Home Security System

During yesterday's long run, Dr Peter and I had some interesting discussions about a variety of issues, ranging from professional negligence to kidnapping cases. And when we were passing the Kingfisher area, he suggested that I keep an eye open for naked bodies in one of the drains along the roadside. This was in connection with the recent gruesome murder of a local nurse, whose partially-nude body was found in a drain within the vicinity. This conversation with Dr Peter was during the earlier part of the run, before he left me behind about 23km into the 30km workout.

To detour from the main point of this post for a moment, a friend had commented that he hoped that the police would catch the murderer and bring him to justice. I replied that the truth of the matter is that there's no such thing as justice—even if the murderer is caught, someone has been robbed of her precious life and many more whom she could have saved as a nurse.

Anyway, Dr Peter and I arrived at the topic of home security system—specifically, alarm systems. Perhaps I should seriously consider installing some sort of alarm system at my home. I don't know why I haven't done that since years ago. It seems that everyone has been telling me to install it, but I've been putting it at the bottom of my "to-do" list.

To be quite honest, I did visit a so-called specialist dealing with home security systems a while back, and I was amazed by the wide variety of hi-tech equipment available in the market these days. Depending on the quality and functions etc, these equipment can easily burn holes in one's pocket. We're not only talking about plain alarms with potentially-annoying sounds in the middle of the night when the neighbour's cat tries to catch a mouse on the window ledge. The system also includes other accessories which can send signals to the home owner's cellphone when the house is broken into.

Apart from that, if the home owner has too much money, he can also install CCTV so that he'll be able to see the burglars in action while trying to break into his house. Whether or not he can do anything about those burglars is a different matter. And of course sometimes CCTVs are installed mainly for the fun of installing them—not so much for the purpose of hoping to be of any help when crimes are committed, as can be seen in this case. Think about it—the CCTV could be used to observe a crime being committed, but no recording of that crime is made. Not exactly a very clever thing to do. But then again even hotel owners, although rich people, are not necessarily very clever people, you know.

Frankly, it's not really a question of affordability, but I've been putting the home alarm systems thing on the back burner mainly because I'm not convinced that spending the money can really help to burglar-proof my home. And when it comes to the CCTV, even if there are proper recordings of crimes in action, that still can't help to nab the criminals. If you don't believe me, check out my past article here.

Having said that, however, in the end I have to concede to Dr Peter. When and if the alarm goes off, it's not really about us reacting to fight off the burglars. It's more about psychologically shocking and, hopefully, scaring them away. It is hoped that that can help us to buy a bit of time to call for assistance.

So I will make it a point to seriously look into installing security alarm in my home. What of CCTVs? Well, that will simply have to wait for the moment. There will be many more long Sunday morning runs with Dr Peter. Who knows, maybe he will be able to convince me to install those too.