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The person I dislike most is Sunny Soo, my next-door neighbor.
He is in his late thirties and has three teenage children. One would think that
fatherhood might have mellowed him, but Sunny is, without doubt, the most
unpleasant man I’ve ever met.
To start with, Sunny is not a sight for sore eyes. Standing at barely 1.5 meters
tall, he is all skin and bones. His complexion is dark and riddled with pimples,
while his steel-colored wispy hair clings stubbornly to his scalp. A pair of
cold, brown eyes sit above a broad nose and jagged, protruding teeth that make
him look perpetually annoyed—or annoying.
But his appearance isn’t even the worst part. It’s his behavior that makes him
truly unbearable. Sunny talks at lightning speed, and unfortunately, his saliva
travels just as fast. Speaking with him is like standing in front of a water
sprinkler—you’ll need tissues, or better still, a mini umbrella. And to make
things worse, he peppers his speech with crude four-letter words, offending
anyone with even a hint of refinement. I’ve seen more than a few polite ladies
walk away from him in horror.
Sunny also has the loudest mouth in town. Once, my friend Ganesh and I went to
the cinema, only to find Sunny seated right behind us. Throughout the movie, he
gave a running commentary loud enough for the entire cinema hall to hear. We
couldn’t take it and had to move to the front row. We left the cinema dizzy—not
from the movie, but from his nonstop chatter.
Another of Sunny’s infamous traits is his kiasu nature—the obsessive fear
of losing out. I remember a sale in town when Sunny actually camped outside a
shopping mall the entire night just to be first in line. Imagine a grown man
spending the night in front of a store just to grab a few bargains.
His obsession with saving money is equally ridiculous. To Sunny, fifty cents is
as precious as fifty dollars. Once, my mother saw him walking all the way from
our apartment to town under the scorching sun—just to avoid paying a \$1.00
parking fee. His face was drenched in sweat and his wispy hair was plastered to
his forehead. Mum laughed so hard she almost rear-ended the car in front of her.
Worse still is his arrogant attitude toward those younger than him. Once, I
accidentally left the television volume a little too high. He marched over to my
unit, kicked my door, and demanded that I switch it off. If my father hadn’t
held me back, I swear I would’ve given him a piece of my mind—and maybe a black
eye.
Now that you know what Sunny Soo is like, perhaps you’ll understand why I find
him so intolerable. The strangest thing, though, is his wife. She is kind,
soft-spoken, and gracious—everything Sunny is not. How someone like her ended up
marrying him is a mystery I doubt I’ll ever solve. |
