Gone in 60 minutes

It was a rainy Tuesday morning. I was on a sick leave because of another conjunctivitis infection. Around 7:15 that morning we left the house to send Adam and Mia to the nursery and Linda to the train station. Today somehow we decided to go to the Bukit Jalil LRT station instead of the usual Sungai Besi station. The road along Kinrara - Bukit Jalil was slightly congested probably because of the rain. It took me longer than usual, just over an hour to finish my errands today.

At around 8:30 AM, I arrived home after getting my usual breakfast fix at Kak Na's. Just when I'm about to enter the house, my heart sank upon seeing the front door grill had been forced open. I feared for the worst and true enough, when I stepped into my living room I found the entire house ransacked and in one big mess. First thing I noticed is my PC is gone along with the LCD monitor, wireless modem, keyboard and mouse while my black working bag is missing along with my Asus EEEPC, Nikon digicam and iPod in it. Apart from that the thieves also took Linda's gold necklace, old wrist-watch and Mia's money, RM200 in cash.

I immediately call my policeman father in law but failed so I called my wife instead and she quickly left her office to come home. Then I asked my next door neighbour but the kindly Aci didn't hear or see anybody this morning. When Linda finally gets home she was visibly shocked and distressed to see our home in such a state. There's not much I can do to console her as she cried. After confirming what else is missing, I finally left to the Seri Kembangan police station 2 hours latter to lodge a police report.

When I got there, there's already a couple of other people waiting in line to lodge reports. 2 other people reported similar break ins. One lost his car and another lost his wallet. Since the police officer in charge took quite some time to type in each and every report, I waited for almost an hour for my turn. After filing my report, I was told to see the investigating officer, a sergeant in his cabin outside. There he interviewed me some more and asked a little bit more details about the break in. Meanwhile back home, a little crowd had gathered in front of our house when my wife went out to ask around our neighbours about the incident. One elderly woman said she saw a dark Honda car parked in front of our gate earlier this morning and saw two guys entering our house. She didn't suspect anything cause she thought those two were my friends or something (@#$%&*!). The investigating officer then said he will send somebody detectives to my house to take pictures later on and then I left the police station.

My mom arrived later that afternoon. We didn't disturb anything for fear of tempering with 'evidence'. So we had to sit in there and talk in the mess for another 4 hours before the detectives showed up after 4 o' clock. When they did came, they took a few photos, talked with one of my neighbours and that's it. If you'd expected them to take out some fancy gadget to pick up evidences or finger prints or stuff, you probably watched to much CSI/TV. It just didn't work that way over here. I even explicitly pointed out several places where they could get fingerprints but they just ignored it. Before they left they proclaimed that they've got a few suspects in hand and just waiting for the right time to arrest them. My friends told me afterwards that the only time they will search for prints is for murder cases. So unless the thieves got into a fight and kill each other in my house, there's no need to trouble themselves with the extra and unnecessary work.

So that was it. Frankly, I don't harbour any hopes at all at getting any of my stuff back even if they do catch those culprits. They're probably half way to some chop shop/underground re-seller anyway by now, my things. Especially after seeing first hand how our law enforcer work. There was not many items of value in our house except for my computer stuff but still we were very much traumatized by the whole incident. The thieves got away with nearly half of my prized possessions, mostly everything in my work bag, a little jewelery and Mia's money but most of all they took away our sense of peace and security. We will never feel safe again as long as we live there after this. Now I have secured 4 padlocks to my doors, hired a security guard around the clock, installed CCTVs and booby-trapped every entrance to my house with C4 explosives. Okay maybe just the 4 padlocks. Sigh.

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In another totally unrelated news:


Oh yes, I've never felt any safer living in this country.