Our little ice-breaker

Like most people staying in flats, we generally kept our doors closed and minded our own business. It’s not surprising then that alot of flat dwellers like us do not know our neighbours beyond their faces.

I moved into my mother-in-law’s flat after getting married. We stayed there for 2 years before getting our own flat. During those two years, I almost never talked to any of the neighbours and barely said ‘hi’ to a few.

But this changed when M came into our lives. We moved into our own flat just 2 months before M was born. And since then, the rate at which we know our neighbours is way beyond the previous 2 years at my mother-in-law’s place. Granted the population demographics may be younger here, but I think it’s because of the presence of M.

We can now easily talk to neighbours, from primary school children (which M will address as “kor kor” and “jie jie”) to elders (“uncle” and “auntie”). It’s so natural for everyone to play with a young child, which usually leads to conversations about her age, her development, childcare centres around the neighbourhood, which block/floor/unit we stay in, the price of our flat etc… I think I’ve also become friendlier around M.

It’s really nice to know neighbours a little better. Our neighbour downstairs brought our “broken” bamboo pole which landed on their clothes back to us! We’ve chatted on occasions and they probably also noticed it was M’s clothes on it.

So thanks to our little ice-breaker, we no longer need to avoid stares with our neighbours in the lift!