Neighbours

Neighbours are the people who live next to us whether we live in condos, apartments, duplexes, houses or bungalows. If you are lucky, your neighbours will be the nicest of people who will eventually be your friends (cum security officers when you are on vacation or away on business) who will help you and share confidences and their food with you.

But if you are not so lucky, you will have neighbours who make the Addams Family look darn normal! If you live in an apartment like me, it can be hell. I have these neighbours in the upstairs apartment who seem to live like zombies! They will be cooking, bathing, washing their clothes, moving furniture, renovating and just about every annoying thing you can think of, they'd be doing it..........at 1 am everyday except when they have gone back to their hometowns or wherever they sprung from.

These so called neighbours are also very lackadaisal about their children running around in the apartment block vandalising just about everything in sight and littering. You can see the candy wrappers strewn all over the hillock at the back and in the parking lots too! There was even a time when soiled baby diapers were seen floating down their windows to fall splat on one of the cars parked beneath their windows! The children love to ring doorbells and run off! Complaints to the parents fall on deaf ears for the kids are still doing it and now they have even taken to scratching the paintwork off all the new cars in the parking lots. So far 8 cars have had their bodies scratched and my car was not spared either!

Then there is the couple downstairs whose only interest in life is to fight each other tooth and nail in the wee hours of the night. The husband will be shouting and the wife will be cutting, slashing herself with knives and pieces of broken glass they will be hitting each other and hurting one another. There will be a lot of things thrown around and there were even times when the police had to be involved.

There is also a guy who comes back drunk every night and starts to kick the doors and gates of the apartments he passes to get to his own and threatens anyone who dares to confront him with bodily harm. Again the police had to be called in to take the man away.

All these happenings in the apartment block are usually ignored by the other tenants as no one wants any problems or involvement. Is this then the famous APATHY practised by us Malaysians? Or are we so busy chasing our own dreams to even remember to say hello or just smile at our neighbours? I have lived here for 4 years and I only know the guys next door and the neighbour next to them and the couple downstairs. Where then, are the friendly, caring and compassionate Malaysians that raises to help in the tsunamis, earthquakes and other tragedies that don't involve them? Do they exist only for the publicity they can garner?

So what kind of neighbour are you? The nosy one? The friendly one? The 'kiasu and kiasees'?