The San-gu Neighbour

My mother-in-law has this neighbour – a skinny, mousy, bespectacled fellow who has this habit of standing outside his flat bare-bodied except for this pair of shorts. He's in his forties, quite ordinary looking, but always has this pleasant smile on his face – he’s one of those people whom you would warm up to quite easily because he looks rather friendly and harmless. I have to admit that I took a liking to him when I first met him, and found myself thinking that Singapore needs a lot more people like this man – friendly neighbours who take the initiative to say “Hi” and display an interest in you.

But what I did not realize is that he is actually a san-gu in disguise. San-gu is a Chinese term referring to those old ladies who love poking their snotty noses into other people’s affairs probably because they stay at home all day long and have absolutely nothing better to do. These are the people whose front doors are perpetually opened so that it would be easier for them to dash out of the door when they hear a commotion outside (yes, they are mostly old ladies above sixty who normally shuffles around, huffing and puffing with effort, but once they hear a possible gossip, they suddenly become Olympic sprinters).

These are the people who would stick their heads out of the windows to peer at you when you go to / return from work. And they have super-hearing as well; they can hear an argument five floors up, and will take a lift to your floor and loiter right outside your door, just out-of-sight, in order to hear what’s going on.

They cannot stand missing out on things; they have to know every single detail of your life. They live, thrive and survive on gossip. These people would go insane if they live in a peaceful neighbourhood where nothing happens.

My wife calls this particular neighbour Mickey Mouse. She can’t remember how her siblings and her got to giving him this nickname, but they have been referring to him as Mickey Mouse (not to his face of course) since they were kids.

Anyway, Mickey Mouse doesn’t go to work – my wife told me that he was retrenched a few years back (this information was relayed to my mother-in-law by an actual san-gu) and has become a house-husband since. His wife is still working though. Thus, he spends the whole day sticking his Mickey Mouse head out of his door watching people, wearing nothing but his spectacles and shorts.

He’s really no different from your typical nosey, old san-gu, except that he’s male, not that old, and your typical san-gu is usually fully-clothed (thank God), so you can see why it took me a while to see through his disguise.

As he is unable to obtain gossip from the ‘conventional’ san-gus (by virtue of the fact that he is male), he has chosen to befriend my mother-in-law so that he can get gossip from her. Hence, he is always lurking outside his house, waiting for her to come out so that he could get the latest news. And before you know it, he has started taking an unhealthy interest in my in-laws’ household affairs.

But what really bugs me is the fact that he is always around in the morning when I bring Jaslyn to my mother-in-law’s. I would arrive early in the morning at about 7 a.m., and Mickey Mouse would be there, bare-bodied, peering out of his door and smiling. After a while, it became really creepy.

(He used to carry my daughter a lot too – my mother-in-law would bring Jaslyn out of the house and he would offer to carry her. Jaslyn, who is a pretty sociable child, would allow him to do it. It really bothered my wife and I to see this bare-bodied uncle with armpit hair sticking out holding our daughter, so we put a stop to it by instructing Jaslyn to say “Nonono” to him whenever she sees him.)

Anyway, the faithful old Thomson TV at my in-laws’ house finally stopped working last week after 2 decades (quite thankful for that since it means my mother-in-law can’t watch that dreadful Ch8 show ‘Portrait of Home’ (Tong Xin Yuan) at 7p.m. – I don’t really care if she watches it, but if the TV is on, my daughter will be watching it as well and this is one sick show – lots of screaming, scheming, vulgar language, abuse, adultery, promiscuity, more screaming and scheming, etc. And this is deemed prime-time material!). My wife bought a new Sony TV to replace the old one and it was delivered to my in-laws’ place on Saturday when only my mother-in-law was home.

Needless to say, Mickey Mouse was around to witness the delivery and he promptly came by to enquire on the TV model, how much it was, etc. And being the irritant that he is, told my mother-in-law that she should have informed him about her intention to buy a TV as he would have been able to get it for a lower price.

Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being ‘Tolerably Irritating, like a Mild Itch’ and 10 being ‘Excruciatingly Irritating, like a Cancerous Ulcer’, I think people who come over to look at something you just bought (after careful consideration and comparison of prices) and inform you that, “You should have asked me first, I can get it for you at a much cheaper price!” rates an 11. The law should allow people like that to be bludgeoned to death with the item of purchase.

Apparently, Mickey Mouse owns a similar model as well, and he asked my mother-in-law if she could lend him the remote control to test it on his TV. Don’t ask me why. If he had asked me, I would have said, “What the f**k do you want to borrow my remote control for? How do I know that you are not going to do something funny with it like putting it down your shorts? And go put on some clothes, you pervert.” Anyway, my mother-in-law lent him the remote control which he returned later.

When we went to my in-laws’ place the next day, my mother-in-law promptly informed my wife that Mickey Mouse had said he could have gotten the TV at a much cheaper price. That started my wife fuming. Then, she told my wife that he had borrowed the remote control as well and asked, “Do you think he switched our remote control with his?”

At this, my wife exploded. How in the world would she know whether the remote control had been switched? And if you distrust him so much, why in the world did you lend the remote to him in the first place?!

I think my mother-in-law also realized that she had done a very silly thing / asked a very silly question because she did not pursue her line of questioning (or maybe she was afraid that Mickey Mouse could be squatting just outside her door listening to the commotion).

Whatever the case, I hope this will teach her to be more wary of that ulcer in future.

I am also thinking of teaching Jaslyn to say, “Uncle, don’t be so san-gu. And please go put on some clothes.”