When our home was burglarized....

On the very first day of my reservist training, Addy and I came back to our house, only to find our private space invaded.

3 laptops gone and about $600 worth of cash.

Whilst I was concern about the data privacy of our personal information being compromised in our laptops, Addy was fearful of the physical intrusion of privacy in our home. Imagine a stranger rummaging through your belongings, standing in your bedroom and looking at your life, it does give one the shudders.

It was quite an adventure calling 999 and having 10 officers visiting our home that evening, with the whole works of questioning, dusting the place for fingerprints and photo taking. Apparently, it is the first burglary in our neighbourhood. Despite the our window grill being damaged, the hole is a bit too small and that our external glass pane was not breached for a break-in via that way. The police premised that the intruder entered via the main door.

Our broken window grill from the outside

The whole episode was pretty disruptive, and that is what I did for my reservist. My Navy family was kind enough to release me; a part of me wanted to go for reservist as a holiday break..

We had to replace all our locks, change our grills to the wrought iron type, put up a CCTV thingy with signs. To allay our fears, we are going to put up an alarm system and buy an enhanced insurance plan. So much for staying in a 3 room flat.

But more, the incident made me think that there are indeed selfish people out there trying to take advantage of us. And our responses are reactionary - suspicious of our neighbours, being skeptical of others, walling up our houses physically and thinking that the world is more evil than we thought it is. I wonder how better to reflect on the incident to see how we can better learn from it and be more Christian. It is certainly very hard, trying not to curse and swear at that unknown person.

Whilst we try to gain back some normalcy in our lives, we thank everyone for showing their concern and that our family is at least safe. Whilst we sustained some lost memories and heartache, experienced lots of inconvenience and losing money, we hope this can be a warning to all around us to be watchful.