dian chronicles 1.0 [intro]
This is a story from my room in some Makati apartment. You see, I couldn’t sleep that much. Actually, my housemates and I have trouble filtering out the noises. My neighbors. They are the noises. We would understand in so many ways, because it’s daytime and they have every right to smother everybody else with annoying sounds of what nots.
Maybe we are not really neighborly. None of us in our little apartment has the drive to say hello to the other dwellers in the compound. Perhaps we feel that socializing with them means hipocricy or just simply a waste of time. Our only connection to them is our landlord, Mang Bert. He is really friendly. I mean, at least he thinks so. Or, by being friendly, it means we do not have a landlord-tenant formal contract because “we are friends.” I think he does not know that there is a whole chapter in Philippine Law regarding such a relationship. But then again, we are friends and friends do not have contracts.
By March, our rent is a little bit more expensive. Maybe because that is how the standards work with rentals. Wow, ironic, huh? And by then, maybe I should start pestering (in a good way) Mang Bert about our toilet flush. Or, perhaps tell him how some of our neighbors keep us awake. But of course, we would not do that. Complaining is not really our favorite gesture. We do not really compete with the others, who actually have the nerve to knock on our door and say, “Dude, please turn down the volume of your TV.” We feel that civility comes with suppression. Yes, we suppress our issues with our neighbors. Sometimes, we just mock them. We are even polite in our mockery… we whisper.
Somehow I find a way to channel all our frustrations and just tell the reality of living and coping with people. Neighbors, in particular. Should we move instead? We could. But you see, it is that hard to find a place in Makati with safety and accessibility.
- w. machtuzs
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