An Alarming Morning

An Alarming Morning

The whole house was wokened up by the house security alarm this morning. The alarm triggered off around 5 this morning, and yours truly was in the bathroom setting out for some toilet business. And to add coincidence to the story, there was also a separate incident happening in the bathroom just before the alarm was triggered; i had an encounter with a cockroach of grandfather-sized proportion, which apparently was as surprised and horrified to see me as I was to see it. The cockroach actually tried to find a place to hide, attempting to squeeze itself through the small holes of the sift that drains the water from the bathroom to the gutter outside. Back in the days when it was of a relatively quaint size, it would have probably escaped. Fat cockroach had no such luck this time and I went for the kill.

It was actually quite skillful in dodging the gayung i was using to wham it, and it actually had the nerve to make a counter attack on me. While I was clobbering away maddeningly, hitting the brave roach a couple of times slightly, that was when the alarm triggered off and my attention was immediately taken away to more serious concern.

The memory of my house being broken into in October last year suddenly came back rushing in my mind, and instinctively I grabbed a long spear that was in my room (which my father must have gotten from the many souvenirs he received while he was serving in Sarawak) and went out to check what was going on. Outside in the living room was my father, clad only in his kain sarong and a long sword in his hands, apparently prepared for any possibility. While we might have looked like rejected extra casts from The Lord of The Rings, the anxiety we felt was real. We went and inspected hurriedly at the possible points where we felt the house might have been broken through, bracing for any possibility. It was at this point that I only began to realise, I was only clad in a towel.

The indicator on the alarm control system showed that the breach or its attempt that prompted the alarm was made from my room and my brother's. However, we couldn't find any signs of attempt to break into the house anywhere. As the mystery deepened and anxiety escalated, I mentioned about my personal duel with the heroic roach earlier. Apparently, the impact of my bangings of the gayung on the tile floor caused enough vibration to set off the security alarm, which had a sensor placed at the toilet's ventilator.

There were nervous sighs of relief at this confession of mine all over in the house, and we were prepared to dismiss the incident due to that. We then set about to get ourselves ready for Subuh. But could that really be the reason for triggering the alarm? Or could someone actually tried to breach into our house through the ventilator of my bathroom, and somehow clumsily ran off triggering the alarm, at the sound of the bangings that I was making in the bathroom? Hmm... I don't know. We checked the windows and the ventilator from outside this morning and there were no signs of attempted forced entry.

I went back to my bathroom after we reset the alarm, getting ready for Subuh. To my surprise, the badly wounded roach was still running around looking for escape. Must have been one of those dim ones (and mightily strong as well) I guess, still running about unable to figure out where to hide after all that time.

I took the aerosol can and got it out of its misery.

What a way to start off the weekend.