Neighbors

At one point do you call your landlord or the police to report that something might have happened to your upstairs neighbor? What if you're in foreign country--tell your boss that something odd might be going on and risk it being nothing?

I like my apartment. It's a one room, but a good size for me, bug-free (now, not when I moved in), new, quite satisfactory. The walls are solid concrete so usually sound isn't an issue. The doors, however, are quite thin and might as well not be there. One neighbor likes to pretend he's an opera singer (although he sounds like a dying cat), another likes to have loud arguments with a boyfriend at all hours, another has occasional late-night soju parties. Some of the female residents clomp up the stairs late at night with their high heels, slamming the door as they enter their apartment. The doors aren't too big an issue, though.

The bathroom, on the other hand, is worse. Somehow the vent system is connected so that both sounds and smells are shared. If my next-door neighbor is smoking or cooking a particularly strong chiggae, then the smell permeates my apartment as well. Sometimes smells come up through the drain. If I'm in the bathroom and the next-door neighbor turns on the water or closes their cabinet door, I can hear it. Likewise, if the upstairs neighbor is taking a shower, I can hear it, too.

Well, from the sound of things, the upstairs neighbor has been taking a shower for the last 24 hours. Yes, it's hot, but no one can take that many showers in a 24 hour period! Every time I've been in the bathroom the water upstairs has been running. On Wednesdays I'm home a lot later than on other days, too. So the question is, what's going on up there?

Because mostly students live in this building, my first thought was that someone came home drunk (yes, mid-week, getting drunk is fine anytime here!) and took a shower to try to wake up but passed out and/or died with the water still running. Yes, I have an over-active imagination. Second possibility: the resident decided to do a midnight run and left all the lights and water on to make the bills higher for the boss. (There are supposedly 4 other foreigners in this 15-unit building, although I've only met one of them.) Third possibility: with the water problem that every now and then the water slows to just a trickle, perhaps leaving the water on all day keeps the water from slowing down again. (I don't know how these things work! It might be possible!) Fourth, and perhaps the most reasonable possibility that I've just thought of: the unit is either vacant or the resident is away, and something broke so water is always running. As long as the drain continues to work, it should be OK. However, standing in the bathroom wondering if the ceiling is going to collapse on me is not a pleasant thought!