On not getting the message

I’m going to shout at someone soon if I don’t get this off my chest, so please forgive me another rant…

What is it with Bangladeshis and not getting the message? Back home, if you call someone twice and they cut your calls, you’d probably assume they are either too busy to talk or not your friend anymore. Here, however, if someone wants to talk to you, there’s simply no stopping them.

Last night, I was really late with for a deadline thanks to the national power board, and two colleagues were trying to get hold of me. I knew it was nothing urgent, as I’d spoken to them both less than an hour before. I rejected twelve calls from the two of them in the space of thirty minutes. TWELVE. Now, it isn’t unreasonable for a person to feel hounded under such circumstances, is it? Because I’m really losing perspective here. In the end, I turned off my phone (I wanted to chuck it out the window).

When the article was finished, and I called my colleagues back, they were both outraged that I had ignored their calls. They were understanding when I said I had been very busy finishing some work, but that’s not the point, is it?

Today is a Friday, what I like to think of as me-time. Working six days a week doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to relax, so on Fridays, I tend to reject all but essential invitations and disturbances, and spend my day reading, writing, watching The Wire and painting my toenails.

About an hour ago, a neighbour came over. I heard her downstairs chatting to the other housewives, before she came upstairs. Unfortunately for her, I was really not in the mood for idle chitchat, so I decided to ignore her knocking. My lack of response did not, however, discourage her.

Meanwhile, I was checking my emails or something. At first, the knocking was easy to ignore. I assumed she’d go away after a couple of unanswered knocks. But as the minutes ticked by, I found I couldn’t concentrate. Then, I heard her telling her son to go outside and see if he could see through the windows. I cursed, and turned the main light off, starting to feel like a fugitive in my own home. I heard the kid calling to me from the front yard, then telling his mother he couldn’t see me. Then my phone started ringing.

Eventually, they must have got bored, because she went back downstairs, complaining loudly. Then I heard the gate screech as she left.

Fifteen minutes later, I judged it safe to put the light back on.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I being rude to act like this? Part of me thinks so. But the other part thinks that if everyone could just take the hint and bugger off when I occasionally don’t answer their calls, we’d all get along much better.