Ask Auntie Millie: Permanent Exhibitions at the Local Museum

Dear Auntie Millie,

I’m a single woman in my mid twenties living in a nice taman, in a house owned by my parents. I have one housemate who pays rent for her share of the house. All in all, my living situation is fairly ideal. The house is a five-minute drive from my workplace and convenient to all amenities. The area is safe, clean, and multiracial, there’s a lively morning market right behind my house, and most of my neighbours are wonderful. I’m telling you all this so that you will understand why shifting to another house is not a good option for me right now. I’m saving a lot of money by living in my parents’ house, and even if I were willing to sacrifice my savings, it would be hard for me to find another place like this on my current income.

Unfortunately, my housemate and I have one very problematic next-door neighbour. Let’s call him Uncle D. Uncle D is in his seventies. He lives with his married daughter and her family and they have all lived together in that house for as long as my parents have owned this house. A few months back, he started picking fights with us for no apparent reason. First it was with my housemate. He accused her of having splashed water on his clean clothes that were hanging on the washing line while she was watering our plants. The next day, we saw him using the garden hose to purposely spray water on our clothes. It wasn’t just a few drops; our clothes were completely drenched. We let it go because we didn’t want to turn it into a big thing.

A few weeks later, Uncle D was waiting for me outside the gate when I was trying to leave for work one morning. He said that I had parked my car in such a way that it jutted out into their property. I promised to be more careful in future but frankly I didn’t see why he was making such a fuss. We have to park two cars and they only have one, which is always parked inside the gate. I was not taking up space that they normally use, and I was not blocking anyone’s path. Once again I apologised and let it go. When I came home from work that day, I saw that Uncle D had delineated the boundary between our property and theirs using several large flower pots arranged in a row. I just shrugged and hoped that he hadn’t done all that heavy lifting all by himself. My housemate and I decided that he was going senile and that we should be lenient with him.

But now Uncle D has developed a new habit that my housemate and I are finding it difficult to overlook. I’m not sure if his daughter and her family are aware because they hardly seem to be at home. At first, we would only catch glimpses of him walking around in his underpants inside their house when we passed their gate on our way in or out. But one day my housemate was coming home quite late from work, the lights were already switched on next door, and the curtains were wide open. She got quite a — well, panoramic — view, and unfortunately we think that Uncle D saw her, because from that day onwards he started venturing out into his compound in very skimpy underpants and once even without them. If we could believe that he is simply unaware of what he’s doing, it would be much easier for us to approach his daughter. Then it would be just a medical problem, poor old man needing help and all that. But we can’t convince ourselves that that’s all it is, because several times now Uncle D has deliberately made eye contact with me or my housemate while on his underpants excursions. When he looks at us he doesn’t seem lost or unaware at all. He looks gleeful, and sometimes he even sniggers a little bit like he’s produced the trump card.

My housemate wants to tell her parents. I know that if she does that, they will move her out of the house and I will have to hunt for another housemate. But I just don’t know if I can bring another woman into this house without disclosing the facts about Uncle D next door. I’m racking my brains trying to find a solution my housemate and I can implement ourselves without involving our parents. Can you help us, Auntie Millie?

Sincerely,

Cannot Unsee, Setapak

***

Dear Cannot Unsee,

Recently I heard about one man who was caught doing god-knows-what in a dimly lit alley or lorong somewhere. Now doing god-knows-what all by yourself in peace is your own business, but this fellow was trying to show off his god-knows-what skills to some unsuspecting young girls. It just so happened that one of these young ladies was able to whip out her phone as quickly as he had whipped out his personal toolkit, so she captured the whole thing and viralled it on her Internet like they all do nowadays.

Obviously I am only telling you this because it is the exact opposite of what you should do. By no means should you or your housemate consider such vigilante guerilla tactics. No no no. You are respectable young ladies, I understand. I described it in detail because I believe Dos and Don’ts should always be adequately outlined, otherwise how is one to know if one is accidentally doing a don’t? I will only add that after that enterprising girl viralled that wandering soul and his divining rod, even I came across it one day while innocently searching for a good claypot rice recipe, and now, should I ever come across that dowser, I will recognise him immediately and cross to the other side of the street. His rod I will not recognise, as, fortunately for me, it was blurred out. What-what things the girls know how to do nowadays! When I was a young woman we could not just blur out any substandard rod we felt did not deserve the adulation of the people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not approving of such stealthy methods or promoting them. All I am saying is that in my old age I cannot help being a bit grateful to people like that girl with a good phone and no inconvenient scruples preventing her from using it. But now I am simply rambling. What I would or would not be grateful for in my old age is not your concern, is it? Of course some younger women would be grateful too for the complimentary Public Denouncement service, but even that is beside the point.

Ruling out the David Attenborough treatment for Uncle D without further delay, you are left with the option of accosting his daughter one of these evenings when she has come back from wherever she goes to escape her troublesome father. Put aside all your fears of awkwardness and impropriety and make it a simple conversation between two grown women with a problem to solve. You deserve to be safe from unwanted eyefuls of Uncle D’s ding-dong in your own home. He may think that he has the right to air his equipment on his side of the fence (all the more so when he wants to show you who’s boss), but in that case he should avail himself of another three dozen or so king-sized flower pots (I suggest those big Chinese ones adorned with dragons, stacked up on top of each other) to block the view, or, failing that, a brick wall. Offer to call the contractor. If a wall is unacceptable, perhaps Uncle D would consent to choosing from an array of sartorial staples that permit high airflow: the checked sarong, the pyjama shorts, and so forth. After all, Uncle D, ‘wearing the trousers’ is an actual figure of speech for having the upper hand; perhaps his daughter should tell him this.

I wish you the best of luck, but of course I most definitely will not be looking out for Uncle D on the Internet while searching for a good roast duck recipe for my son-in-law’s birthday in a few weeks. Not that I would recognise him either way, with or without his short-range missile blurred out.

Yours ever,

Auntie Millie