Victim of crime, victim of attitudinal differences...

So the burglar's job was easy-peasy: walk up to the house gate, enter the building and walk up to the landing on the floor above, thence out the window and onto a ledge outside, then onto an airconditioner, from where the felon hoisted herself up to the ballustrade of my balcony. The rest was even easier: the door was not locked.

This happened in a gated community called COUNTRY GARDEN, residential resort of hundreds of Hongkongers. The street is no through-road and there is a watchman right beneath my home - ten meters as the spit flies from my mouth!

She then disconnected my monitor and made straight for my bedroom: there she beheld the computer... she swapped the two, taking the computer back to the living-room, helped herself to another computer, a notebook that is, plus my ownership certificate to the home, then left quietly my home by the same route. The criminal must have deployed unusual physical prowess, lowering a large-ish computer and a notebook down, then lifting them into the window, and coming out from the stairwell.

This happened in broad daylight at 2 p.m. I discovered the absence of my monitor at 9 p.m. the same day; I was lucky - the thief had ignored the tiny APPLE computer connected to the monitor. Apparently she must have thought it to be the modem...

And yes, the perp is known, hence my use of the female pronoun 'she'...

I know it because I suspected my ex of this; when I tried to contact her her cell phone said its power was turned off... The police, called to investigate half an hour later, called her on their mobile phone, and she immediately answered (not knowing who was calling!). She at once said she had helped herself to goods she as my former wife owned.


Yes, I divorced that woman, and yes, the court had awarded her a portion of my savings in two bank accounts; unfortunately, my case hadn't gone according to the book: the verdict was published 2 months and a half late, and my ex got no copy of it. The reason might be that she has never given any legal address (she had throughout our marriage been an itinerant person with one legal anchorage in Shenzhen though no home in her name). Anyway, she had gotten her dough from me in cash, signed a number of receipts (some of the money I gave her in Macau, and she went to gamble it away over the next 11 days).

So she had no legal claim to anything in my home. Even if she had, wouldn't she be held liable to first ask me to give her what is hers? WOuldn't she have to make an appointment with me to take possession of her property?

The police the next day were in a quandary: they knew she was the burglar but they couldn't act against her because she was making counter-claims. Instead of securing evidence and placing the stolen loot under custody the police...dawdled, hoping the case would go away...


I mentioned Country Garden Estate in this context; I blame them to a major extent of the insecurity and lack of safety. They have installed impressive steel gates at the main entrance, and pedestrians must use swipe cards to enter; others enter showing their reisdent's card. The trouble is that former residents that no longer live here can still enter - including my ex, who refused to return her card.

Management at Country Garden also refused my request to be allowed to install a security door on the outside of the threshold of my apartment, saying the doors to every uni must have an uniform look.


I am willing to write off that computer, which was 7 years old and phased out because its software had shown some defects. Ironically, my ex contacted me to complain she had to pay 400 kuai to repair the computer... The police are entertaining the belief that I still owe her RMB 10'000 even though she has no proof whatsoever...


As though I hadn't had enough of bad luck a second burglary took place this week, 17 days later, in my second flat on the campus of some univesity. I was at my Country Garden home when someone must have put a ladder against the wall of the balcony on the backsinde of my home here, climbed the 3 meters or so up, then broken a bar and bent a second bar; the resultant hole was still too small for him to get through, so he abandoned his burglary. WHen I discovered the scene of crime the next morning I was suitably shocked but satisfied that nothing had gone missing, not even valuables I had been keeping in that apartment.


Now you would think the police would be spurred into action, but you are labouring under Western concepts of what plice work is all about. No police have been here; my employer says "we will fix the bars again!" - as though that could restore my confidence...


We have construction work going on 24 hours a day here on campus; suspicion naturally fell on those workers because they have tools such as ladders and spanners to break into a house. And obviously they are familiar with the patterns of living of some of us resident here because they see us come and go, turn the lights on and off...


BUt if you think anyone is concerned about safety and the security of human beings you are deluding yourself! Another victim of a burglary in Guangdong, a Korean expat, paid his watchfulness with his life as the Chinese burglar stabbed him to death...

Hi sorry to hear about you're misfortune,but you could change the locks on the doors of the flat's.

I repeat: she didn't even need to use a key - she entered through the BALCONY...

And what can you do if a locksmith is in cahoots with your ex?