1. Singapore Mint ventured into the lucrative jewellery market, and is currently considering getting local distributors to represent it, was reported in the Business Times on 1 Feb 2010.
2. The owner's reaction was this would take away some business from workers who work from their flats and create noise for others. He remembered from BlogTV a participant saying a noise woke him at night, and he was unable to go back to sleep. He said the neighbour seemed like reasonable people, but when he mentioned the noise they did not admit it. It sounded familiar to the owner. The subject title was Neighbour From Hell.
3. The owner wrote to the President, the Police and a few Ministers. He received replies the matter will be look into. The owner also placed two more posts in his blog on the same day 1 Feb 2010.
4. Let's go by the facts that could be ascertained:
a) How did the owner come to conclude the maid, who was making the noise, was not registered to work in the flat? He kept watch over the period 8 Jul 07 to 5 Aug 07, wrote to HDB Branch Office, and noted a quiet period at the same time a poster of a maid working at a coffeeshop (not allowed) appeared on the noticeboard. The maid was not seen again until the Chinese New Year '08. If the maid was with the present owner and she was registered at another address that may be where the family had lived. Meanwhile the flat is used as a place of work. More details may be found in the post sub-titled Neighbour. The Ministry of Manpower could confirms whether there was a maid in the record, and the address she was registered.
b) The owner thinks the noises are from the working of jewellery or fashion accessory. HDB has personal details on the neighbour such as their occupation.
c) The owner gave reasons in his postings the first owner and the present owner are working together. They are in a business with other workers. HDB would have the personal details of the first owner and his occupier, and could confirms the dates of the owner's complaint, the eviction of the occupier, a letter the owner sent to HDB Feedback Unit, and the tranfer of the flat to the present owner. The dates should be close together. Several officers knew about the eviction, which took place in mid-Mar 99.
d) If there was no eviction as an officer wrote on 20 Aug 09, it is possible there is also no record of the occupier. The owner wrote to the Branch Office the occupier came pounding on the owner's door the next morning after the owner knocked on his door the night before but he would not answer. He had lived there for many years. The owner had also seen the present owner and his wife before the occupier came to live there. Only the owner's mother had seen the first owner and spoken to him a few times.
e) The Officer-in-Charge(OIC) would not give the name of the present owner, although he was at the meeting in which Head,Pasir Ris Branch Office(HBO) agreed to when the owner asked. Does the present owner has a record.
f) The flat across the neighbour used to keep watch on the neighbour has a noise recording device inside. The bcc from HBO to Chairman,Residents Committee would confirmed it. Are they facts.
g) The flat is occupied since 22 Feb 08 after the owner's first letter to the Meet-the-People Session on 16 Feb 08. It has been two years now. If there was not a problem they would not be there, and if there was one they had not done much to solve it. During that time the owner went to eight more Meet-the-People Sessions, wrote in a blog and the noise has continues. His observations indicated noise could be detected, and noises from early morning to the night are from persons taking shift. The tamp and ramble are from machine-tools. If there was an independent team could the problem be resolved.
h) In effect they watch out for the neighbour. The letter from Town Council to the owner that he would hear from HDB and Mr Teo Chee Hean, who wrote the letter to the Town Council, asked him whether someone came to visit him but no one did. The people in the flat would know they were coming or inform the neighbour when they visited. They have a view of the main entrance and study room of the owner's flat. The owner wonders whether they occupied the flat only to have the matter under their control.
i) Random inspection of noise at the owner's flat may be an effective method since the repossession of flat acts as a deterrence. The owner wrote a man who came to live in the flat across the neighbour for a short period and noise had stopped for four years, and a lady who scolded him for staring gave him the full name of the man. The neighbour at the time was the present owner. The inspection will have to be carried out without the people in the flat who would informed the neighbour when they visited.
j) The owner has a general awareness of the situation. During the time he was at the Meet-the-People Sessions he noted there were Community Center members who were for and against him. He had spoken to the Community Center members who were involved. He knows he is watched, and had noise directed at him that could be tied to action such as after he sent a letter. When there were visits to the owner's flat the noise would stopped.
k) The problem could as easily be someone else. The neighbour is working for a profit and some officers allow it. More details on a force-entry, a break-in and the bcc could be found in the first post under Findings and the post sub-titled Pervasive Case.
l) The owner handed over a copy of his letter because the OIC said the office did not received it. He asked for an acknowledgement and a meeting with HBO, which was in a room with the OIC present. The signed acknowledgement had two lines missing that alluded to the OIC having contacted the present owner to adjust the noise level. The owner was already suspicious after a well-dressed man and the OIC visited him before visiting the neighbour upstair. The well-dressed man did not want to give his name. Two days later, a three hours stretch of rambling noise was followed by the OIC calling back to enquire.
