Weird neighbour

Since I already wrote on my rude neighbour and why not I write about this weird neighbour. This middle age man, married and with a son in Primary school, has an unusual habit. He is a person who like cleaniness and cannot stand a bit of dust, chinese called 洁癖. He just stay next door.

The story is like this (which I heard from Yuxin's grandma) : The previous owner of our house is an old lady who stayed in this unit for more than 30 years. Half a year before Yuxin's daddy shifted in, this man shifted in and became the old lady's neighbour. After a while, I think this old lady could no longer stand this neighbour so ended up shifted house. In fact, this old lady shifted into the same block but different unit. So you can imagine an old lady who stay here for more than 30 years also wanted to shift. Actually, the area we are staying is an old neighbourhood that's why other neighbours will tell you some history.

So how come the old lady could not stand this neighbour? Here is my story and experiences. Every day this man will washed the corridor floor with no exception even during Chinese New Year. Ok?! He washed his corridor is his business but he will pour water onto our door step and sometimes water will come into the house. Therefore, we have a cloth put outside the door to clean away the water. Will you feel frustrated if your neighbour pour water onto your door step everyday?

Not only this, every morning when he wakes up, he will take out his blanket or pillows or whatever and beat it outside his house, either at the kitchen window or the corridor. Besides this, every time he come back, he will take out his T-shirt and 'waved/shaked' at outside of the corridor. It's like his shirt is very dirty that he has to 'waved/shaked' very strongly. Whenever, Yuxin saw him topless, she will show me a 'shame shame' action. Then, when he come back his routine is clean the house first so his wife and son have to wait outside for him. Only after he finished cleaning the house, the wife and son can go in. Then after that, he will sweep the corridor floor and then pour water. You don't think is only water, he even pour detergent also. So sometimes we need to go out and happened that he just wet the floor, we have to be extra careful because we have to walk on wet and slippery floor. Can you imagine we have young child and old lady and how dangerous it is if they fall?!

There was an incident which happened before Chinese New Year that really make us mad. This man hang a few 'dried fish' (I think it is 'Yu Piao') onto a bamboo stick and hang it outside the corridor. Those 'dried fish' are very smelly and he hang it diagonally across the corridor! So every time we walked pass we need to bend down our head to cross over and worse still when wind blow, our house is filled with smelly odour. Can you take it or not?! Yuxin's grandma did asked this man why you cannot hang inside your own house. Can you imagine what is his answer? He said hang inside the house very smelly! Bastard! Hang inside your house was smelly so hang outside not smelly, huh?! Initially, we thought maybe he hang for one or two days then forget it. Who knows after 2-3 days still there so Yuxin's uncle could no longer stand it, he shifted the bamboo stick to one side. At least shifting to a side we don't have to bend our head to walk over. And then after a few more days, the odour was not that smelly. Can you guess how long this man hang his 'dried fish' outside? If I didn't remember wrongly, it was almost a month. I remembered he hang out the 'dried fish' in the beginning of January and removed it before Chinese New Year in February.

One more thing, some people will paint their house before CNY so this man does the same. He not only paint his house, he also bought white paint to paint the whole of his corridor. Can you imagine?! Hahaha... then his effort has gone down the drain because in March our block was scheduled for repainting. So his corridor painting last for only a month. Then the story not yet end. When it is our floor turn for painting, he pasted his windows and door with paper. It looked ugly and horrible. All the workers were very curious why this man has to cover his house like that.

Last month, we arranged a carpenter to do some renovation works. The carpenter had to bring a lot things like tools and renovation materials therefore most of the things he had to put outside the corridor. I was hoping on that day that our neighbour come back only after our carpenter finished his work. Unfortunately, this man came back before our renovation completed. So I asked Yuxin's daddy to tell this man to wash the corridor floor after the work completed. I could not remember exactly what this man said but I know he said something sarcastic back to my husband. Then he went back into his house. After sometime, he came out with a can of insecticide. He sprayed insecticide onto the floor/on our renovation materials!!! He was like inspecting the floor very carefully looking for ??##**%%!! Or he did it purposely because he was unhappy that all the stuff dirtied his floor??!! I was very furious when I saw him spraying insecticide. Later, he came out and put a pail of water outside. I was worried that he would washed the floor and destroy our stuff (it's wood) so we told the carpenter to bring in all his stuff into the house. Although in the end, the man did not washed the floor when the carpenter was around but I was still unhappy that he sprayed insecticide.

Besides this, there were also some story before we came back. He did not allow us to put flower pots and shoe rack and metal pail (for burning incense and praying stuff). He said you can put but he will still pour water onto it! This man almost (but didn't) cause a fight with our family (we were not back yet when this happened)

Sigh... What can I say? I have never encounter such person in my life. Only came back for a year and I came across and encountered so many things. For those who are staying comfortably without any problematic neighbours, if you want to shift house, do re-consider and choose your house carefully. You not only have to look inside of the house but 'outside'(neighbours) is also very important.