Eternal 1984

I live in the Village of the DAMNED.

Or maybe time has never passed beyond the eighties?
Like 1984?
An eternal Orwellian 1984.

No, really, very creepy here.
As in Big BROTHER is Watching creepy.

As a non-Asian in Asia you live in the perpetual fish bowl. You get everything ranging from the outright GAWKING to most common yet only mildly offensive "Oh, look at the white person." "Oh, a foreigner." to the native language equivalent of "GO THE FUCK HOME!"
After more than five years, yeah, I am tired of it, but I am also thoroughly used to it, completely non-responsive in any case. (Actually, I have been practicing Korean lately so I can mess with them back. It's the little amusements that get you by here.)

But here.... This place is truly creepy with its monitoring and watching and veiled digs for information.
It's subtle too, until the pattern gets repeated so many times so can't NOT notice it.

I got a very large package one day. At my APARTMENT.
The following day at work, I was on duty with someone I normally NEVER see. They were very chatty with me which NO ONE EVER is. In the conversation it came up out of no where, "Do you ever buy things online?"
This suddenly coming from a person at work who can barely turn on a computer.

?

Obsessed with TV much?
Really, how many times can anyone ask me " Do you watch the TV?" before it gets odd? And how weird is it that when the final time it's asked I mention that I remember that I did watch this one program only to then have the TV Collection service suddenly show up out of nowhere the next day after I answer yes??

??

The weirdly distorted ones are almost the creepiest for me though. The one that stands out (and yes there has been MORE than one instance.) is the night I heard a kitten crying outside. I am on the third floor. It was a dark NIGHT. And yet the crying was so loudly insistent that even though I am deathly allergic to felines, I couldn't ignore it. It was obviously a kitten and s/he sounded stuck or lost or hurt or hungry. Whatever was the problem I went to look for the wayward critter.

Now, behind the apartment building is a school surrounded by one of Japan's famous cement block prison-like school fences. So I am looking all over the back, where the school fence and the apartment parking lot meet. That's where the sound is coming from. Over, around, along the Twiggy-thin intervals between houses. Peered into the school ground by the apartment once or twice - cats do sleep there I had noticed before from my balcony. ZIP. NADA.

Give up and go to bed.

So, another morning, another day in hell house (work).
I arrived at my post when curiously out of no where, the person I am on duty with mentions, oh so casually, "You live next to a school, don't you? Isn't that inconvient?! Don't you worry about them peering over the fence into your room??"
Without missing a beat, I blandly responded, "I live on the third floor."

Oh, and did I mention it was DARK out that night?

I don't need to spell out how fu)(&&d-up creepy this is, do I?
who the f%#$ reported what to whom who then passed the message to work and then that message was passed to the VP (most likely) who then assigned the person on duty with me to deliver not just a "warning", but a weirdly distorted allegory of a warning ?!

・・・
・・・

Cheers!
and SMILE!!
remember, we're watching u 2 (^_-)-☆


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