But I still hate that rooster.