It's been a looooooooooong time since I blog about my daily life other than my travelogs. Partly because there's really nothing so interesting to write about and also I didn't have much free time after my work.

But now due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I have quite a lot of free time now! And of course I'll blog about my experience working in the Fever Center but that should be in another post!

Now, about my life in Tawau...

It's been exactly 1 year and 3 months since I started working in Tawau Hospital. Tawau, a slow-paced town, is actually a place that suits my lifestyle as a laid-back introvert. Tawau is really not that different from my hometown, Klang. It has got all the living necessities easily-accessible. It has quite adequate choices of entertainment for a self-contented person except it doesn't have an actual mall. Hence, it didn't take me much time to get adapted to the environment here. In fact, Tawau is more suitable to live in than Klang for a lazy person like me.

Working environment in Hospital Tawau is also acceptable although we kind of got culture shock from the attitude of pharmacy assistants here. Otherwise, it's okay for a non-ambitious person like me.

I wanna talk about the house that I'm staying at right now at Tawau.

When we first came here in a group, we looked at a few houses through agents but all weren't ideal enough for us. Eventually, we settled with this one because although it's old, it's fully furnished and the landlord was quite generous in attending to our requests. The rental was also the cheapest among all the houses we saw because we didn't go through any agent for this one.

We also felt quite lucky because the landlord gave us new water heaters, new fridge, new bed (queen-sized!) and wardrobe for my room. And he usually attends to our complaints about broken stuffs rather swiftly. Other than that, he also likes to invite us for lunch or dinner! We've always praised our landlord uncle to our colleagues about how good a cook he is.

So I thought I would stay forever in this house as long as I'm working at Tawau.... Until...

.....This happened.

One fine Friday night around 8.25PM, I just finished my dinner and was watching an English show on my laptop in my bedroom like usual. My guy housemate went back to Kota Kinabalu and his car was not at the house. My girl housemate went out to buy some stuff.

Around 5 minutes after my girl housemate went out, I heard someone opening our grill door at the living room. I felt weird but I thought maybe she forgot something and came back for it? But I was on my alert mode already. I could hear that it's taking a longer time than usual for that person to open the grill door, around half a minute I guess? So I stopped focusing on my show and started listening to any suspicious sound instead.

I heard someone's hand tried to open my bedroom doorknob but it was locked. I felt weird and thought why would my housemate tried to open my bedroom door? Then, there was a few seconds of pause.... then suddenly someone started banging my bedroom door!!!

I immediately sprung up from the chair and used my body to push the door! I was afraid that the door cannot hold the impact and would break open! The person still kept banging and I think I screamed out loud after the person banged 3 times.

Once I screamed, the banging stopped. And I think I could hear the person ran downstairs, climbed over our autogate to get out from our house.

I was terrified. I immediately called my girl housemate and told her what happened, all while still using my body to push the bedroom door. She said she will drive back immediately (though when I think back it's quite disheartening that she kept saying that she's confirmed that she locked the door, instead of concerning about me). Then I called my other close friend who I was chatting with on WhatsApp, and she also rushed to my house right away. My friend said I sounded like I was crying but actually I was just trembling. I was told to keep connected on phone call until one of them arrive. I didn't think of calling the police because the intruder was already gone. And also I'm not quite sure that was it really an intruder or was it something else? (my delusion maybe? lol) since I didn't see anything!

When my girl housemate arrived, she asked our neighbour to accompany her to check the house. Only then, I had the courage to walk out of my room to check out what happened. We found that the autogate was not opened, but the grill door at living room was wide opened and the lock was damaged. So, we confirmed that our house was broken in!

Me, my housemate and my friend then went to Mr DIY to look for a safer lock but in the end we find any good ones. I called my aunt to inform her in hope that she would offer us a place to stay for the night as I was so terrified to be sleeping at the house. At first my aunt didn't get it but after that she called back to offer us to stay at her place temporarily haha.

During that night, I didn't think much, but after that I vaguely remembered that my housemate seemed not as concerned about our safety as me. She could still ask my friend about my friend's personal stuff which was not her business in the first place and when I said I wanna stay at my aunt's house she seemed to think that it's not necessary.

Anyway, she still followed me to stay at my aunt's house of course coz she didn't dare to stay alone. And while we were staying at my aunt's house and when I was brainstorming on how to improve our house security, she was just worrying about her unfinished work and she could even read novel on her phone.

The next day, I decided to make a police report for record purposes (who knows it can be used as reason to transfer back to West Malaysia lol). My housemate said she had to go to the hospital to do her statistics stuff coz she's afraid that she could not finish by deadline. Fine... luckily my friend willing to accompany me to the police station. After making the police report, I went to landlord's house for lunch (it was planned even before this incident). My housemate got time to have lunch in landlord's house pulak.

During the lunch, I didn't have much appetite. My landlord seemed to think it's not really a big deal. That was really disappointing.

After the lunch, I told housemate that the police will come to check on our house later. I thought she would go back to hospital straightaway but she said she would go back home to be there when the police is here. After 30 minutes, the police still not arrived, and my housemate said she had to go back to the hospital to finish her work. Fine... no expectation... no disappointment... Luckily my friend came to accompany me once again to deal with the police.

As expected, the police didn't really do much except taking photos of the crime scene. There's no big reason for them to investigate because there's nothing being stolen.

I was lucky that I have good security awareness, unlike my housemates. Was lucky I always lock my bedroom door. I couldn't imagine what would happen if the intruder got in my room. Although there was no physical harm done and nothing was stolen, I was forever traumatised by this incident.

I never feel safe in the house after that incident even though my landlord fixed the spoiled sliding door and got us a better lock, even though I fixed a new car alarm and mini alarms on all the entry points of my bedroom, even though my dad DIY an alarm to be placed in my bedroom, even though I bought a CCTV and placed it at the living room.

Everytime I hear a sound, I would check on the CCTV. Everytime I go into the bathroom, I bring my smartphone with me (to check on CCTV and make emergency calls). Everytime I comes out of the bathroom, I peeke at the grill door at living room. Everytime I go downstairs, I check that both the sliding door and grill door are locked properly.

Another reason that I don't feel safe is because both my housemates still don't take it as seriously as me. They still leave the door or autogate opened, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I cannot live with this anymore. I want to feel safe in my house. For an introvert, the house is like a fort. I also cannot take all the BS from my housemates already. One's tolerance level has a limit. I think I would get hypertension if I continue staying in this house with housemates that need babysitting.

And that's why... I've decided to move out... just waiting for the right time.