Burgled on Steeles

I guess I’ve kinda been lucky up to this point in my life. I’ve lived in a lot of different places and never in particularly good neighbourhoods (the irony here being that I move to a good neighbourhood finally and what happens) in a great many cities around out fair globe and I have never had a break in.

In fact, the worst thing I have ever had happen property crime-wise up until today was a smash and grab in Paris when someone managed to get my cell phone.

Today, however, the good karma gods that have been getting me this far in London and blessing me with this new spectacular job and city had to let the scales balance a bit, and while I was at work, someone broke into the house I now live at and systematically burgled all the flats.

For every door but mine, they kicked it in. The apartment next to me is currently empty and kicking in the downstairs neighbour’s triggered a loud audio alarm which probably sent the thieves scurrying but apparently they start at the top of houses and work down towards the door and so mine got hit first. They didn’t even bother kicking down the door since apparently my lock was a snap to get past and so entered, rifled my things and made off with some of my valuables. Interestingly the CSI investigators have determined from the footprint that the thieves wore Nike trainers.

Luckily, I had my laptop, blackberry (from work), new digital camera and iPod nano with me so the few important valuables I had with me are fine, but they did make off with the Airport Express I was using for wireless as well as an older iPod I use for data backups (and which means I am now systematically calling banks and credit card companies changing passwords, and making sure they can’t manage to hijack things that way. I imagine they’re unsophisticated thieves, but you never know). They also grabbed a sum of Canadian cash in some drawer but appear to have left chequebooks, passports and other stuff alone which is kinda a relief. Could have been much worse for me just having got here if those things were missing.

The lawyer downstairs who has the loud alarm system that probably made them run is getting the door altered as they let themselves in apparently by sticking a wire through the mail slot and triggering the door opening button on the inside latch (which would be pretty easy actually).

Still, it does really, really suck having just moved here. Kind of a bad apartment omen along with the fact that the apartment is quite cold and damp now that winter has started sticking its fork in a bit.

I guess even in unluck I am lucky though since my main cargo shipment of things from Canada has not yet arrived at the house which means they got a lot less than they could have. It is making me think that along with all the other quirks about the house I maybe need to think of moving. I’m sure insurance will not cover something so close to the time I started getting it and the amount is pretty small anyway. Obviously, these guys were grabbing small, valuable, easily portable things they could hide on their person in pockets as they ran out the door. The stranger thing is what they didn’t steal though. A cell phone loaner from a friend, a boxed wireless router, chequebooks and other things I would have thought they’d grab. Weird.