Neighbours the story continues

Continuation …

Flat #3 After the first blissful year in our lovely Tokyo mansion, we found by chance (we had to phone up about damage to our room due to an earthquake) that our contract wasn’t renewed for the second year and had to move out of our hamster box into another hamster box a few streets away. It was the same Uber company that owned the place called Leopalace 21 http://www.eg.leopalace21.com/service.html . Anyway I digress, the second place we moved into was on the bottom floor and yes again mega small. This time for our neighbours we had to the left of us Mr Male Host, who would get around with freakishly large spikey hair, an oversized black suit and drown himself in aftershave. He would often bring back young giggling girls from his nights out in the town and they would generally giggle all bloody night.

Above us we had a couple whom we never actually saw at all, but made up wild and fantastical stories about them. We wouldn’t actually hear anything except an almighty thud coming from the room above every so often. The G-man and I came to the conclusion that it was a midget man and his torso of a girlfriend who lived upstairs, and due to the fact that she had no legs, she would have fall from the loft onto a nice soft cushion below, because she couldn’t climb the stairs. Don’t know how she got back up right enough. Maybe the midget man had a hoist of some kind and would winch her back up when they needed to sleep or whatever else they did. It makes sense doesn't it?

Finally we had the Fucking Idiot that lived across from us who would, on a daily basis put their bike so close to our door that when you opened it you inevitably knocked their bike, along with our bikes in a domino effect over. Eventually we ended up picking up their bike one night and placing it somewhere down the street.

After 2 years of living in Tokyo, we moved on to Bonnie Scotland where we ended up living in a very beautiful part of the country on the West Coast of Scotland but completely in the middle of no where. Ok maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but having been in Tokyo and then moving to a semi-rural area was a a big culture shock along the lines of "What do you mean there isn't a Starbucks, no 7/11 or beer vending machines? What there is a bus every 4 hours into town? G-man where the hell are we!!" After the initial culture shock we settled in and moved into Flat #4.

Flat#4 was a cold, mould invested little cottage that stunk of old people. We have a multitude of varying neighbours in the 2 years that we lived there but the ones that stuck in our mind were the Washing Machine Fucker Uppers. As we lived at a self catering B&B/hotel we had to use the communal washing and drying machines out the back, not a problem can cope with that, however this one neighbour was continually breaking the washing machine. Pulling the handle off, stuffing powder into the liquid section and generally leaving it a complete mess. I mean how friggin hard is it to use a washing machine, it wasn't one of those Star Trek contraptions, it was a cheap arse, we've only bothered to put 5 different cycles on here because you are such a tight arse washing machine - so I ask you how friggin hard is it?

Obviously it is really hard, I mean really, really hard. They couldn't even understand my hand drawn poster which I stuck onto the machine to show them which compartment was for their powder and which compartment was for their liquid - didn't work though. So everytime I would do a load of washing (which was a hassle because I would have to venture out into the wild and cold weather just to wash my knickers) I would end up having to scoop handfuls of mouldy, slimey, smelly and generally vomit enducing shit from the detergent trays - every bloody time. Ok so this isn't strictly freaky behaviour but it is never the less bloody well annoying.

Bare with me, I am nearly at the end of my story.

Finally we get to Flat#5 - the apartment that we now own in the centre of the bustling town of Oban (keeping my anonimity in this post is difficult). We live on the first floor of the apartment block, there are only two apartments thankfully. When we first moved in, we met the family above us (husband, wife 2 children) and they seemed rather nice. That was until the sun set (actually I added that bit in for dramatic effect, in actual fact it didn't matter what time it was) the woman upstairs turned into a banshee. I have never heard anyone yell like that before in my entire life, and I come from and ethnic family so I know all about yelling. The lungs on this woman, woooo weeeee and the language, it even made me blush. She would scream and scream and scream until we think she popped a vein. One night she was going on such a bender, and we knew the husband wasn't there so she was yelling at her kids, that the G-man and I were tempted to go up there and see if everything was ok. Alas we didn't, we were too frightened of her - a truly big Scottish lass that you didn't want to mess with. The odd thing was, when she would see us in the street she would talk in an inaudiable whisper, acting all shy and sweet - as if we couldn't hear her? An absolute nut job, the frightening thing was that the poor boy had to go to hospital all the time, on a weekly basis. We think the poor child's nerves had packed up on him.

Now we have new neighbours as the previous ones sold their apartment. It is being rented out now by two children! Well that is what they look like to us, you can tell we are getting older (I refuse to use the word old) because they look like babies and we have come to the conclusion that they are some strange hybrid vampires that can walk about in daylight because they never ever sleep. I mean never, it doesn't matter if I get up at 2, 3 or 4 am in the morning they are trotting about upstairs, talking watching TV and going in and out of the apartment! How is that possible, don't they need to sleep? God knows I bloody well do! The other strange thing about them is this one time, I sent the G-man upstairs to tell them that the bins had to go out that night. I hear a bit of muffled speech and when the G-man came back inside he has a really strange look on his face.

