Robbed!
If you’ve been following my adventures since I arrived in Singapore in July, you’ll know that my wallet was stolen about four days after I arrived here. Well, I was in Bugis Market, which has a subsection called the Thieves’ Market, so fair enough.
But this time someone entered our apartment and swiped my cellphone and camera. I admit that I left the door unlocked; on the other hand I have done so in California for 8 years without missing anything. There are lots of people around, since the building is getting a facelift – it was opened in 2000, and after 9 years in the humidity quite a lot of the exterior needed to be hacked off and replaced before it could be painted in three cheerful colors of peach, yellow and off-white. There have been workers here since October zooming around on cherrypickers, to the delight of the local toddlers; and they’ve been very good about not looking in one’s windows while water-blasting, painting and cleaning. But now there are just a few guys left, who seem to be using some very high-powered paint solvent to clean up spatters, and since I’ve seen them hanging around my door cleaning a part of the floor I had thought was paint-free, I wonder if they decided to go inside and look around while I was out.
Bleah. At least all I’ve lost is a little money on the prepaid phone card. The last time around it took months to cancel and replace credit cards, and get a temporary driver’s license. This time I just need to buy a new card, install it in my old phone, and re-enter some phone numbers.
Guess it’s time to start locking the doors. Sigh. As one of the signs I’ve seen around reminds us, “Low Crime Doesn’t Mean No Crime.” You can say that again.