door to door
It comes to a surprise to quite a few people, including ourselves, that J and I have been (married and) living in our present flat for seven years. Seven! Where did all the time go? I think about my 2003 self and boggle at how young J and I were back then. Did we even know what we were getting into - collecting keys and signing a few decades of our lives to a mortgage, trying to fix up our place on a limited budget, getting married just because? At the time it just seemed like the natural thing to do, and it was pretty low-key, the way everything just sort of worked out and how our lives just blended together as if we had been living together all this while. When friends asked me if being married felt different, I would answer no, but what was truly different was moving out of our parents' place and into our own. Now, I feel like I couldn't live anywhere else or with anyone else. Although that idea is an entirely different can of worms, lurking at the corners of our minds. But more on that as it works itself out.
Anyway, it occurred to me yesterday morning that I have never written properly about our neighbours and our neighbourhood in all our seven (well, six, if you count a year away in NYC) years living here. This realisation came to me at approximately 7am yesterday morning and only because some child was shrieking and crying its eyes out at the top of its lungs so early in the morning. Now, I am more than used to this unknown child's hysterics and even use it to tell the time without looking at a clock ('oh, the kid's yelling again, it must be 7am'), but yesterday what shocked me awake was some guy bellowing out of a window 'OI!' so loudly I actually jumped in my early-morning daze. I guess the fellow just couldn't take it anymore. After he shouted the child was silent; maybe its parent finally got a clue and decided to do something about it. I doubt it's the end of the screaming, though.
I wouldn't quite consider my neighbourhood as part of the true heartland, because it seems to lie in the middle of two areas with distinct income and cultural differences. On one end there are rich, luxurious homes (including one which holds the fantasy kitchen of my dreams, always gorgeously lit and beautiful, that I stare at in awe on my way home), plus some of the expensive, top schools of the country, and on the other end, there is public housing in slight decline, industrial estates, and lonely streets where you try not to walk alone. J laughs and refers to our neighbourhood as The Bronx, because it mixes in public housing with industrial estates, parks and mosquitoes, with a dash of gentrification thrown in. Plus, it's really close to the zoo and the largest nature park in the country. We call it Bronx-y because we no longer bat an eyelash at the fact that there is fossilised poo (!!!) in the multi-storey carpark stairwell, that truant schoolchildren often use our stairwells as impromptu hotel rooms, that our public areas are crawling with graffiti, stray cats and abandoned sofas (that serve as more impromtu hotel room in our void deck), that we have a quite a few neighbourhood crazies (whom I have become quite fond of). It is a world away from the neighbourhood that my parents live in, for instance, but I am actually pretty attached to it.
And so: our neighbours. J and I have come up with acronyms for each of them:
B.C. (aka. 'Boring Couple'): we sound mean, yes, considering they live right next door to us and have been nothing but helpful to us, especially when we are traveling and need someone to keep an eye on our door. They are 'boring' because every time we see them, they are watching television. In the day, at night, weekdays and weekends. Maybe they should have been named 'TV-couple', but well, 'B.C' has stuck and 'B.C' they remain, even though they now have two kids (so they can't be that boring after all, right?).
V.C. (aka. 'Vampire Couple'): because they never are seen in the daytime and seem to only return home in the darkest of night (okay, I exaggerate), but also because every time I happen to pass by their (rarely) open door, the entire flat is curtained shut and swathed in darkness. V.C. are the newest family on our floor and have only just replaced M.C. (aka 'Mystery Couple'), named as such because they rarely came home and even if they did and we happened to see them, they would smile at us, open their front door ever so slightly so that they could just barely slide their bodies in, and then shut the door immediately. It made kaypoh me wonder why they never opened their doors wide: maybe they had escape-prone cats? maybe a drug lab in the living room (J's suggestion, not mine)?
'Noisy Family': because they had two screamy children who would troop up and down the common area shouting at the top of their voices all the time, and who would try to kill water the plants outside with bubble-mix. Also because they had a VERY loud-talking, chain-smoking grandma who would use the common area as her living room. They moved out a few months ago, to my relief.
'Cheena Family': they have a nice white rabbit that has the full run of their place and which is often seen lounging by the living room windows (which sort of look into mine, which is how I know this). The matriarch of the family teaches Chinese in a secondary school and wears cheongsam tops all the time. Once the rabbit got loose and I caught it and returned it to them; schoolteacher-matriarch looked at me and said ‘感恩’ ['gratitude'] instead of the regular '谢谢' ['thanks']. They also often host erhu recitals in their living room. Fascinating.
