Diary of a deaf guy - My Memoir [Part 2]
39This blog that I'm doing is to help people understand what it's like to be deaf, or even for other deaf people to know that they are not alone.
I hope to continue this blog with various things that happen to me during the day in terms of my deafness.
Please like this video if you like it and comment on it if you want to ask me any questions.
Hello. This is part two of my diary of a deaf guy. And in this one, I just wanted to talk about this actual diary of a deaf guy that I'm writing up. It's a sort of memoir, of what it's like to be a deaf child. When I was young, my mum wrote loads of notes about me being deaf and it would be things that I say that actually meant something else. For example, I would say 'nini' to mean shorts and my mum worked out that it was because shorts went down to the knee. So I just ended up calling it 'nini', but I don't call it 'nini' anymore, I call them shorts, but the idea is there. Also in these notes, there'd be various bits and pieces about interactions that I had as a deaf child. I'd be talking about them in detail in the next few videos. But it's quite a big wad of paper, I hope to get through it and write it up in detail mainly for parents to read, parents of deaf children. Because some of them could feel quite lonely out there in terms of deaf people. I know that my mum and dad, they didn't really know anyone else that had a deaf child and it would have been good for them to meet those sorts of people. But that's a shame that never happened. So this memoir thing
that I'm writing, I feel would be good for those parents, just to read and get an understanding of what it's like, from another deaf child's point of view. Hopefully, I can get this published, I'm not being too hopeful though. The other thing I wanted to say in this video, is that I went out for a meal last night, and we sat down on this table, the bunch of us. Behind me was a speaker, that was playing out some music, and to hear the people in front of me was quite difficult with this speaker behind me playing music. I then switched my hearing aids, because they're digital hearing aids, I switched them to the directional setting which then allowed me to cut out the microphone at the back of the hearing, and just have the microphones at the front of the hearing aid running. What this means is any noise behind you should be reduced and any noise in front of you should sound louder. It doesn't work completely because sound from behind can go to the wall in front of you and then bounce back into the front of your hearing aid. But it does work to some degree. I did notice it when I switched my hearing aids to the directional setting that the sound behind me, the music, was a lot quieter, well I say a 'lot quieter', it was quieter than what it was. The people in front of me seemed louder, which was perfect, just what we need. I'm sure many deaf people will agree with me, background noise is an absolute pain. Because we can't distinguish between the sounds that we want to hear, and the sound that we don't want to hear. There are various development going out there that are trying to improve this and I did go to one lecture which was being lead by Harvey Dillon who is quite famous in the audiology world and he was explaining this thing. I'll probably explain it in a video in the future. But this directional setting would be something that even hearing people would love to have because it's not just deaf people who have a problem with background noise, we just seem to have the problem more, especially in pubs when loads of people are shouting at the football and you're just trying to hear the person in front of you. I could think of many situations where background noise is, background noise occurs. Yeah, so hopefully in this video, I'll be able to get the audio synced up correctly with the video because Youtube seemed to mess it up last time. So I do apologise for that in the last time, and hopefully it should be a lot better. See you all soon.