Kevin sinclair's hong kong

Being burgled is not a pleasant experience. The discovery that your home has been violated, that some criminal has trespassed into the very heart of your existence, comes as a brutal shock.

It happened to me a few days ago. Looking back, like most victims of break-and-entry crimes, I can see that I was partially to blame. But who expects at 8am on a bright sunny morning in a busy village that some intruder will scale a 2.5-metre-tall iron gate and prowl around in a house where people are clearly at home?

The brazen cheek and crafty opportunism of the crime are disquieting. What if this happened when my wife was home alone and she stumbled across the intruders? Would they turn tail and flee? Could she be hurt? In the aftermath of the crime, my mind has dwelt on many scenarios; none are amusing.

The incident drove home the daily threat. The risks are equal in town or country of becoming victim to prowling burglars alert for an easy opportunity. In Sai Kung, where I live, it's common to blame such household raids on illegal immigrants. I'm not so sure. Certainly, they have in the past been responsible for many rural house thefts. Commonly, they steal shoes, clothes and sometimes help themselves to what's in the refrigerator.

That pattern did not fit my luckless experience. The robbers were swift, slick and discriminating. They knew precisely what they wanted - cash and items that can be easily converted into money - and grabbed them without distraction. They were experts. If you are going to be burgled, it's best to be robbed by experienced criminals. There are, roughly, three kinds of break-and-enter merchants in Hong Kong. The first are professional burglars. Secondly, there are opportunistic thieves, usually youths, who see a chance and grab it. Then there are illegal immigrants, a dwindling threat in recent years as their numbers have dropped.

I was visited by the first variety. They came, they saw, they grabbed, they scampered. It was 8am in my hillside village above Sai Kung. I'd been working for an hour in my home office, then had breakfast. The garbage collectors were around cleansing the village rubbish bins, commuters were walking past my house down to the minibus, cars drove by, workers were renovating two neighbouring houses.

For 15 minutes, the two lower floors were empty. I had gone upstairs to shower and our domestic helper was on the roof hanging out laundry. As police and I reconstructed events, what must have happened was the thief or thieves noticed our doors were open. They could have seen through windows on two sides that there was nobody downstairs.