Kena curi lagi

It is that time of the year again. What time of the year, you ask. Well, the time of the year when I get my personal belongings stolen, of course. What else?

Last year on November 27th, I was robbed in Kota Kinabalu. This year on November 28th, I lost my bag and its entire contents to a thief who somehow figured out the padlock combination of our dragonboat locker cage. Five or six bags were stolen, including mine. This is the first time that something of the sort has happened in my team, although someone cut through the American team's cage before, apparently.

Things I lost: My trusty Esprit bag, which YKent who bought it from Hong Kong sold to me, and it has weathered through so many conditions formal or rough because it's so versatile. Sigh. It was a good bag. My wallet which was cheap and falling apart, so no love lost there. S$100 which I had just withdrawn the day before, and a couple of hundred RM, which, don't ask me why I was bringing all around Singapore when they don't accept RM here. My student ID, my debit card (which has 2 bucks in it, they're welcome to it), my ATM card, my EZLink card, random transport cards that I collected from the US. My phone, the one that I hated. Well good riddance, except that all my contacts and sim card were in it. My umbrella. A library book - Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which I had not finished, damn it. And it looked pretty old too, bet it was published a long time ago... well, let's just hope that the thieving bastards would appreciate classic literature. My Vegetarian t-shirt =( and my very absorbent gym towel. My house keys.

Things I didn't lose: More important forms of ID - my passport and Malaysian IC or driver's license. My research notes and camera which I took out right before I left, because I didn't want to make them wet.

Things I thought I had lost but didn't: my pencil case, my supervisor's library book, the cable for my external hard disk, my mp3 player which contained the 3-hour interview with Tope my Nigerian CSer (!!!).

All in all I suppose the damage wasn't huge, since most of the stuff that I lost are replaceable, apart from that vegetarian t-shirt that I got from San Fran... but I guess I could be thankful to the fact that I didn't lose my Old School or "If you can read this: make me a sandwich" t-shirts that are my favouritest t-shirts in the world, bought from Wellington, which have been with me through thick and thin, through leech infested tropical jungles and dry dusty deserts. Sucks that I lost all that money, but then money doesn't have emotional value so that's fine. Ambivalent that I lost my phone, along with it old and musty messages that hinted of relationships that could have been, people whom I've lost contact with, dear messages from my good friends that I can always accummulate again. I shall think of it as a yearly cleansing ritual, losing a phone and all the contacts, and building up again the core of people who matter.

The police took ages to arrive and in the meanwhile everyone crowded around to cancel credit cards and phone cards. The ones who weren't affected stayed back to give emotional support. There was this British uncle who kept growling in frustration every five minutes, haha. A really nice Indian guy loaned me 50 bucks. People kept speculating how it happened, and after they had already exhausted the possible scenarios they just repeated themselves over again.

After settling the collective police report (I'll have to make another individual report later) - I had a fifty dollar bill on me and a card with the case report written on it. And an old energy bar wrapper in the back pocket of my shorts, from the Grand Canyon hike. I could choose to go home, and wait till Housemate David gets home, but that could be a long wait. I decided to go get my sim card fixed at Raffles City instead. Then I changed my mind because I didn't have any form of ID on me and they probably wouldn't take my case; so I took a map from the Concierge and ran all the way to Chinatown to catch the free public screening of Gubra, a film by late Yasmin Ahmad, my favourite Malaysian director. After watching the (really good) movie I met Adibah (a Singaporean CSer) and her friends by chance, and they walked me to Outram Park MRT, although I told them that I couldn't be mugged since I didn't have anything on me. Well apart from 48 bucks and a case card and a Singapore map, but what are the odds, seriously?

There I took an MRT back to Pioneer, stinking everyone within a 3 feet radius of me with a combination of dried sweat and dried river water. After that I walked home from Pioneer MRT. Apparently it only takes less than 20 minutes, and it was nice walking under the night breeze in the knowledge that I had already exhausted the probabilistic quota of being robbed within a day.