Me: what's up with you?
G-man: huh? oh I think our neighbours are weird?
Me: Shock horror, why?
G-man : well I went up to let them know that the bin had to go out tonight and well she refused to open the door and talk to me
Me: what?
G-man: she said what? who is it? what do you want? who's there? so I said it's ***** from downstairs, umm just wanted to let you know the bins are to go out tonight, then she said I can't open the door! My boyfriend has the keys and he has locked me in the apartment.
Me: WHAT? I don't get it. What did you say?
G-man: Well I said - oh .... ok .... ummm and then she said i'll tell my boyfriend when he gets home and then I just backed away from the door and came back here.
Me: is she ok? did you ask if she was ok? do you think she has been kidnappped or abused?
G-man: well, I don't know but it's weird don't you think?
Me: *silently thinking back over all the strange neighbours we've had* I suppose, what do you fancy for dinner?

So there you have it. We are freak magnets, I wonder what freaky neighbours are out there waiting for us?

****sorry for any spelling/gramatical mistakes I'm writing this during my lunch break OMG is that the time - shite*****

Neighbours Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

The G-man and I seem to attract the weirdest neighbours in the whole UNIVERSE, no really it is true, actually I even think that it is a scientific fact proven by strange little equations scribbled on a white board during the night. No seriously it has to be true, that either the G-man or myself posses the uncanny ability to attract … … freaks and not the nice freaks that you want to hang out with smoke dope and drink copious amounts of alcohol with. No these are the freaks that actually make you want to take one step backwards.

I shall start at the beginning, that’s always a rational and logical place to start.

Flat #1: Seemed like the dream house in a quiet area of Adelaide, a little strata title dooflaky thing with about 6 places in the cul de sac. 2 bedroom place, sweet little garden out the back, garage, and generally really nice and a good price too. Can’t go wrong with that now can you? Ooooooh yes you can big styley.

Firstly the chairman of the strata was a complete and utter whack job and I mean seriously. He would get around with his road kill for an excuse of a toupee slapped on his head and shorts that were so short that they should be made illegal telling everyone off for all sorts of minor infringements on the strata policy. He even marched up to the G-man’s youngest brother while he was helping us move in and said “we don’t want people like you living here you look like some kind of bikie” He spat the words out at the poor guy with pure venom. Ok so G-man’s brother does look a bit like a bikie (in the stereotypical sense), he is absolutely massive, I mean tall and built like a brick shit house, has a long long goatee and a shaved head, however that does not mean that he is drug dealing, gun toting gang member. In fact he is the sweetest guy you could meet. Just don’t ever cross him or his family, you could live to regret it, but then the same could be said for me as well.

Then the psycho girl from hell moved into the house next to us. At first she was all sweetness and light, she and her younger brother moved in, they were from country South Australia, and she was studying at Uni or something. Then things got a little psycho. She would scream at the top of her lungs and my God she had a pair of lungs on her, she would scream at her poor down trodden brother at all hours of the night. She would run screaming after her boyfriend who had sped away, tyres squealing on the asphalt to get away from the nut job night after night. This went of for god only knows how long, until I screamed back through the gyp rock walls “shut the fuck up or I will break your back!” (I actually don’t remember saying this as I was asleep but it certainly got a reaction.)

Flat #2: Then we moved to Tokyo. We were expecting weird there so it didn’t really come as too much of a shock when our neighbours did in fact turn out to be freaks. The crap thing was that the MANSION that we lived in was a shoe box … literally it was 13m2 . Yep the whole flat, bathroom, kitchen, lounge and loft.

On one side of us we had Mr Cough Up A Lung, who would every night proceed to do exactly what his name suggests. On the other side we had Try Hard Band Member, who would practice his interpretation of music and underneath us we had Complain All the Time Slapper, who would stomp up the stairs, yell at us in Japanese for something and then have copious amounts of loud sex.

I might just stop here as this will be a mega long post if I don’t and put this little bit at the bottom.

To Be Continued … …

A Timeless Battle

There is a timeless battle I feel between urges, especially the ones that creep up on you at 3 in the morning. This is the all time battle between the urge to wee, to get a drink or to go back to sweet sweet slumber.

For the past week or so I have had to contend with said battle nearly every night / early morning. I wake up, with a bladder the size of a football and a gob like Ghandi’s slipper ! However, the urge to just roll over and go back to sleep is ever so strong, but I know if I do that I will either have dreams where I am constantly weeing but not getting any relieve or sense of satisfaction, or I will dream that I am searching desperately for a drink (a bit like real life actually). A conundrum indeed, so the only option is to get up, but in what order? Shall I go to the loo first and then get a drink, or do I get a drink and then go to the loo? Either way I am probably going to have to be pretty much fully awake, although you can wee with your eyes shut.

