So I go outside and there is a torrent of dirty soapy water coming down all over our clean dry washing and pool towels. “Stop” I yell, it continues. “Hello can you please stop,” nothing, it continues.

I go outside, look up and in the apartment above us there is a maid on her hands and knees scrubbing the outside floors.

“Hello can you please stop washing the dirty soapy water over the edge of the balcony?” I ask as nicely as I can ‘cos I was a bit pissed at this point.

“Mam said it’s OK.”

“Well it’s not OK because you’ve got two apartments under you and we are both getting soaked.” I’d already heard Deb, the British lady below, shouting out too – welcome to Singapore Deb.

Finally, it stopped.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. At our last place in Singapore we were on the ground floor (with 16 floors above us) and maids would regularly wash the balcony and spill buckets of filthy soapy water over the edge, right where an 18 month and a three month old were playing. It was infuriating.

I always adopted a policy of finding out which apartment was responsible and then getting Vick, our maid, to have a word with them. I didn’t want them getting in trouble, but sometimes I had to speak to their bosses, which meant they did get in trouble. Sorry girls. You should’ve listened to Vick.

It boggles my mind how people just don’t think about the impact they have on those around them – well in this case below them – but that’s communal living. Tackle it one incident at a time and stay nice. Being a bitch just makes things worse!

Yours, without the bollocks
Andrea