The Berlin Wall in Riang... well, sort of...

Been living in Riang for almost 10 years now. We've had our share of good neighbours and bad. Cory was writing in her blog about neighbours who don't smile at her. I told her she's lucky it stops there.

Neighbour on the left (the other corner terrace) is an old couple. Uncle Chan and his wife have owned their house since they bought it from the developers yonks ago. Living next to them is his brother and his wife. The two couples could not be more different. But both are very friendly and nice.

Neighbour in front is a Sikh family. Jack, as he wants to be known, is a friendly guy who putts away on his little scooter every morning. His scooter, car and house number are the same - 57. They have two children who are pretty grown-up already. If we meet, we usually exchange greetings and chat. Jack is also on the RC and so a useful source of feedback.

Then we have neighbour on the right - who is a real piece of work.

Honestly, KH and I have never been able to figure out what this guy's problem is. We have racked our brains countless times to figure out where or how or in what past life we may have offended him. Its still a mystery to us.

But from day one when we moved in, the animosity began. Oh we never had the big bang spats like in Everitt Road (except once), but things have always been chilly and its really the little things that prick.

Smiles would be met with sour faces. "Hi" goes unanswered. When Isaac and Gillian (then 3 and 4 years old)called out: "Hello uncle!" the reply is usually a grunt or no reply at all. Our helper was told not to hang our fern on the common fence because the water from the fern would drip into their side. When we had BBQs and hung the trash bag on the common fence, we were told to remove it. In contrast, we could do so on our common fence with Uncle Chan with no objections at all. When we came back late and had to carry sleeping kids from the car to the house, we would stop the car in front of our gate, leave the engine running, grab the kids and put them in the house. The neighbour would come out with a scowl and tell us to move the car. When the kids play and climb on the common wall, they were scolded and told not to touch the wall. Eventually, the said party wall was bricked up - by them. They did not tell us or ask if we wanted to share the cost or ask the contractor to smoothen/paint our side. We came home one day from work to find a worker bricking up the wall, leaving an unsightly extension of brick and cement on our side.

Things finally came to a head one morning several years ago when we were about to leave for a Malacca holiday. I was upstairs getting some last-minute stuff when I heard shouting. I went down to find KH and said neighbour yelling at each other. The other neighbours had also come out to see the commotion. Apparently, KH had parked his car across from their house. He was clearing the car and took the floor mats to dust against the lamp-post. Lamp post was in front of their house. That man got offended, marched out and yelled at KH. KH lost it and yelled back. And pretty soon, there was a yelling match going on. When I came out, neighbour's wife had joined the fray yelling something like: don't talk to these people! They are low-class uneducated people from china! Huh???? If she only knew how bad my Mandarin was, she would not insult Chinese nationals like that!

I can laugh it off now, but back then, there was Tension in the air... and both KH and I were fuming mad. We could not understand why a couple, who obviously think they are 'educated' enough, can just hit the roof over something like that and more importantly, why they just let little things whittle away at neighbourliness and common courtesy over the years.

Since then, and esply after they built the Berlin wall, we have avoided all contact. We have told the kids not to play ball/badminton etc and risk having their ball/shuttercocks go over the Berlin wall. Sometimes these things do happen. Either the kids, armed with laundry poles, head for their front gate and try to prod the object over to retrieve, or we just wait. Somewhere in the next morning, we would find said object in our front garden. There is no point pressing the doorbell to ask politely - the kids have been yelled at.

Still, I am an optimist - at least they throw it back!