acarongo

The time was at high noon when James called through my cell phone. He said that he found something that I might interested. And it does. As I was burglarized a week ago, having updates about the story won’t make me think twice to catch them as soon as possible.

James started his new found items from my backyard which is the near my kitchen window where the thief broke in. What he found was a PVC card which sized two third from American Express card. The card is colored in blue and a code inscribed BBNFEGWB.

[Do you feel like familiar with this kind of code? You got it! It’s something like Amazon’s ASIN code but I think it’s not gonna make me earn an affiliate commission or something like that]

I have no idea what this card for. I never saw it before, and I’m surely convinced that the card wasn’t at my backyard until the thief came in.

And our biggest assumption is that the thief has a strong connection with this mysterious card.

So here I go about architectural design and little experience about it that I want to make out for a conversation. Almost half of my clients from the first time until today have similar questions to what I described at the first presentation. And from these questions, I learned a lot about that little thing brought bigger question.

“Where do you put my coffee table?”
“Are you gonna put my TV set under the stairs?”
“Don’t you think that the door is too little for my puppy to get in?”

Yes, yes. It’s all questions that should be answered right at the time it questioned. And most of the time, I wasn’t ready to give the appropriate answer for those stuff. I wasn’t ready for contingency plans, for any questions that might occur.

But the worst thing that I realized for such case was that I haven’t understood my client’s demand. They don’t want any amazing design or outstanding blueprints that would impressed their neighbors. They just want simpler stuff with more comfort and functions, so that they can have their daily life more efficient and more enthusiasts.

I was browsing through my older files which might have been created several years ago. Actually, I was looking for something that I could use for the Clarke’s project. Something like those Greenpeace activists always says “Reuse, Refill, and Recycle: Save the Planet”. Hohoo, it’s quite make sense, since it would also save my job instead of my planet.

And what I found was this crappy design which I made on the early years as I started to focus on architectural designs. I couldn’t remember what for did I make this drawing. Was it for my future house or some kind for a dog house? Hey, what for did the stairs? Wasn’t it supposed to head to somewhere instead of a wall?

However, this drawing quite attracts my little attention right now since it has a simple touch but uncommon shape. I have made hundreds of drawings until now, and I think this drawing has a lot of contribution to what I achieved right now.

This is an example story which is still talking about home safety. You know, burglary is a crime of opportunity and to avoid them, the chance is minimizing any opportunities which might occur. In other words, if you want to build a good mousetrap, than you must think better than a mouse.

The first thing a robber will wanna know is if anyone is home. Generally, burglars don’t target houses that appear occupied. For such reasons, if you have a mailbox in front of your house, take your name off that. Also your names in front of your door, in which cases can tell who owns the house.

With such informations [your names and address], a burglar can easily browse through a phone book or call for information to get your phone number. All they have to do is call your home number and check whether someone answers. Some thieves which are bolder, could ring the doorbell to check whether it’s occupied or not. For them you can create lived-in sound effects by connecting a timer to a radio or TV.

Maybe, you can take lesson form Macaulay Culkin to decoy two burglars whose tried to rob the house while the family away.

You can guess what I’m gonna talking about, don’t you? At the time I know that somebody ransacked my house, I tried to search the entire building to notice where those crooks got in. And the answer gone to the window on the kitchen which was not safely secured. The police who went after, also gave the similar conclusion.

The burglars broke the window with simple efforts, got in, search things, and went out from the front door. That easy.

And the guys from Thief episode does make clearance for burglaries that might occur in our neighborhood. As the security systems are improved, bad guys are gone better at the same time.

The most simple ways to secure your home is installing serious locks. This could be the deadbolts which should be extend at least one inch into the door jamb, to keep thieves from kicking them in. Just like my kitchen window.

If have safe, bolt it to the floor, otherwise the thief can easily pick it up and carry it out.

My house is a mess since I haven’t clean it up three weeks ago, plus being ransacked by determined thieves. Curtis brought back the notebook this morning as soon as I said that I need to work with it. I thought today is a hard day to start the week, until I noticed incoming e-mail on my mail client.

The address told me it’s from Clarke & Partner’s office. I haven’t expected any messages from them this early, but the mail said that my works caught their attention and invited me to give them a presentation about the design on the following Wednesday.

This is a great news. Previously I never expect that my idea to give their office a touch of nature would bring me into their consideration. Simply, I just put an aquarium across the wall that enables people to see from both sides. Who knows that a simple idea could turn into something big?

And this Monday, I’m not quite bad.

If you ever heard stories about man whose gone camping and found that his home burglarized at the time he went back, then unfortunately I’ve become one of such stories. I left my house for two days and it has already ruined by act of burglars.

How much did I lost? I think it’s my BMX bike, $215 cash, and a pair of Rayban sunglasses which Suzy gave me last summer. I don’t know how much it priced, but a gift should be kept safely, isn’t it?

The better part of this accident is that I didn’t left my notebook at home while I’m away, so the burglar have no chance to took it also. My cousin, Curtis, borrowed it as I’m packing up before we went on camping. His PC was temporary in trouble, so he came and asked me whether I could lend him my notebook to finish his weekend homework.

I wish Curtis keep it safe because all my projects are stored in the notebook. Including the Clarke’s design.

That’s the consequence for taking a camp site near the river. The river is only 4 ft deep on the lowest part so it would have us drowned. There’s a lot of fun when we’re playing with water, plus we can easily spot the water animals which is fish!

Well, it’s not the first time for us to see fishes in the river, but having them swimming across our feet is something that we never had before. I wish they’re salmons.

James wasn’t excited at first we called him to go down the river. But as we showed him that we are having fun with the fishes, he put aside his notebook instantly and ran down at a full speed. You know what happened next? He acted like a John Rambo, hunt the fishes with a spear.

Of course he couldn’t get big fishes like Rambo did, as he struggled for an hour spearing, but serving three small fishes for the dinner was a quite honorable.

The camping site which we usually headed are not available for the recent time. There was a landslide on one side of the hill so any campers would be warned not to camp near the landslide site. As a matter of fact, the site was our favorite site to go camping. The rangers told us to go north where they pointed out another available camping site. It’s not a hill but it’s on the edge of a small river.

At the beginning, we’re a bit of disappointed since we knew that our favorite site wouldn’t be available again. Also we didn’t have any preview about what we would gonna have on the new site.

But there’s always a silver line in every gray clouds which means our disappointment has its pay. The new site wasn’t bad at all. Instead, it’s terrific. The small river was the good part of the site since it runs smoothly and we could build our tent on the higher level above the river current. We shouldn’t afraid about the sudden flood because the slope terrain would protect us from increasing water level.

Suzy bring her large tent which she bought a couple of months ago. That should fit five of us together, besides the two little tents which the twins brought. They will be used as the supply tent or reserve needs. What James got in his bag is not less of his notebook and a small set of audio. I wonder what would he do with that stuffs whenever he is in the camping site where there’s no electricity available.

“I know that I won’t have any internet connection while we’re away, but I’m still able to read some PDF files which I’ve downloaded some time ago and never been read”, said James.

He added,”And if you still have doubt about these audio sets and where should I have electricity, here you go”. He showed me a simple electrical generator which runs on gasoline. “It’s e-bay’s”, he simply nodded. He also brought a dozen of batteries that should convince me that he wouldn’t run out of energy.

All the stuffs are packed and we’re ready to head to the camping site. It’s quite a fortune since my Combi Volkswagen has been repaired and ready to ride several days ago, so we didn’t have much worry about the transportation.