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Sunday, June 20, 2010

The mystery of the thumping and chair dragging noise saga..

Sometimes I wonder if my life is a drama set in itself. As my colleagues put it, whatever sort of colourful events and incident seem to always find a way to me...

As shared previously about my noisy neghbours upstairs, their efforts to keep their sons from playing ball inside the house (and disregard the noise they generate from the ball-wooden floor impact) was noted but another new source of problem popped up.

In the middle of the night, we would still hear chair dragging sound. I dont mean intermittent sort of once in a while sound. I mean regular thumping, heavy pounding footsteps and chair, that bloody fucking chair creating a din through the floor boards.

I tried to cast it aside and stuff my ear with ear plugs but it was near impossible. On fri nite, my head was exploding from headache and I went to bed early at 11pm.

To my horror, the thumping noise persisted from 11pm, 12am, 1 am, 2am and christ sake till 3.30am!! Then every morning like clockwork, at 7am, the thumping will begin and 7.30am the chair dragging will start. It was nitemarish!

So at 3.30am, I was soooo fedup that I almost wanted to hound and pound on their door to ask them what the fuck is going on. I have been sleep deprived for a week and enough is enough. In the end, I didnt ring their bell in consideration they have 2 kids, and didnt wanted to scare their wits off. I am still civilised to a degree. So instead, I sms my management office officer on his mobile which he had the unfortunate to share with me previously over the flooding incident.

This is what I wrote "I have to text you now at 3,30am because the unit above have been making so much noise that it keep waking me up and its now impossible for me to sleep. Can u please deal with it and speak to them? "

I figure no sane person will deliberately send a complain sms in the wee hours of the morning, so the guy got to work on sat. While we were out catching a movie, the guy spoke to the family about our plight.

When we got back on sat nite, we got a message that our neighbors upstairs wanted to have a chat to find out what was the issue since she insisted that she was dead asleep in the master room and no way there is sound, and there are no chair in her room.

So she swung by, (as I anticipated since I can hear her walking to the main door), and we started talking. She just didnt get it. Alot of things, alot of excuses. I gather she really was asleep. However, I told her the footsteps thumping is distinctly male (coz of the weight impact) and i can hear toilet flushing, and definitely the god damn freaking chair.

She went on to say because it was exam period, she even banned her teo sons from watching TV. Woman, I didnt even complain about TV???

The funniest thing was this.
In the end, she invited us to her place. I had bought some stickers for her chair actually and I brought it with me. The min we entered her house, her sons were sprawled right in the living room, watching TV!! I wanted to laugh....then she was eager to show and tell us that all her chairs had anti-slip/ sound sticker attached to her legs. I did a gentle push and the chair went "eeeeeeeeeeee.." I went "THERE! That is the noise! She looked abit unconvinced and she lifted her chair and said "but they all have stickers"

Unfortunately for her, when she lifted the chair, all the stickers were either fallen off, or were disintergrated. She was still unconvinced and well, reluntant to admit the problem. We moved on to her room.

There I was really puzzled because there really were no chair and a solid cabinet was there which couldnt be moved easily. As she was about to indicate her victory, my partner pointed out, "could it be from her son's room" since it was the room closest to the master room and closest to where I am sleeping.

We peeked into her son's room and THERE IT WAS! The horrible disgusting source of culprit!
And we also discovered the source of the other thumping sound which came from the 3 freaking electric guitar in the room. There! All evidence right before us. Again, she tried to say all the legs had stickers but when lifted, all had none.

I immediately offered my stickers but she declined, saying she had a "special" sort of stickers she need for the chair. I offered to pay for it to stick it on ALLL her chairs but she declined saying she will get it herself. Fine by me so long as she get it.

Maybe she was flustered or as many typical Hk woman, they cannot lose. They cannot afford to admit their mistake when confronted. So she went on saying that they cannot help but make noise since 7am is normal hours, and her kids have to go to school. I almost rolled my eyes but seeing she was so agitated and detracted from the root problem, I had to calm her down with my 100watts mega smile, saying "relax. we are not talking about 7am. We are talking about the 3am problem." She kept saying her son was only using computer and wont make ANY noise. What the fuck. She didnt even know what her son is up to....

So i told her, it doesnt matter. Since we alreayd identify the source of problem, let's see how the stickers help and dont worry too much about it. As explained then, I am not saying they cannot make a squeak, but imagine if I cannot sleep till 4am and get awaken by 7am, what kind of sleep do i get?

I think a smile, and a gentle touch on her arm calm her down a little. Her guilty noisy sons kept quiet.

After we went back, in half hour, she rang my bell informing me she had gotten the stickers and stuck on all her chairs. Wow! Talk about efficiency! haaaa

The good news, the horrible dragging noise has stopped!! And she must have told her son to stop keeping such unearthly hours because the footsteps seem to have ceased reasonably earlier. Thank god!!!!!

I must admit, no matter how reluntant and denial she was when talking to us, at least this HK neighbor, she was willing to find a common solution to solve the problem. Unlike the stinking chain shanghai people next door who wont even try to talk and just say "sue us" when they flooded our unit.

So moral of the story, if u canx stay on the top floor, at least find out who lives above you...

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