Now that it's May I'm aware of the clock ticking down on our California adventure. I frantically think of the things I wanted to do but have not. Most prominent in my mind is my failure to make friends with my neighbors. I had such grand intentions of being the neighbor everyone loved:
*Bringing home-baked pies and cookies to their doors.
*Offering to babysit their children after school.
*Pouring tea while giving them wise counsel.
Um, none of this happened. But to be fair, what I had to work with was greatly lacking also.
My downstairs neighbor I call the Smoker. I never got more than "Hi" out of her mouth, besides a daily -- and nightly -- stream of smoke that seeped into every corner of my apartment, even with the windows closed. I heard she worked as a waitress, but she sure didn't seem to leave much, at least not according to the schedule of smoke floating upwards.
Across from our bedroom and kitchen are the Yellers, the dynamic duo of Indian college students, top and bottom apartments. Not sure how many live in there, anywhere from 3 to 5 in each, but at 1:00 am it sounds like half of New Delhi. We learned from our hot tub Indian friends (to be explained later) that in their culture they often eat dinner at 11:00 pm, midnight, or later. And apparently when they cook they must yell to their roommates the whole time, who of course must yell back. The downstairs apartment dwellers have a patio facing us that acts as a beer bottle recycle plant and a Cone of Cacophony. You've heard of the Cone of Silence? Well this is the Cone of Cacophony. They are unaware that anyone else may hear them "talking" at 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00 in the morning. In fact they talk so loud that when Bill tries to yell out the window to ask them to be quiet, he has to try several times before they hear him. We have, unfortunately, complained to management multiple times because they don't seem to understand that we don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night. I always smile and say hi when I see them and they smile back, but they're probably muttering Indian curses about a million camel fleas to infest my bed or something.
Then there are the Night Phoners. These may come from the same apartment of the Yellers, but I don't walk out at 4:00 am to check. These are the guys who want to talk to their family members back in India at 4:00 am. Being ever so considerate of their roommates, they step outside under our window -- so that their neighbors can hear their conversations instead.
Lastly, there is the sweet family across the way on the other side. Mom, Dad, 8-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl. Okay, so I tried to befriend them. I invited mom and daughter over for a tea party. The little girl was so excited she basically did gymnastics in my apartment the whole time (don't know if the Smoker got to enjoy that or not) and was too excited to actually eat the treats. Mom was very nice, but never once asked anything about me. I still enjoyed finding out about them, but unfortunately it ended with a blood-curdling tantrum when they had to leave. (She has at least one of these a day, by the way, that I can enjoy from the comfort of my own apartment). I was still hoping they would invite me over to their place for a tea party or to play Candyland, but it never materialized and I never had the guts to make a pest of myself.
So here it is with 3 weeks left to go and I have nothing on the Good Samaritan. Instead I'm the bad Oregonian! Even Mister Rogers wouldn't want to be my neighbor. We did, however, befriend the aforementioned hot tub buddies. They are two Indian college students who soaked in the hot tub every night while enjoying a six-pack of beer. They were very friendly and even brought us some curry one night. I basically had to wash the curry sauce off of my chicken before eating it and it still felt like hot coals. One night they explained that that particular day was the celebration day of one of their Hindu gods. They then produced a tiny statue of this god on a key chain and handed it to us to look at. I accidentally baptized the little god in the hot tub. Thankfully, this didn't end our friendship.
So I guess the moral of the story is: You know who your real friends are when you get into hot water.
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