To: My Next-Door-Neighbour

Dear Next-Door-Neighbour,

Gee. Thanks for making me feel better everytime I see the kind of living conditions you are bunking in. You make me feel great that I'm living in a big, big house with a toilet the size bigger than your entire er...flat (if that can even be called a flat in the first place).

Logically speaking, we are not even neighbours because you don't live in the same area as I do, where all the houses there are big, with swimming pools and all. However, you are just located outside my window, below a block of flats. So, I still think you can be considered my neighbour.

Sometimes, I wonder what you do for a living. Hell, you could be the security guard or the man who always washes the cars parked below the flats in the morning. I wouldn't know, because I don't even know what you look like, except that you are a Malay and a guy, because I've always only seen you in the dark.

By the time I wake up at 7am, it seems you have already left your "flat" to go to work. Your green door remains shut. During daytime, you are not always not around. Sometimes, when night falls, I don't see you sitting at the foot of your door, like you sometimes do. Yesterday, when I looked out of my window, I didn't see you around.

You must be a foreigner, who travelled miles and miles to reach this island called Singapore to eke out a living. Sometimes, I stop to wonder if the reason why you are living in such shabby conditions in a well-developed country like Singapore (where there is no such thing as starving to death, only people who say they have no money to eat and you later see them queuing up at the Toto store below their block), was because you were cheated by an agent, if your children had abandoned you, if your wife had left you. But, no, I think they are all waiting for you at home to send some money over.

Sometimes, I look out of the window, and I see you. But, when I see you looking at my direction, I turn away quickly in guilt. I wonder what is going through your mind when you look at my house. Are you thinking of making it rich so that one day you can buy a real house of your own? Or are you thinking about your home back in your hometown, your wife and kids?

Sometimes,when you leave your door open, I see that you don't even have a proper bed, just a mattress being laid on the ground, and a small fan beside it. I look at my tall fan next to the window and Gee, you make me feel so good about myself. You really do.