Love thy neighbours?

I have bastard neighbours.

Strictly speaking, I don't know whether they are considered my neighbours since they live, respectively, above and below me. Let us call them Upper and Lower.

Upper is a family with kids and old folks. In the morning, around 6am, one of them would get up to pound chili. Apparently they eat chili everyday, and they can't just simply grind it. They have to pound the hell of them it, and the sleep out of everyone in my house.

And they must have belonged to some ancient, mystical clan that dictates that all pounding have to be done on the ground itself, without any paddings, or they will incur the wrath of some great earth spirit. As such, we get to experience the full surround sound of the rhythmic pounding every single day for a few months. Until I shouted at them to shut the hell up.

At 7am, when their kid wakes up from all the pounding, he will decide that he wants pay back for the noise. But most curiously, the payback is done to us. He would ride on his fake car, which sounds like a ton, and go careening across his flat. Now the sound experience is even better. We can actually trace the car with our eyes as the rumble of the car approaches, until it circles our heads for a brief respite, then it would zoom off again to another corner of his flat. His parents, and grandparents are doing a fabulous job of teaching the kid sensitivity; he will probably grow up to be a jerk, not unlike his parents and grandparents.

And of course, why stop at disturbing people with noises, when you can actually irritate them with smell? One of them Upper, I have no idea which, loves smoking. And he loves smoking at the window directly above mine. Probably because if he smokes in-house, he will kill the kid which shows so much promise of growing up into a jerk and he doesn't want that, he tries to kill me instead with his second hand smoke; he blows them out of his window, and without fail, the wind blows them into mine.

And since I have the habit of sleeping with my door closed, the smoke stays inside while I sleep, until I wake up half-choking over the smoke to shut the windows. Then I have to open my door to air the room, which is impossible since the windows are shut and there's no air circulation. So I have to wait for him to finish his stick, before opening the windows again.

Every night, I have to do that. Sometimes at 1am, sometimes at 3am, but without fail, 5am. And people wonder why I always look like I didn't get enough sleep. He doesn't only smoke at night though, it is just that I have the sense to stay out of the house in the day most of the time.

Just when you thought that only Uppers can affect you, since they can do things to your ceiling which is their floor, while Belows can't do anything to their ceiling which is my floor, the Belows began their smell attack. Interestingly, even though cigarette smoke only travels downwards due to their density, incense smoke is light enough to float up the air. Every friday, we are fumigated, unwillingly, with some intensely pungent incense and treated to an un-interrupted stream of ringing experience for exactly an hour. It was close all the windows, or die. Apparently, it must be some rites to send people like us on the way.

I don't want to live here anymore. Not with my bastard neighbours, and the super ulu-ness of the place. I hate it.