The Dilemma of the Window Pathway.
Earlier this year, I moved into my first "big girl" apartment. I cannot explain how excited I was to move into the miniature version of my dream house: big windows with lots of light, a cute balcony with beautiful views, and a nice modern and minimalist feel to it; this was finally home.
However, with moving into my mini dream house, my anxiety increased. You see, while house-hunting, I had looked at several houses, and my major concern with all the other houses was that I would be in a single house alone in a compound isolated from others. Yes, I live in a city that is considered relatively safe, but the thought of living in such an isolated situation will always make me uneasy. So I moved into this apartment building with lots of people living around me, where I felt a bit safer.
The thing is, I live on the ground floor, and my windows are big enough for me to pass through when I forget my keys, meaning that anyone else can do the same thing. So every night, before I go to bed, I need to ensure that my front door, living room windows and doors, kitchen door, bedroom door, and bedroom windows are locked. With living alone, the responsibility of all of this remembering falls on the extremely forgetful young adult: me.
For context, two of my friends live around me, and we usually just show up at each other's houses because we practically live together. On one of such days, my friend showed up at my door, knocked many times, and tried calling me, but I was in the shower and wasn't with my phone, so she did what I would've done: she climbed over my balcony, passed through my window, and came into the house. Now, as weird as it may seem, this was pretty standard because, as I said, I forget my keys a lot. This time was different, though, because I had woken up and gotten straight into the shower before I had a chance to open my windows, meaning that I had slept with a window unlocked.
This made me panic, but it also got me thinking, so I researched (read. initiated a Google search) about home security systems. Home security systems are not really common on this continent, mainly because they are so expensive and the hardware is so complicated, but they need to be, especially for people living alone like me. I came across the smart lock that particularly captured what kind of system provides the perfect solution for me. Smart locks are typically connected to an app on your phone so that makes them more accessible. They also allow you to set parameters for access to your house so you're alerted when your doors and windows are unlocked, and you can set them to lock at a particular time automatically. This is literally my dream come true.
The issue is that while this solution exists, it does not exist here, which poses problems to its functionality in my location. The only way these systems are affordable for me is if I make use of instalment options that are typically available. However, if you live outside the countries where these are sold, it's much harder to track payments, so these instalments become less of an option for me. In addition to this, if any part of the lock starts to malfunction, it becomes useless to me because the technical parts and know-how to fix it are not on the continent, making it a lot more difficult to manage.
Unfortunately, in this situation where my perfect solution actually exists, it's not yet optimized for my location and it seems like while this is still making its way to the continent, I would have to rely on my estate security and my mother's prayers for my safety.
