+ Neighbours | Act Five

My Wife at her Chic Couture Kiosk with friend Dionne

Divine intervention was definitely at work yesterday.

Got a call from my mother-in-law on Friday night, 2nd day of Hari Raya Aidilfitri. She had arrived in Singapore from KL Malaysia with my eldest brother-in-law and two of my nephews.

They were staying in her home Singapore in Clementi West Street 2.

On my wife's last day of business at OUB Centre kiosk, my two nephews came to visit at the kiosk. They waited until the kiosk was finally closed for the year on Friday, 11th November 2005.

My side of the family had already arranged for a whole-day family house-to-house visit. We do this every year.

We would charter a coach and all 30 odd people - our Mom and Dad, my sisters' families, bothers' families, their children and their grandchildren (yes, I am already a grandfather) congregate and go visiting from one person's house to another.

All within the 10 hour "marathon." We would share the transport cost.

From home to home, each will cook-up some delicious food to eat. Each their own specialty. Everyone will bloat like a blowfish at the end of the day for sure. Yes, every year!

You fast for a month and so proud you loose a few kilos or pounds, but you get back the pounds or more in just two weeks. Sign... but the food were great indeed.

Anyway, getting back to what I wanted to say.

The visiting was long and the 3 of us were finally home 10 minutes to 1:00am in the morning. The worst and the best thing happened!

The two nephews were to shy to follow us along stayed home. We had all their lunch and dinner prepared and all the Hari Raya cakes and cookies available to them to munch in between.

We tried opening the front door, but was latched from inside. We had no choice but to wake them up to open the door from inside for us.

From outside of the front door, we could hear the TV turn on loudly, and the lights were all on.

Ringing the doorbell did wake them. Banging on the door did do any good either. Ringing our home phone was a waste of effort. Calling their cell phone was useless too.

They we dead asleep! That was the worst that could happen to these 3 tired, over-fed persons locked out of our own home!

ACT FIVE

Yes, this sucks, but then came the blessing.

Out came our neighbour, 1:30am in the wee hours of the morning, with her bag of trash.

She saw us and smiled. We reciprocated. Went to the rubbish chute and laid, yes laid her untied trash bag at the side of the chute as always.

FINALLY, CAUGHT RED-HANDED.

As she was walking back to her home, I called out to her and told her that it was unhygienic to leave her rubbish outside the chute.

Asked her nicely to throw her rubbish into the chute straight away, while controlling my disgust. Boy was I disgusted with her act.

She replied "Oh, wait first. I have some more rubbish to throw."

Duh!! She has more rubbish to bring out from her home to place it into the trash bag she just placed at the chute before throwing it into the chute? That was odd! That was a lame!

"Ok..." I said and nodded with a purposeful bewildered frown. We'll see, I said to myself.

Once she disappeared around the corner, we got back to our ordeal at hand.

We thought to ourselves that we were destined to sleep in the garden till morning, until my son had a brilliant idea. I love this kid.

He thought that if we could unscrew the peek hole off the door, we could call-out to them better. I thought that that could not be done as the peek-hole would have been built to not be able to be unscrewed from the outside.

He insisted and tried but was tough to turn it loose. He forced me to try and I did. Yes, he was right, it can be unscrewed from the outside. (Now with that, I have to think about security later, but first things first.)

With the peek hole unscrewed and the inner lens pushed out from the hole, I could see the two of them fast asleep, or rather, dead asleep on the couch. The TV was "watching" them instead.

Cupped my mouth with my hands around the hole and shouted out to them at the top of my lungs. Several times, but that did not stirred them.

One last desperate attempt altogether we thought spontaneously - my wife called and let the home telephone ring endlessly and banging on the door, while my son rang the door bell continuously. I shouted their names like crazy through the peek hole.

That morning, we set our won record for the most noise ever generated by this family, ever.

It did not stir them awake that fast, but it stirred the neighbours first. They probably thought that someone was having a family squabble or drunk or, something.

When they finally "came to" from the "sleeping dead," we were let in.

What a relief! Now where the hell is that dumper already!