My advice: put the headphones on, but don't turn the music on!
Alas; my headphones are the flimsy "I got these with my Discman six years ago" kind, and not the "these headphones are for when I am a DJ spinnin' my tunes in the secret back room of the Supermodel Club" kind. One other guy in my row actually has straight-up airport-worker earmuffs!
That is an excellent idea!
See also: active noise reduction headphones. Switching on their arcane sound-nullification technology without playing music creates an instant (and somewhat eerie) well of silence inside your head. I read an article in Wired last year that claimed that some offices planned to install ceiling-mounted inverted-soundwave emitters to cancel out ambient noise over a wider area using an adaptation of the headphone tech.
Personally I would like such an emitter for personal use, just to shut individuals up in a comedic fashion. Like when you pretend to use a remote control to turn the volume down on a person, except, y'know, real.
At some of the caltrain stations they think they have a pigeon problem. So now they have this loudspeaker that emits an ear-piercing 18kHz oscillating tone, and then every 60 seconds or so becomes a loud screeching hawk-is-attacking-you sound. It's mind-destroyingly loud.
Maybe you should get THAT for your cube. You could switch it on whenever Shouty Chinese Dude comes around.
(b.t.w., was this anyone I know?)
Nah, this guy showed up after you left; I don't actually even know his name!
Commenting by HaloScan
