Bloc Party

My mother always says that if you want to get the latest news, don’t bother turning on the news or waiting for the feed to drop on Facebook. Just go get your hair done, she advises. Your hairdresser will update you. “That’s how I found out Uncle John had died in the arms of his mistress!” she told us once.

“Wait,” my sister said. “Janet told you Uncle John died. With his mistress.”

Mother arched a perfectly drawn eyebrow. “Not just with his mistress,” she said. “In her arms!”

“And Janet knows this how?” Michelle asked.

Mother looked around to make sure Daddy was out of ear-shot and leaned in. “Because Janet was the mistress!”

Years later, as Michelle recounted the story to her therapist, she wondered aloud if this was the sort of conversation a mother should have with her ten-year-old. “I mean, where are the boundaries?” she asked. “Is this why I have so many issues?”

Saffy says that sometimes she really does blame the parents. “Your sister is a mess!” she told me the other day. We were on the couch, sunk deep within its cushions, watching ‘Game of Thrones’ and wondering, not for the first time, just how some people are so daring they can just take off all their clothes for the whole world to see.

“I mean, look at what’s happening right now!” Saffy said, waving a chicken drumstick at the screen. “If this was a 3D movie, she’d have poked my eyes out with her thrusting boobs! What must her parents think?”

Just then, Amanda marched in the front door. She crossed the room, picked up the remote and hit pause.

Saffy’s bosom inflated above the cushions. “Excuse us!”

Amanda waved her hands. “Shut up, Saf. You’ll never guess what, but we might be going en bloc!”

Saffy gasped and stopped chewing on her chicken.

Apparently, Amanda was downstairs in our condo hairdresser’s getting highlights in her hair when Irene casually asked her how she was going to vote.

Amanda looked up from her latest issue of Women’s Weekly and stared at Irene in the mirror. “Vote for what?”

Irene’s brush paused in mid-stroke. “Ay? You doh-no, ah? On block, mah! How you doh-no?”

Turns out that one of Irene’s clients is the condo’s secretary and as she was giving Mel a unicorn highlight, Mel had said that several committee members were proposing to put the matter up at the next condo meeting. The last time they’d tried this stunt was five years ago, but there was such a complete lack of interest from our condo’s population of aged retirees that the whole thing died a quick silent death like poor Madame Wong in #07-08 who died last year of a heart attack in her sleep.

“So why are they trying again?” Saffy moaned. “My God, I don’t want to move! I’m too lazy to even get off this sofa to go pee and they want me to move house? Seriously?”

“Apparently, some owners here don’t actually live here,” Amanda said. “They’ve bought several properties as investments, but the rental market is so soft, they can’t service their mortgages, so they’re desperate to sell, especially if they can increase the plot ratio and get some developer interested!”

Saffy turned her head towards me. “Did you understand a word she just said?”

“I stopped listening after ‘some owners’”, I told her.

According to Amanda, Irene also said that she’d been talking to a number of the other residents, including Mrs Yeo and Mrs Chan in block 246 and they both said that all their friends are going to vote against any en bloc. “They’re in their 70s, and Irene says the only way they’re going to be moving out is into an ambulance!”

            “Oh good!” Saffy sighed.

            “But on block is good what!” Sharyn later said, offering her considerable expertise as the owner of two apartments that have both gone en bloc for considerable sums of money. “Wah, when my Gillman Heights go on block, I make so much mah-ney, you know!”

            “Yeah, good for you, Shazz!” Saffy said with just the faintest edge of bitterness in her voice. “But we’re renting! So the only person who’s going to be celebrating is our landlord, not us!”

            “Oh yah hor. I forgot you got no money! Aiyoh, so how, ah?”

            “I may have to move in with you,” Saffy said. “I’d have nowhere else to go.”

            Behind Sharyn’s Coke bottle-thick spectacles, her eyes widened. “Hah?”

            “Well, you’re the one who said en blocs are good!”

            “I got say such ting, meh?” Sharyn said weakly.

            Saffy later said she lives for such moments.