And what does that make us, J and I (and The Bun?). Here are a couple of our suggestions: Yuppie Couple (cringeworthy but not entirely untrue), Nosy Couple (obviously), Snarky Couple, so on and so forth.
I sound so snarky and obnoxious in this entry, but it's all affectionate, really. I love where I live and it would take a lot to make me move. Although that, like I said before, is a whole big mountain on its own.
Anyway, it occurred to me yesterday morning that I have never written properly about our neighbours and our neighbourhood in all our seven (well, six, if you count a year away in NYC) years living here. This realisation came to me at approximately 7am yesterday morning and only because some child was shrieking and crying its eyes out at the top of its lungs so early in the morning. Now, I am more than used to this unknown child's hysterics and even use it to tell the time without looking at a clock ('oh, the kid's yelling again, it must be 7am'), but yesterday what shocked me awake was some guy bellowing out of a window 'OI!' so loudly I actually jumped in my early-morning daze. I guess the fellow just couldn't take it anymore. After he shouted the child was silent; maybe its parent finally got a clue and decided to do something about it. I doubt it's the end of the screaming, though.
I wouldn't quite consider my neighbourhood as part of the true heartland, because it seems to lie in the middle of two areas with distinct income and cultural differences. On one end there are rich, luxurious homes (including one which holds the fantasy kitchen of my dreams, always gorgeously lit and beautiful, that I stare at in awe on my way home), plus some of the expensive, top schools of the country, and on the other end, there is public housing in slight decline, industrial estates, and lonely streets where you try not to walk alone. J laughs and refers to our neighbourhood as The Bronx, because it mixes in public housing with industrial estates, parks and mosquitoes, with a dash of gentrification thrown in. Plus, it's really close to the zoo and the largest nature park in the country. We call it Bronx-y because we no longer bat an eyelash at the fact that there is fossilised poo (!!!) in the multi-storey carpark stairwell, that truant schoolchildren often use our stairwells as impromptu hotel rooms, that our public areas are crawling with graffiti, stray cats and abandoned sofas (that serve as more impromtu hotel room in our void deck), that we have a quite a few neighbourhood crazies (whom I have become quite fond of). It is a world away from the neighbourhood that my parents live in, for instance, but I am actually pretty attached to it.
And so: our neighbours. J and I have come up with acronyms for each of them:
B.C. (aka. 'Boring Couple'): we sound mean, yes, considering they live right next door to us and have been nothing but helpful to us, especially when we are traveling and need someone to keep an eye on our door. They are 'boring' because every time we see them, they are watching television. In the day, at night, weekdays and weekends. Maybe they should have been named 'TV-couple', but well, 'B.C' has stuck and 'B.C' they remain, even though they now have two kids (so they can't be that boring after all, right?).
V.C. (aka. 'Vampire Couple'): because they never are seen in the daytime and seem to only return home in the darkest of night (okay, I exaggerate), but also because every time I happen to pass by their (rarely) open door, the entire flat is curtained shut and swathed in darkness. V.C. are the newest family on our floor and have only just replaced M.C. (aka 'Mystery Couple'), named as such because they rarely came home and even if they did and we happened to see them, they would smile at us, open their front door ever so slightly so that they could just barely slide their bodies in, and then shut the door immediately. It made kaypoh me wonder why they never opened their doors wide: maybe they had escape-prone cats? maybe a drug lab in the living room (J's suggestion, not mine)?
'Noisy Family': because they had two screamy children who would troop up and down the common area shouting at the top of their voices all the time, and who would try to kill water the plants outside with bubble-mix. Also because they had a VERY loud-talking, chain-smoking grandma who would use the common area as her living room. They moved out a few months ago, to my relief.
'Cheena Family': they have a nice white rabbit that has the full run of their place and which is often seen lounging by the living room windows (which sort of look into mine, which is how I know this). The matriarch of the family teaches Chinese in a secondary school and wears cheongsam tops all the time. Once the rabbit got loose and I caught it and returned it to them; schoolteacher-matriarch looked at me and said ‘感恩’ ['gratitude'] instead of the regular '谢谢' ['thanks']. They also often host erhu recitals in their living room. Fascinating.
And what does that make us, J and I (and The Bun?). Here are a couple of our suggestions: Yuppie Couple (cringeworthy but not entirely untrue), Nosy Couple (obviously), Snarky Couple, so on and so forth.
I sound so snarky and obnoxious in this entry, but it's all affectionate, really. I love where I live and it would take a lot to make me move. Although that, like I said before, is a whole big mountain on its own.