One Man’s Meat by PHILIP GOLINGAI

Because something as ominous as an unknown car parked in front of your house may just belong to them.

It is 9.25pm and an Audi A4 saloon is parked right in front of your double-storey terrace house. You don’t know who owns the Audi blocking your driveway.

Nobody is supposed to be at home as your wife and child are in Kota Kinabalu for a family emergency.

In your 15 years living in USJ 13, Subang Jaya, a stranger has never ever parked his/her car in front of your house. Probably a guest of one of your neighbours, you think.

You check. The four houses on the left and right of your home are locked up. So is that corner house facing your house.

What do you do?

I called 911.

I’ve heard enough horror stories from my USJ 13 Rukun Tetangga community members to be frightened to see a “suspicious” luxury car in front of my home.

Stories such as Neighbour X was driving home at 4pm. She noticed a vehicle tailing her but she was not suspicious as it was a luxury car. When she got out of the car, four men holding parang pounced out of the car and robbed her in front of her home.

Stories such as Neighbour Y assumed it was his neighbours who were washing their luxury car outside their house. Actually the “neighbours” were robbers breaking and entering the house.

Before I called 911, I got out of my “not so luxury car”, a Perodua Alza, and walked towards the Audi.

My right thumb was ready to press my car alarm. My game plan was if there was somebody suspicious inside the luxury car, I would press the alarm. Hopefully, my neighbours would not think it was not another car alarm going off (again) and they would rush out of their homes and rescue me.

Nobody was inside the silver-coloured Audi.

I called 911. (Interestingly, the call went through as since October 2007, the emergency number 999 had replaced the 991, 994 and 112 lines.) I gave my name and my address and told the call-taker there was a mysterious car parked in front of my house.

“Ini Encik Philip (Is this Mr Philip)?” the call-taker asked.

OMG, she’s a psychic, I thought.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“When there is an emergency we are allowed to trace the owner of the mobile phone you are using to call us,” she said.

She connected me to another number which I assume was the nearest police station – the Subang Jaya district police headquarters in USJ 8. The officer said he would dispatch a patrol car.

Since I live in Twitterland, I took a photograph of the Audi and tweeted: “Called 911 as there’s an Audi (deleted) 6133 parked in front of my house. Cops will send a patrol car to investigate.”

About five minutes later, a patrol car, with two policemen, arrived. I was so happy to see that one of the cops was carrying an assault rifle.

“How long has this car been here?” asked the policeman in Malay.

“I don’t know. When I arrived from work, it was parked there,” I said.

The cop checked the Audi’s bonnet. It was cold, indicating that it had been parked there for some time.

The cop told me to unlock my front door. I did, slowly.

Worried a parang-wielding man might pounce, I – as a taxpayer – told the cop armed with the assault rifle to enter first. He did.

Nobody was at home.

The other cop told me that the Audi was registered under a company and there was no police report that it was stolen.

His theory was one of my neighbours’ friend parked his car in front of my house thinking that it was empty and went off with my neighbour for an outing.

With a heavy heart, I bade them goodbye.

Just as the patrol car sped off, a neighbour asked me what was wrong. I said I called the police to investigate the Audi.

The 40-something woman said it belonged to the neighbour living in the corner house facing mine.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“It has the same number as that car,” she said, pointing at a Toyota Camry parked nearby. “They are my neighbours and you have to know your neighbours.”

Ouch!

At 10.08pm, I tweeted: “It turns out that the mysterious Audi is owned by my neighbour. Lesson learnt: know your neighbours.”

Some tweeters gently chastised me for not knowing my neighbours. In my defence, I do know my neighbours who live along my row.

My immediate neighbours are the best neighbours you’ll ever ask. I also have a neighbour who is a wan tan mee hawker; a neighbour who told me, “how come your wife is nicer than you” (that was not a nice thing to say); a neighbour who everybody would suspect if there was a nasty anonymous call to the MPSJ (Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya); and a neighbour I’ve not spoken to since the last decade because during a gotong-royong he attacked my frangipani with a parang.

Now I know that I have a neighbour who owns an Audi.

And I suspect he’s not a robber.