Andie Summerkiss

I grew up in a neighborhood where it is considered rude to rant on neighbors. It is normal to hold tons of grudges against my neighbors. Vice versa – I guess.

For one, our right side neighbor is a family of 5, or now 10 I think, with the daughters in law and grandchildren now staying with them. The youngest son was a spoilt brat who would never fail to press horn for three minutes at times until the domestic helper came running to open the gate for him. That happened for years till the hot blooded Mr. Andie got so mad one day (our bedroom is right next to their main gate), he threw a bottle of nail polish at his car, hit it right on the hood. It was a great throw, he didn’t know what hit him.

We are not the award-winning neighbor either. More than once the family complained to our housekeeper that our dog gave out unpleasant smelt. Mushu’s kennel is right next to their front gate. Ha!

Our front neighbor is a house of sin, literally. One of the local club owners bought the property years ago to hold his “working girls” from mainland China. It accomodates about 20 of them at times. We spent hours on boring evening on binocs standing at my bathroom window with Mr Andie to spy on them. They leave for work at 8pm and coming back around 3am. Sometimes they have “guests” over, quite noticeably with fancy cars hiding under car covers. Although we get the kick out of checking out the “latest stocks” when they off-load themselves from airport taxis, we do not enjoy the ugly moments when wives of certain reputation came and trash-talked on their gate. That kinda ruined the lovely neighbourhood, don’t you think?

All that being said, never once we confront each other on what is bothering us, for the whole 20+ years. That is driving Mr. Andie crazy, of course. But it is not very acceptable in our culture to complain about your neighbors. I have heard many stories from our acquaintances how their neighbors drove them literally insane. We handled our problems the same way. By not saying anything.

I am absolutely awed by people who can be so opened and they could rant on others, especially their neighbours. I later found that it is not always the case, when I spotted www.RottenNeighbor.com. Online website where you can rant on your neighbours, categorized by area, counties, zipcode and whole bing-a-bong. You can even post videos and photos to support your claim! Loving it! Too bad it only covers US.

I am so ready to expose my neighbors, and waiting somebody to post Mushu’s mugshot.