Neighborly Relations

At the Seattle airport ready to check in!

This was going to be a post about our travel to Nanjing, the flight we missed in Beijing because we were delayed out of Seattle and how we finally made it to our apartment at 2:00am.  However, I have a much better tale to tell.  One of a mystery power outage and crazy neighbors who we always seem to live next to!

Right now, our landlord is in our apartment and has just called the police.  Why has she called the police?  Because our neighbors upstairs just now turned off the power to our apartment in protest.  This morning we also lost power around 6:00am.  We were both awake (I was trying to go back to sleep) and the power went off.  Two cold showers later and around 7:30 or 8:00 someone turned it back on (only after us calling our friend to call the landlord).  The hubby investigated the power outage and noticed it was only our apartment that didn’t have power.  After it came back on, we figured it all got worked out.  Apparently, it was our neighbor who turned it off this morning as well and no, nothing is resolved.

What I haven’t told you yet is that yesterday our upstairs neighbor came down while the landlord was here signing our lease to complain that the ceiling fan in the living room was creating too much noise and bothering her husband (who has cancer).  Follow that up with over an hour of the landlord, association president and neighbor going up and down the stairs, turning on ceiling fans, turning them off, etc. trying to figure out where the noise is coming from.  We thought the issue got resolved and it was not conclusive that the noise heard upstairs was coming from our apartment.  So far, everyone who heard the “noise” such as our landlord, the association president and others have said that it is a normal noise and couldn’t be caused by the fans in the living room or bedroom or the air conditioners.   Our friend, Angelina, who stayed in our apartment for a few weeks this summer said it doesn’t matter if we turn everything off, the neighbor will still say it is caused by us.   She even accused Angelina of lying, saying that Angelina would turn off the ceiling fan and air conditioner when she heard the neighbor at the door coming to complain of the noise. 

Our neighbor (left) standing guard as the association president (not seen) checks out the ceiling fan in the bedroom

Fast forward to the present, and now we have the police, our landlord and the neighbors arguing very loudly in the stairwell.   The police told our neighbor that he has no right to turn off our power for any reason.  The neighbor shot back that he would turn off the power every day until this issue is resolved.  Ai-ya!  Meanwhile, the hubby is loving every minute of this and is actually recording the argument from the landing. 

So, we traded one crazy neighbor for another.  In America, we had a trying relationship with our neighbor.  She was an elderly lady who lived alone and complained about us to the association a lot (we owned a condo and had a shared wall with her).  We had many arguments with her over her things in the yard, our dogs, noise and everything else in between.  It was a learning experience.  In fact, we are still dealing with her as now we have tenants in our condo and she has been pestering them as well.  As I’m typing this, the hubby just turned to me and said, “Maybe our situation with our neighbor in the states was really preparing us for this.”  A good perspective check for us.  How are we to love our neighbors in this situation when we can’t even speak the language?  We want to be good neighbors.  What does that look like in this situation? 

The police have now left and our landlord asked us to not use the ceiling fans for a week and see what happens.  Our first 36 hours in country and we have already had the police stop by!  And our neighbor lady just knocked on the door again saying she can still hear the noise.  I guess this drama is far from over.