The Neighbour From Hell

While Mumbai had finished battling the terrorists that attacked her, something happened closer to home just a few hours ago. A verbal terrorist in my own neighbourhood.

I had just returned from Kampar with Jon (which was a happy fun trip in itself), who was there to collect his car from my house (more on this on another entry), and when we were parked outside opposite my house, we could already hear the deafening “boom-boom-boom” sounds coming from my neighbour, the Phua family. Some of you may know that my house has a long driveway (so does my neighbour and other houses at the same row), so to be able to hear it from afar would mean that they were blasting it to the maximum.

It’s an everyday occurrence, I assured a surprised-looking Jon, and having lived next to an inconsiderate and thoughtless neighbour for so many years, one tends to get used to their antics. My family and my neighbour’s family have been on a Cold War of our own for many years, and I used to think that it’s my parents’ problem and the Phua parents’ problem – and us kids are always caught in between. I thought too that they’re really not that bad as they did helped our family once when my bro went missing.

All my perception changed just hours ago when I was practising the piano and I was rudely disturbed by shouts and violent verbal exchanges between my dad and our neighbour. Apparently my dad, who was watering the plants, was “looking” at Mrs. Phua, and the sons (both of which used to go to the same high school of me, but their intellect placed them at one of the lower classes wtf) started berating my dad for it. Wtf?? Logic much??

When my dad didn’t respond to their verbal abuse, they started scolding my dad in Canto with things like “wu guai” (tortoise HAHA wtf) and “lei mm hai lam yan” and “ngo mm keng lei ah” etcetc, you know, those selected vocabulary that can only be found within the social construct of Chinese gangsta-wannabes of the lower strata of humans. My dad was duly provoked, and started shouting back, using as well one of the worst foul phrases that he could manage: diu nia sing, which pales in comparison to the things that my polite neighbours were screaming from over their side of the fence.

I ignored the verbal exchange while my mum attempted to assist my dad by telling him in Canto, “Just say that you’re a tortoise and ignore them”. The shouts persisted until I could take it no longer, I went outside and shouted to both parties to “SHUT THE FUCK UP LAH!!” which caused the two sons and the mother to pause for about 2 seconds and eyeball-ed me, then continued saying things like “think I don’t know English ah” (but in Canto, surprise surprise!) but I just ignored them and asked my dad to please ignore the neighbour that we didn’t even know existed in the first place.

Seriously, all these years we live in a peaceful co-existence whereby we treated as if the other party does not exist – no greetings, no CNY cookies or angpows to the other – while my family and the Malay neighbour next door got along very well, doing those small little things for each other like warning the other party if it’s raining to collect the clothes if they have yet to do so, occasionally give cookies or small gifts to the other, friendly talks, etcetc.

I had enough with my neighbour (whom my family nicknamed as PCK – Phua Chu Kang) who thinks that they could belittle and bully my dad – I don’t know why we were blessed enough to have the neighbour from hell whose uncivilised and uneducated activities have caused us much grief: blasting loud music or movies from their superior hi-fi set till our neighbours who are two or three houses away could even hear them clearly, catching them throwing rubbish into our porch once, etcetc.

I seriously dislike conflicts – and I don’t wish to see their faces nor put up with their nonsense any longer up to a point that I’m seriously considering discussing with my parents to erect a brick wall or any other form of visual interference that we could utilise in order to maintain our peace-loving lifestyle. It’s one thing to be accused of something so childishly inane and stupid (whether it’s true or not I’m not entirely sure as my parents and youngest brother are not in right now – which I doubt is true ‘cause Mrs. Phua isn’t exactly one you would consider as being even remotely visually pleasing for her age), it’s another to be berated so violently that one would’ve thought that we’ve just bloody murdered their dog or goldfish or something.

Update: Parents made police report because apparently the sons threatened my dad.