Alarm Madness

Not too long ago, I mentioned the spanking new unit block next door to us.

It's the most bizarre robotic looking thing.
I think it wants to be dernier cri architecture but is trying way too hard. My feel is that it's overdone and screams for attention. All was progressing well, until the landscape designer decided to overload the entrance with an asymmetrical steel pergola structure just above the outside stairway. The central facade of the building is a brown tacky number, it doesn't even look painted. Standing back to look at the building, one gets an uneasy sense that the builders ran out of some materials and improvised in the best way they could. More distressing is that for some of the fixtures, it seems that the designer couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted chrome or steel.

And the roof... Don't get me started on the roof. There's enough sharp corners and manga style protrusions to believe that if the building wanted to take off and transform itself into a car or a spacecraft, it damn well could!
In fact since January, we have given this hideous unit block a nickname.
We call it Optimus Prime. :)

Optimus Prime units sell for no less than 730K. So that's a good thing for us from a real estate point of view. And ever since it's landed on our street, it has given the previously empty block of land next door, an eccentric face lift.

But there's been a couple of dodgy things happening.

One of them is a bit of a joke. Around the start of the year, the builders celebrated by taking a "secret dip" into the common swimming pool. My private investigator (aka Jason) told me that one afternoon, a bunch of loud, hard yakka blokes took a break from their hot day's sweaty labor by enjoying a cleansing splash in the cool waters of the backyard. Oh, they had fun. You can bet on that.
Not so sure that the new unit dwellers would be very thrilled to know about this...

Here's another dodginess. Ever since the new owners have moved in, my nights are often - say, around once a fortnight - interrupted by an obnoxious alarm. It usually goes on for about a minute and then turns off. We've never really sourced the problem until last night. Last night was the worst. It sounded three times in a row, each time lasting for at least 10 minutes and we didn't get to sleep until 1:30am. Around 1:00 am, Jason went outside for a reconnaissance trip. He discovered that it was not a car alarm as we had previously assumed but that it was the hyperactive security alarm from the building next door!
Bloody Optimus Prime was malfunctioning!!

This was confirmed when we heard the frantic phone conversation between one of the next door neighbours and her body corporate. Apparently, the tenant didn't know how to turn the damn thing off. She had already rung security and they were not responding. Who knows, perhaps, they too, were taking a midnight dip in some high profile swimming pool...