Just heard that the house directly across the road was broken into, the people threatened with a parang (machete), tied up etc etc. The house was then ransacked by Indonesians burglars at 5 a.m. (I think I read somewhere that 20% of the Malaysian prison population is Indonesian but I can’t verify that and my memory for figures is a bit suss.)

An attempt was also made on our next door neighbour’s house, but they woke up and the attempt was foiled.

Things are bad here. It seems to be not a matter of “if” but “when” one is burgled. Sooner or later someone is going to die.

It is not a particularly rich neighbourhood, although there are a few wealthy people in it. Mostly it’s just teachers and uni lecturers and pensioners like us.

We have an alarm, grilles on all windows and doors, at night we lock all room doors and the doors themselves are solid wood (they smash down other kinds of doors to get to sleeping occupants). Now the neighbourhood is talking of paying a ghurka guard. I dunno what else we can do. Invest in some very nasty pit bulls? As this is basically a Muslim area, there are no dogs, which is probably one reason it is targetted.

What really worries me is that we have very little of interest to burglars. Much of my valuable jewellery has long since been stolen; what was left I gave to my children rather than see it go the same way. We don’t wear rolexes, or keep money in the house. My laptop is years old and my husband’s is so old it doesn’t even have wifi. We don’t have a TV or a stereo set or a hand phone that’s not four years old, or an MP3 player or an Ipod or any of these other gadgets of interest to a thief. And they are known to get very angry indeed when they don’t find valuables.

There are times when I want to leave this country.