Noisy Neighbours

For almost a year we have lived a comforable life in our 23rd storey apartment. Large, bright and breezy, it was relatively quiet for Shanghai standards (although Shanghai's standard resembles Heathrow airport's front runway). The reason was our block had quite a few apartments as yet unsold, which went some way in proving the hypothesis: less people = less noisy neighbours.

A couple of months ago, however, there was a big sell-off as the developers wanted to fill the emptiness (had something to do with the Chinese government - possibly induced by Kellogs - threatening to stabilise house prices). All vacant apartments were duly snapped up.

I have since learned that the 10 empty places in our block were bought by the same company. Which is fair enough. It's a buyers market and if they want to spend untold millions on Shanghai apartments and sell them on at a profit, then fair play to them. What I do NOT like, is they are taking the approach of renovating all the residences AT THE SAME BLOODY TIME. Meaning power drills and hammers shrill and bang from early morning to evening.

The soon-to-be infamous Guangming Chenshi building massacre is not so far away....