*this is a continuation from yesterday’s post about abominable neighbors. excuse my mistakes, this post was made in haste rushing for a favorite show on tv …
Like I’ve always lamented before, I’ve never met a neighbor whom I would consider as ‘normal’. Ne-the fucking-ver. I have moved for approximately 5 times before settling down at my present unit… and out of all the 6 places, there was only 1 place which I favored most. Anyway, let’s run a little bit of a history check against myself …
1977 – 1980 Georgetown, Penang :
I was born at Macalister Road and lived near that area with my paternal family. It was a pre-WWII shop house residential… and my neighbors were all low income bunch of Chinese folks. I couldn’t remember most of my days there, but much later in my prepuberty years (10 – 13 years old), I would spend a lot of my holidays living there with my grandma.
Alright, my left neighbor, was a shrilly voiced middle aged housewife sporting beet red dyed hair. But the problem’s not with her. It was her daughters. She’s got 2 of them, the elder one was much older than me, and the younger one was of my age. The younger daughter was an annoying fuck (her name’s Jackie, if I’m not mistaken). She inherited her shrill voice from her mom and put it into bad use. You know, being all noisy, shouting, crying and I swear that I had seen her flash her lacy brown colored underwear a few times. I mean, can you believe that?? That bitch was trying to corrupt my innocent thoughts by showing me her nasty beaver…(though it was covered)
Jackie also kept a pet cat, that distributed a fairly abundant amount of natural fertilizers across the corridor… (those old pre-WWII shop houses actually had a long stretch of shared corridor). Never liked Jackie and her stupid cat.
My right neighbor? Whole family always wearing pajamas. Never seen them in any other garments before. Apart from that, they were considered as normal…
1980 – 1983 Queenstown, Singapore :
My father was assigned as an expat there… and our family moved along.
Couldn’t remember most of my neighbors, but I remembered their kids (heck, as a kid myself, my only concern would be other kid mates…). I remembered Simon… my neighbor’s son about my age – whom I used to wallop with my plastic sword and then he would run crying like a pussy back to his apartment. And the next hour, he would always come back to play again.
Wouldn’t consider him as an abominable boy, but he could get really annoying sometimes. Like when I did something real evil… or taught him to do cool stuffs like burning something up, he would brag it all out in front of our parents… where I would get a healthy amount of spanking…
1983 – 1990 Rifle Range, Penang :
The infamous Rifle Range flats. High density, low cost, ghettoish residential that was the favorite amongst prostitutes, gangsters, hitmen, loansharks, retired soldiers … all in one small crowded place. It’s a long and very personal story on how our family ended up in such an seedy establishment … which I’m not gonna share.
This was the place I’m talkin’ about. The place that I favored most …
My left neighbor was a family of 7 (4 sons and a daughter) … all cramped into a 500 sq ft single roomed flat. Albeit a bit congested, the family was the friendliest lot I’ve ever met. Their parents would speak with mine … and the guys were awesome.
Whenever their parents are away, these 4 guys would crank up their self modified stereos and bombard the entire block of flat (and that’s how I learnt about Modern Talking). They would organize parties, and perform cool stunts that I would admire as a kid (they’re all very much older than I am).
Certainly was the happiest period of my life … (though by today’s standard, I would have labeled the guys as ‘hooligans’ for being so noisy…)
1990 – 1999 Air Itam, Penang
My mom bought a landed property and we moved to that place (as Rifle Range wasn’t really an ideal neighborhood for an already savage kid like me…)
That place was a nightmare. Right neighbor was a stinking old indian lady … and we’ve got fat mary (tuak pooi mary) and her psychotic mutt in front of the house.
Behind our house, lived a dysfunctional Malay family. The husband was a retired musician of sorts, who always spray paints his stupid guitar and motorcycle – where the mist/droplets would then drift over to our home … making our lungs healthier. And his wife? Was an obese 20 something years old, that would yell in and out of their home… you can imagine the commotion around my house. (update: I exclusively blogged about her here)
1999 – 2001 Greenlane, Penang
I moved in to live with Emily at a rented low-cost apartment after my family was hit with a domestic crisis. Mom had to sell the house for good.
Neighbors were all assholes. No brainers and were all lower than a piece of flattened shit on a paved road. They would vandalize everything they could find. The elevator, mailbox, gate, guards … anything. Every morning, we’d have to contend with surprises like a pool of urine on the elevator floor, or someone’s car getting wrecked by drunks the night before. My car was hit, scratched, dented, broken into … and even had a near shave with someone who committed suicide by jumping from the 8th floor.
It wasn’t long before I moved again.
2001 – 2003 Farlim, Penang
To Farlim. A slightly bigger apartment unit and less ghetto. It’s peaceful here.
But there was this fat fuck neighbor – who was mom’s colleague, that would always come over to our place and chat. I found him rather annoying as he would always ask me about my work stuff. I mean, who in their right mind would do that after office hours ? Tiuuuu….
2003 onwards, here.
I finally saved enough money to get my dream home. My own big ass apartment in a low density, pristine neighborhood.
But fuck, … who would have thought that educated people have their own ways of screwing up ?