Just over a week ago, when my family was still in Hong Kong, our neighbor, a man known to us only as "Bob," passed away suddenly due to a heart attack. He couldn't have been more than 50 or so.

I never got to know Bob really well. He was Malaysian, and maybe spoke Cantonese, but our family couldn't communicate with him in English. About 8 years ago, he bought the house next door and just moved in.

What he did with the house was not too great -- he took a really nice, family house and "re-decorated" it to fit his personal style. This involved painting the charming blue-and-white view house entirely white, filling in the small lawn in the front with cement, and adding barbed wire and fences. Still, it was nothing we couldn't live with.

My only personal memory of Bob came shortly after he moved in. We had an electrical problem on the upstairs level of our house and couldn't figure it out for the life of us. Bob came by, fixed it quickly, and explained to us how he did it. Other than that, our interaction was limited to waving hello and good bye while passing each other on our the street.

In any case, last Friday Bob never showed up at work. His concerned coworkers dropped by his house in the afternoon, and upon finding it locked, called the paramedics to break in. By then, it was too late.

Good bye, Bob. We hardly knew ye.