I was hoping to start the week fresh with the worst of the studio’s sprinkler disaster put behind me, but the incident was actually more difficult to handle than I thought. When I returned to the studio on Monday, my colleague told me that one of the younger neighboring landlord barged in earlier yelling and wanting to see the boss (landlord), my colleague yelled back in response to his rudeness. Later in the afternoon when my brother’s friend (also a tenant) and his colleagues came over to cleanup their previously flooded room, the two landlords of the neighboring units were giving them a hard time when they tried to walk pass them in the corridor to get to the washroom. My brother’s friend tried to reason with them, but that almost turned into a fight, and I had no choice but to call the police.

After the police came to talk to each of the parties separately, I immediately did some research at night and bought a security camera the next morning before returning to the studio. Things turned a lot quieter in the corridor after we reported the conflict to the police and installed (regrettably) the security camera outside the entrance.

More bad news happened, not to me, but to my calligraphy teacher. When I arrived to the classroom on Thursday evening, water was dripping from the ceiling and my classmates were mopping the floors. The water pump above my teacher’s unit was malfunctioning, and this wasn’t the first time it happened. In the middle of the class, my teacher received a call saying that his brother, who is in his nineties and living alone, was found lying on the floor of his apartment. My classmate and I rushed to the hospital with my teacher. His brother was pronounced dead.

Some happier times this week was meeting up with a couple of artist friends on Wednesday and Saturday respectively. Was actually hoping to introduce them to meet each other on Saturday, but one of them cancelled the last minute due to sickness.

I’m now left with less than one week to finish my annual fai-chun writing exercise and the 100 CNY postcards project. 😖