I am taking part in a hearing study at work aimed at people who test as being able to hear fine, but still have trouble in crowded or noisy environments. For the past two weeks I've been taking samples of said environments and reporting back on how well I can follow a conversation.

Today, we're on to stage two, whereby I have hearing aides now for 2 to 4 weeks, and report back in the same type of environments.

So far, I've determined that the world is in fact, quite noisy. (when putting these on, I could hear my hair (or more accurately the aides brushing against my hair). In the office, I could hear the a/c vents (which are usually background noise that I just ignore). At home, the birds are somewhat louder (and so is that NAS doing a sync). And don't even get me started on the Corellas on the way to the carpark.