''We were informed that they had been stolen,'' said Rich.

''The monitors were only six or seven feet away from the security guard, who was apparently asleep at the time - shock, horror, gasp.'' The gang at Noble House, which produces a property magazine called Prospector, have given their landlords some advice.

Alan Jones said: ''It's not often that a security system gets pinched, is it? ''We've recommended to the owners' association that next time they should purchase a security system for the security system.'' There was an item on this page last year about a Hongkong thief who stole a large number of guard dogs. ''What next? A burglar alarm thief?'' we mused at the time.

Sadly prophetic.

Dampener WATCH out. Telephone salesmen are on the loose in Hongkong, trying to find the postal addresses of innocent people.

Robert Bissell of Mid-Levels got a call at 5.30 pm yesterday.

Salesman: What is your address? Bissell: Where are you calling from? Salesman: North Central.

Bissell: Why? Salesman: We want to send you discount coupons.

Bissell: What for? Salesman: I don't know.

The wet and feeble salesman, sensing failure, gave up at this point.

''If he's in North Central, he would be in the water anyway,'' said Robert.

Not aides . . .

NOW we don't want to send the Hongkong share market plummeting, but the latest dumb story circulating is that the Governor has AIDS.

Chris Patten ''is telling chums in London that the latest ridiculous rumour to worry the colony's jittery markets is that he's got AIDS'', according to the London-based Guardian.

Politics in Hongkong is becoming more ludicrous by the day.

The big news on Reuters screens yesterday was that Lu Ping denied that he had denied that the talks were on. He said this while continuing to deny that they were on.

Meanwhile, we bumped into Lisa Prestwich of CNN yesterday.

Her colleague Larry King, America's top talk-show host, has pencilled in April 3 and 4 for his visit to Hongkong, and he is hoping to interview Mr Patten.

Ross Perot shot to fame in America after an interview on Larry's show. The Governor, who needs as much international support as he can get, may benefit similarly.

Judging by the mail we get, most US mid-westerners think Hongkong is a suburb of Japan, which is a city in Singapore, which is off the coast of the Tariff Barrier Reef.

Flower power THE world's greatest decision-making device is not lost after all. We all just have to flip coins in Chinese instead, we hear from Yvette Law of Motorola.

You can't do ''Heads or Tails?'' with the new bauhinia coins, since the Queen has been exorcised from them.

Instead, you say ''Gung ding chee?'', meaning ''representation'' (literally ''doll'') or ''writing''? Moving story SPEEDING along Gloucester Road at 2.45 pm yesterday we spotted a removal van. This was one of those yellow and red wood-framed trucks, emblazoned with the name Chung Wah Transportation Co.

As it drove in front of us, we could see that its cargo was a pair of metal executive desks and swivel chairs.

In one of the chairs a woman was fast asleep.

In the other, a man was sitting straight up and talking rapidly into a mobile phone.

Chung Wah Transportation: the removal firm that shifts your office furniture without your staff noticing.

Bell letter THE last word on the Tregunter false fire alarm: Estate management has sent out a letter to all residents. It reads as if it were written by a lawyer from the Edwardian era before being put through a food processor.

''With reference to the captioned incident of which took place at approximately 5.30 am this morning at the subject building thereof thus causing extreme inconvenience to all of your goodselves is apologetic herein.''