I've been liking my new habit of recording a small notebook page-a-day kind of paper diary, then going back over the week to distill it here. There do seem a few drawbacks to the method, though.

On the whole, I like how the space limit I've given myself requires me to focus my thoughts, which leads to more shape (for want of a better word) to the daily entry. But that same lack-of-room means there's not a lot left over for recording specific reactions to events, and even sometimes small events that turn out to be exemplars of a growing trend.

For instance, our dispute with the Evil Neighbors, or - I should say by now - the Evil Landlord and Shop-Keeper. (There is a perfectly pleasant, real neighbor occupying the apartment above the shop.) For those tuning in late: when we first viewed the house, there was a little ethnic shop next door. By the time the sale of our house had been finalized, that shop had been forced to close by the police: the property had been declared unsafe for human habitation.

A month or two after moving in, the restoration work began. At first, we were pretty happy, or at least pleased to see that the neighboring owner was putting the property to rights. But things went downhill rapidly after that, and we soon discovered that much of his labor was of the "cowboy" nature. (For a man who, we have since discovered, is rather more wealthy than we are, he sure is a damned cheapskate.) The police visited the premises again, a month or two after that - a raid, for illegal workers. They took quite a few people away. (No, we had not made that phone call... though I wouldn't put it past the Evil Landlord to have arranged that raid to "save" himself the wages, then put about that we did... yeah, it's that kind of atmosphere these days.)

Several stages of the restoration works inflicted or threatened to inflict damage on our own home. There was the incident of the beams, and the water leakage problem, and finally the Heavy Saddleback Roof, with features completely not allowed for in the permit the Evil Landlord had deigned to acquire.

Oh dear, I thought this was going to be short... do go get yourselves something to drink, kick back and relax, eh? (And skim, if you've "heard" this before, there's definitely some repeat!) Here goes the tale:

The beams: we are lucky enough to live in an old, old house, one that had been lovingly restored and modernized. The beams are original to the construction, dating from the mid-1600's. We learned that they originally stretched through our house from the house on either side of us, making a cute little threesome. The Evil Landlord had no respect for the history of the house (which was not otherwise protected by landmark heritage rules), so he just hacked them out on his side of the party wall. (So, now, the beams are only in two of the three houses.) In the process of doing so, he managed to deliver shocks through the wall dire enough to knock holes in our plaster. At the time, we'd alerted him (or rather, members of his extended family - we were rarely treated to any contact with this man, as if he fancied himself the emperor of China or something), and the message came back that "everything would be taken care of."

So, we waited. You can guess what result came of that.

Then we discovered a huge spot of damp in our guest bedroom, where the wall was again shared with this house. Not only that, but during particularly bad storms, we would even get dripping into the study area that Mr Sweetie had set up, not realizing that the water would travel right down that same wall. Sheee-it.

My previous journal sported a few "mushrooms" - dry rot, actually - in the guest bedroom. There was also (as yonmei can attest) a huge patch of black mold. Mr Sweetie would go at it occasionally with anti-fungal treatment, but it always kept coming back.

However, when we took our complaint to the Evil Landlord, or rather one of his many familial representatives, he had the gall to point to our downspout, and blame that for the damage. And then, trying to lord it over me (I was handling this by myself rather than with Mr Sweetie) he proceeded to outshout me in my own home, in the presence of the contractor we'd also invited to make a tour of the damage. I escorted the representative off the premises, then turned around to the contractor and said, "Now, we can talk business." There was a lot to talk about, especially after he'd gone up the roof, to inspect their construction from above.

They had not only done a dog's-dinner mess of a job (re)building the wall between our two properties, but they had utterly failed to seal the space between the walls. No wonder we had a damp problem: the rain was simply falling free from the sky.

Well, as Mr Sweetie once remarked (after we got over the lather of declaring war), at least we have clarity, now. He went in search of the various allies we would need in this battle. Primarily our insurance, but also the city building inspectors. That's when we found out that the wall as in reality even worse than its lumpen appearance: it was too weak to hold up the construction of the roof. If it had been allowed to stand, it most certainly would have collapsed, leading to goodness knows what. We also learned that the city had not issued a permit for the building to have been raised by 1.5 meters; the permit had only been for interior work, not even the structural stuff he'd tried to push through.

Oh, and? He had no proper insurance. Rather: it was rendered null and void as soon as we made a stink and the city confirmed that his building project had overstep the bounds of his permit. Which means that for damages, his ass is now hanging in the wind, not just for our personal repairs to the paint-and-plaster work, but to our insurance as well. We found this out when our insurance guys tried to reach the Evil Landlord's insurance, and the "inspector" they sent over was for... fire insurance. He eventually had to knock it all down (but did it in enough of a hurry that he's now trying to assert there is no "evidence" for our and our insurance's damage claims - mind, this was after inspectors had been through the building at its various stages and a veritable library of digital photography from our side) and Mr Sweetie was involved in the process enough that he could insist the work be done by a proper contractor and to an architect's design. (That all and the fine on top must have cost a pretty penny, but the Evil Landlord doesn't seem to have gone bankrupt just yet.)

And it just doesn't stop. They put up an extra sign on the shop front, right next to our front window (blocking one of the views) - Mr Sweetie went to the building inspector's office, and learned a) that they had not applied for an additional permit to place the sign and b) the building inspector remembers these guys from our first go-round with them.

But for a rich guy, this one is sure being dumb. It goes without saying, they've completely squandered our good-will, and now they'll have no quarter from us. For instance, when they had started to park their vans in front of the shop - mind, there is a clause for loading/unloading. Fair enough, as it's a shop in a busy, built-up center.

But they don't get to park there for 7 hours. With the engine running. (And the charming thing? I was trying to study for exams a lot of that time.)

A phone call to the police started out slightly ambivalent. They were understanding, but had to pass us on to the specialized parking enforcement, and from there we'd have to communicate with them. Fair enough, we said, and got our ducks together. (This was fortunately after my last exam, so I even could devote time to keeping necessary data.) Then something strange happened one recent Sunday evening: we were cooking dinner, but I noticed that the Ever-Present "Delivery" Van was out on the curb. Then I glimpsed 2 or 3 guys in hi-visibility vests, walking in practically on the heels of the shop worker.

I don't know what was said (it was all very quiet) but right after that, the van was driven away very fast, and since then, the next door shop has been scrupulous in how long they've kept any vehicle out on the curb.

However, now... they've been placing a sign advertising one of their lines in ice cream, blocking the way, and frequently pushing out onto "our" sidewalk. That is, until someone forgot to take the sign in, and it was broken into two pieces by some Saturday night drunken passer-by. After that, they've taken to propping it up.... you guessed it, against the front of our house.

It's a bit of a toothpaste-tube situation by now; they're feeling damn entitled to things that they're not, and now getting that pointed out to them (when the sign had ended up leaned against our paintwork, chipping it...) has earned Mr Sweetie being called a "klootzak" by one of the shopkeepers. At least, as we knew already, we have clarity about this situation. If anything, their aggression will only make things worse. It feels a bit on one hand like being next door to some junior (and very second-string) mafia, but apart from calling their bullshit when it's actively forced on us, my best revenge is sailing sweetly and unperturbed past the shop front, on the way to the rest of my life, while Mr Square-Face sits sullenly at his counter.

Other topics I thought I was going to cover were things like my grades (failed, badly - still hurts, will talk later), and in between thoughts on how to deal with the coming semester and academic years.