It took me a couple weeks to get up the energy and courage to write this:

It started off pretty funny. Janet and I spent the weekend in Southern Cebu. Now normally when we do this we take the ferry and bus, but in this case we drove our car, carrying a car load of stuff for the house Janet is building for her family. We returned to Valencia with two sisters and a niece in tow.

Arriving home the kids were hungry and thirsty. Janet went to the fridge. “Where’s the juice?” she asked. She reminded me she’d bought two cartons of juice the day before we left. I looked in the fridge. “Where’s my root beer?” I had bought 2 cans at the same time. “You must have left them in the cabinets,” I said.

“No I didn’t,” she insisted. I started looking through the cabinets positive I’d stumble onto the allegedly purloined refreshments.

“Someone was here,” she insisted.

“So, let me see what you’re telling me,” I responded giggling. “People broke into the house to steal our juice and root beer?” My SIL laughed.

But I knew the power of Janet’s inner antenna well enough that I started to look around. I entered the 3rd bedroom of our house; the one I use as my shop. I spied the window. It was open just a crack. I vividly remembered locking it before we left. “Oh uh.” I was no longer laughing at my wife.

Janet came out of our bedroom. “My necklace is gone.”

Normally we never leave cash around. But we had a little extra and didn’t want to be traveling with it, so we left it behind. Gone! By US standards it wasn’t much but by Philippines standards there were some happy burglars.

The burglars were the neatest, most meticulous thieves I’ve ever heard of. While it was evident they went though everything, they moved nothing. Had it not been for those missing juices we could have gone many hours before realizing we’d been robbed.

They took none of my tools. Actually I take that back; they took one ruler I use in guitar making. Who knows why that was the only thing of mine they grabbed.

Really, when it comes down to it, outside of the cash, they took very little. Besides the necklace, juice, root beer and cash, they took an unopened pack of toothpaste and unopened bars of soap. These were very clean burglars.

Piecing the whole thing together we determined that someone had noticed the car gone the first night and by the second night, decided to strike. They entered a rear window, prying the lock apart with a screwdriver. They even covered a light I had installed outside with a t-shirt conveniently left on the clothes line.

We went to our neighbors who are our landlords and then all of us proceeded to the Police Station. The police grilled my elderly landlord pretty good, assuming she had spare keys. At 75 she doesn’t look like much of a culprit but they were taking no chances. They wrote an extensive report and then several officers came with us to inspect the scene of the crime.

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The police immediately noted the problem; no bars on the windows. When we rented the house, we knew this was its prime weakness. In the Philippines many property owners have bars on their windows, but our rental house did not. We told ourselves that the walls and gates were good, the doors were double locked, that having our landlord as next door neighbor was a good thing, and that in general it was a pretty nice neighborhood. But we always knew it was possible.

Now what to do about the future. Being a guy and a problem solver I contacted someone and asked if he knew a contractor who could install bars. The next morning that guy came over and measured all the windows. By the end of the day I had an estimate which sounded like a pretty good deal to me.

We told the elderly landlord (who is in fact the mother of the actual owner) that we needed bars to feel safe for the future. I hoped the owners (who live in the UK) would agree but had my doubts.

By the next day Janet was adamant that bars or no bars we had to move. I was still hoping for a solution and was more than willing to share the cost of the bars. Hell, truth be told I would have paid for the whole damn thing.

The next day the landlord came over and announced her son in law would not put bars in, since he didn’t want to spoil the view from the windows. I mumbled, “How’s the view gonna look with no tenants?” We stated we would be leaving and that September would be our last month and that since we’d already paid first and last month’s rent, there would be no more rent paid.

In the meantime we spent the day finding a new house. Our normal methodology is much more meticulous but in this case the first house we found that was gated and guarded made Janet happy. It’s not as nice by a long shot as our current house, but it’s not bad and the agent announced all the improvements that were being made. We said we’d return in a week and if the improvements were being done we would take the house.

By the next week even I was impressed. There were 2 new aircons, new shower heads, a new kitchen sink and a kitchen cabinet, since Janet kept wondering where she would put all our kitchen stuff. They’d put down cement on the tiny driveway and behind the house for the washing machine. There were new lights inside and out. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all; well except for having to move all our crap!

Several days after the robbery, the Barangay Police showed up; 5 of them. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. They looked over the entire property and gave us their phone numbers. They told us if we leave again for an extended period we can call them and they will keep an eye on the property. OK, I know this is no guarantee but it was nice to know the neighborhood tries to police itself.

At some point I sat down feeling a bit sorry for myself and counted the number of times I’d been robbed in my 65 years. If I count the time my parents were robbed when I was a teen, the number is now five. In that particular robbery in the 60s no one in our suburban neighborhood locked their doors or cars. Since the burglars simply walked in, I remember my father broke the glass door so the insurance would honor his claim. Needless to say from then on we locked the doors. It’s amazing how different the world was then or at least our perception of it was different.

In the meantime since we are about to build our own house, we decided to spend some more money upgrading the security of the original design. I’m considering a moat.