::A Geek in Korea::

Part of the deal of living an a bonefide apartment complex when there is ownership and longer term property values to consider is that you need to worry about decisions that seem minor, but might impact you long term. Even once you settle on something long term, there are short term drawbacks.

A few weeks ago we got a mockup of the new paint designs for the exterior of our apartment complex. The apartment group had entered into a lawsuit against the builder who had backed out of their painting obligations. The lawsuit had just been resolved when we moved into the apartment, so the apartment group had sent around flyers with the different paint designs. We had to pick for a few rather bland designs. Out of the three we picked the least hideous one.

A few days ago, they started on the process of readying the buildings for the massive paint job. This means that people were crawling around, suspended on ropes, with large scrapers freeing any loose paint. They would go down scraping, then the next day would go down the buildings suspended by safety lines to patch up any cracks in the concrete. This has left the buildings in the neighborhood streaked with tiger stripes on the walls where the various cracks had been patched.

Today I was sitting at the computer watching Internet Videos and following the political threads I keep a handle on. I had just finished my breakfast and was getting up to return my bowl when I saw a guy suspended out my window peering inside as he scraped and patched outside my second story apartment.

GAH! It was like 1960’s Batman walking up a wall to catch a criminal, and he was right outside my apartment. I had seen them doing this entire building through the week so I should have been prepared. However, when they were outside my window, I felt strangely violated by their peering inside. No one doing anything wrong, but no one expect someone outside their window when they don’t expect this. All this time in the apartment I hadn’t felt the need to pull my curtains, but I did after that.