Here’s to bad neighbours

Progress of our new place is doing well. They have finally reached the our floor! I think they should just stop construction right now and just clean up the place so I can move in. Who cares about the rest of the people living above us?

We have a lovely view of the pond.

Speaking of the people living around us, my biggest fear is that of living with horrible neighbours. I used to have a neighbour who lived the floor below us and she was a nasty little thing. My dad and her had terrible run-ins although he was on good terms with her husband. Funny how that is. Here’s a bunch of people I wouldn’t want to live next to:

The woman with the yippy dog

There’s one in every neighbourhood. A small sized dog, either a Pomeranian or a Maltese, that’s perpetually afraid of its own shadow or a buzzing fly, constantly barking at something with smaller than a rat vocal chords. So instead of a majestic WOOF WOOF, it comes out as a yip yip. Or more like a yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip that wouldn’t stop. And it’s invariably owned by a middle-aged woman who calls it Baby or Girl Girl or something like that. There’s one at my block, and it’s constantly barking. I sometimes stand at my kitchen window trying to determine where it’s from. Sometimes I imagine shouting like a deranged woman at the dog to shut up or I will make barbecue meat out of it.

The Mahjong Player

This neighbour strikes late at night. When most people have crawled to bed, the clacking sound of the mahjong tiles will rouse you from your deepest sleep.

The Crazy Woman downstairs

This was the neighbour my parents endured for years until she finally moved out. She perpetually ringing our doorbell to complain about something. When our pipes were stuck and my dad tried to unstuck it with a plunger, she rang the doorbell and accused my dad of trying to do something to her pipes. When her bathroom ceiling leaked, she accused us of bathing past 11pm, causing her ceiling to leak. Her stupid teenage son wanted to barge into our house to check if our bathroom floor is wet and that we really weren’t bathing. It was only when my mother told her the bathroom ceiling is false and that there’s a water heater installed in there so please go check if your water heater is leaking, that she realised that we were right. she later came back upstairs with her tail tucked between her legs, begging my mother not to tell my father so he won’t shout at her again. There was also the time she accused us of playing with marbles in the middle of the night, where my mother reassured her that her kids were too old to play marbles and she was probably losing her marbles.

Family with noisy children

Running and screaming, be they upstairs or down your corridor. Need I say more?

Trash

This is commonly found in apartments in public housing. People who have no qualms about throwing their trash out of the window, because what’s out of the window isn’t their problem. Rice, used tissue, whatever you can think of, raining onto freshly washed laundry and unsuspecting heads below.

Here’s to hoping that we don’t get any of these neighbours. You can choose your flat, but you can’t choose your neighbours. I’m just crossing my fingers and wishing for the best.