I have a colleague, who happens to be a neighbour. And when I say neighbour, I mean one who is living on the same floor as me. Yes! Not just in the same estate. I found out only after confirming the purchase of this place and was adamant to not say anything about it to her. Because, she's not exactly likeable and my ex-finance colleagues and I call her 'scanner' as she is one of those who scans a person from top to toe. And she is quite vocal too, in complaining.

But after about 6 months or so, she saw me and this time I didn't see her although I did see her once and she had no idea. So finally it's in the open. Well, between her and me anyway. The only other people in the office who are aware is my boss and maybe some of her departmental colleagues. At least now, I do not have to quickly scamper to hide or take a quick glance at her unit when the lift door opens at our floor. In the beginning, I could not believe my luck but I've since gotten over it. So, it's true. Things do become better when it is in the open.

Anyway, I needed to ask her if she has the same experience after we have been seeing lone centipedes in the house lately. The first time I saw one was early morning in the kitchen. The next few lone ones were in the balcony and common bath. I even saw 2 shrivelled up ones since we returned from Batam, 1 on Sunday in the balcony and 1 was in K's bowl, yesterday evening. We wonder where do they suddenly appear from? We figured because it's an old flat, 30ish, and there were no U-sleeves in the pipes. You can open the hair-trap and see the pipe all the way down. So the clever hubs placed our unused peranakan tiles over them before we left for the short get-away. 

But since we still see them around and thankfully solo travellers, I had to ask if my neighbouring colleague experiences the same problem at her unit, quite literally diagonally across the lift lobby. But she doesn't. So, I hope ours is an isolated case and will soon be condemned to isolation. After messaging the colleague at work through our internal messenger, I am also relieved to hear that her home has lizards and cockroaches' once in a while. Beats having to see them and scrambling for a rolled-up newspaper everyday.