So I finally decide that something needs to be done, I am nearly fully awake now anyway so I shall go do a wee, get a drink and then slip blissfully back to sleep right? Well the first two seem to go without a hitch, but the going back to sleep thing … … well this poses to be a bit of a problem now because I am now wide awake, as wide a wake as possible, actually I think that I am more wide awake now than I am when I am at work!

I flip flop around in bed, desperately seeking that most comfortable position, but fail miserably to locate it and only stop moving about when not only is the G-man starting to get pissed off at me, but that the cat gives me a grumpy look, stomps on my head and snuggles up on the blanket on the floor. Must get to sleep, must get to sleep, got to get up uber early tomorrow oh no today (this is the mantra that is spinning around my head by now). Sleep does finally arrive, but only after I have thought about a bazillion things that I need to do, and panicked about things that I may have forgotten to do at work yesterday.

Where I go wrong, I do believe is that when I first get up I make the fatal mistake of looking at the clock and then going ‘oh crap it’s 4:30am only a couple of hours before I have to get up and go to work, bugger, shit, bugger’.

So here are my choices the next time this happens:

1. Don’t get up and relieve bodily functions, but continue to sleep hoping desperately that I won’t wet the bed and my mouth won’t seal shut for an eternity due to the lack of hydration (some may say the mouth sealing is a good thing)

2. Get up and go about business without opening eyes and hope I don’t crash into something.

3. Get up, go about business with eyes half open but DO NOT LOOK AT CLOCK.

Is your boss and idiot?

A MAJORITY of Australian workers - some 57.7 per cent -believe their boss is completely ineffective, according to a new survey.

Talent2 CEO John Rawlinson, whose company led the survey, described the finding as a wake-up call for employers. "Employees truly believe their employers should be able to perform their job with a superior skill level and thus to obtain the respect of their charges,'' he said.

"It is no longer sufficient for bosses to expect their employees to carry the load.'' From www.news.com.au


Now this comes as a surprise to me (note high levels of sarcasm here). I must admit that during my expansive working career, I have only had one boss that I really respected, admired and looked up to and that was when I was working in Tokyo. All my other bosses have been completely and utterly incompetent and I had absolutely no respect for them what so ever. Is that bad of me? Should I look up to my bosses as if they were some Jedi Knight or Shaolin pen pusher?

I guess it is hard to respect someone who doesn’t really respect you and I think that’s what it basically boils down to in the end. I’ll respect you if you stop treating me like some 16 year old school girl who has never worked a day in her life before. I find patronising your staff doesn’t work, treat me like an equal, listen to my ideas and thoughts and give constructive criticism – the operative word being constructive here. Don’t shoot me down in flames when I have a brainwave, yell and scream at me because I wasn’t willing to say “how high” when you said JUMP and don’t whatever you do say to me “when you are older you will understand” how much bloody older do I have to be, for Christ’s sake I am old enough to have a pre-teen child!

When I was working in Tokyo I had an internship for an all female language teaching organisation (all female students, all female teachers – reduces the amount of either student and or teacher hitting on each other). The woman who set the whole organisation up was amazing, she really was. She started off in Tokyo teaching English then decided to write a book about ‘gaijin’ (foreign) women’s experiences in Japan in order to help other women who were thinking about moving or already living in Japan. Now she runs seminars, helps find women jobs and offers a real community support network for women living in Japan – check out her website http://www.being-a-broad.com/


The real stand out difference was that she treated everyone as equals, never spoke down to anyone, never yelled at anyone and never expected anyone to work ridiculous hours. In fact she would sometimes actually leave the office at around 5:30pm so that the Japanese workers would feel it is ok to go home and then if she had any other work she would come back after she had a coffee or she would tell them to go home.

Now I find that all my subsequent bosses have had little to no respect for me, maybe I am imagining it, I don’t know. However, I get the feeling that when my previous boss said to me “we’re going to a big meeting tomorrow how about you put a short black dress on”, he wasn’t interested in my views on the current market trends and potential hot spots for increased sales through my new sales plan.

The thing that really shitted me off when I was working for Mr Nobb Ed, was that the only people who ever got anything or anywhere where the women who giggled at all his jokes, smiled gooey eyed at him when he was in the room and massaged his ego (I was going to use another ‘m’ word there but I actually felt physically sick thinking about it).

I tried it once and only once, that night I scrubbed myself raw with my loofa because I was so ashamed and felt so dirty. Plus I just couldn’t pull it off, it always came out dripping with sarcastic acid, I don’t know why, must’ve be my intonation.

So now one of my current bosses thinks that I don’t have enough work to do. Frankly that is bullshit, I don’t get nearly enough time to read all the blogs that I want to during my lunch break, so that obviously means that I am over worked.

Work is a major hindrance to everyone’s social life, so why make it even more painful?

Work to live, not live to work that is my motto and if they don’t like it – eh what are they gonna do about it?