m) The owner first two letters to a MP was followed by a letter from HBO that the owner may obtain a court injunction to stop the noise. The letters the owner wrote were a list of items including maid, force-entry, start and stop attempts and previous eviction; and the second letter was about a heavy knock at 1.00am followed by continual knock through the night, next morning and afternoon.
n) The date of the TV broadcast on perceived injustice was after HBO sent his first letter on court injunction on 25 Sep 08 and before the owner received the bcc on 7 Nov 08.
o) The owner spoke about checking out discussion groups to a friend on 26 Mar 09 since there was no lead on contacting the person who broadcasted the message, and mentioned about the post HBO placed at the CNA Form to the volunteers from the site http://civicadvocator.net who visited him on 18 May 09. They had published the owner's letter a week earlier. HBO may had published and withdrew his post on car-parking at CNA Forum about these two dates. The owner thinks the TV message and HBO's post were unusual events, and there was intend to let the owner know his attempt to publicise was not going to succeed.
p) The bcc from HBO to Chairman,Residents Committee stated "there is no noise nuisance being detected", and asked the Chairman to give the owner a talk on good neighbourliness during their visit to the flat across the neighbour. The Chairman had arranged to meet one of his member the same morning after his meeting with HBO to visit the owner. The owner noted there was in fact incessant knocking that morning; and he told the Chairman and the member about the noise and said, as they were leaving, that if they come without the neighbour knowing they may hear some noise. Did HBO communicated with the neighbour that morning to make the noise when he saw from the flat the owner at his study room. The Chairman had on two separate occasions said he would come to visit him but did not.
q) There are reasons HBO was at the flat across the neighbour. After HBO wrote his first letter on court injunction, the owner when to see his area MP about a connection between the first owner and the present owner, and a previous eviction. Noise was heightened after this, and the owner refused to allow the OIC and a fellow officer into his flat to check for noise on the second week (the owner saw the area MP on the first week). HBO visited the flat with the Chairman who then visited the owner on the third week. HBO wrote to the owner that the area MP had asked HDB to look into his feedback, and he was glad the Chairman had approached and assisted him on the fourth week .
r) The last meeting the owner had with the area MP (when he said he would meet HBO the next day) was on 23 Feb 09. HBO did not reply to the letter the MP sent to HDB then until two months later on 24 Apr 09, which was five days after the owner emailed to the PM on 19 Apr 09. The owner thinks HBO knew about the email because noise in the form of knocks spaced apart over a period of time was meant for the owner.There was direct mention of HBO in the email. The owner remembered the incident because an old friend called almost immmediately after he emailed the PM, and he visited the owner on 23 Apr 09 one day before HBO sent his reply.
s) HBO has influence. There were seven letters from the MPs to HDB that he replied to. The owner made his request to the MPs a number of times that the letters go to the Headquarter and not to the Branch Office, since six of his letters had the words court injunction in it. The owner thinks the area MP had a message for HBO when he went to see him because noise was reduced. HBO should not be made answerable going by the items l) to s), someone else should be or appointed to do so.
t) An addendum to the President's address presented by DPM Teo Chee Hean,who is also the Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service, and reported in the Business Times on 22 May 09 was at a time after the following events: i) The owner wrote about his problem in a post published at http://civicadvocator.net/category/forem on 11 May 09. ii) Mr Teo Chee Hean sent a letter to the Town Council after the owner requested the letter do not go to the Branch Office, but in the next Meet-the-People Session when Mr Teo wrote to HDB HBO cc to Mr Teo his reply to the owner on 3 Feb 09. iii) Mr Teo rebuked an official in Parliament on 19 Jan 09. iv) The owner received the bcc on 7 Nov 08. v) The message broadcasted on TV (about 15 seconds) was sometimes between 25 Sep 08 and 7 Nov 08.
u) There are people who assisted the owner. He would had no support without them.
5. The Neighbourhood Police's email dated 10 Feb 2010 and the Branch Office's email dated 12 Feb 2010 that followed Item 3 marked the time of lower noise. Knock, rambling and muffled tamp are heard from early morning, morning, afternoon and night. The owner emailed the Neighbourhood Police on the 18 Feb 09 and 19 Feb 09 and a policeman came to visit him. An hour before the visit the noise stopped and it started again when he left.
6. HBO in his letters asked the owner to go for meditation or through the court. It will be between the owner and the neighbour, but without much in the way of evidence the noise would continues. The nature of the works and activities of the neighbour known to officers from the time of an eviction in '99 would not be brought into question.
7. The owner hopes the reader could come to some conclusions too.
