Attack of the Night Stalker

Days 24 & 25: 2/24 & 2/25

My long day of class wasn’t very much fun. Math Statistics will be challenging for the first few weeks – I never took Introduction to Statistics, or any form of statistics for that matter, so I will have to a little reading to understand what our instructor was talking about for three hours. I bought a few books and supplies and got a hair cut during my short break in classes. We grabbed some dinner at Broadway Café and went back to Scruffy Murphy’s at night (this time I remembered not to wear a hat). Before we left our rooms for Scruffy’s, however, there was a little scare in UniLodge, when a known resident above us, that we call the Night Stalker, showed up at Julia’s door (two doors down) with a wooden baseball bat. We call him the Night Stalker not because he spies on people, but because this 200+ pound, bald (except for a strategically placed round blotch of hair on the bottom half of the back of his head), tattooed, Australian man, had been in our hallway on two prior occasions to tell us (in as an intimidating fashion as possible) that our “door has hinges for a reason” and to keep our doors closed because we were being too loud and the sound was rising. This time I approached him as he was talking to Julia and Evan outside Julia’s door. He was quite a bit angrier this time and said “…you’re looking at 108 kilos of pure testosterone [with distaste for American and an inferiority complex]”. As I attempted to communicate with him, he decided to interrupt me by swinging his wooden bat into the door frame next to us. This scared everyone a little and when I told him that what he just did was not okay, and that he was now waking everybody else up, he announced that he could be much louder and hit the frame harder this time. As he swung I immediately pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, dialed 0-0-0 (Australian 911) and put it on loudspeaker as I explained to the operator that we had just been assaulted by a man with a baseball bat. I was fairly certain this wasn’t the first time this happened, so the call was motivation enough for him to walk away and back to his room. We ended up talking between floors awhile as I waited for the police – this didn’t accomplish much, and by the time we had finished, the other girls (that were down the hall as this was happening), arrived with the UniLodge late night security. We filed a joint complaint and the security notified us that the police would probably be coming, but not for a long time since calling 0-0-0 isn’t the best option in less it’s a life or death scenario – he explained that there was a good chance they might not come at all, and that if they did, it wouldn’t be for at least another 3-4 hours. I gave him my mobile number in case they did and we went to Scruffy’s, as we were all anxious to forget about what just happened. I had a good time, although neither Chuck nor Luke came out on this particular night, and got back to learn the police had never come. I went to bed and wasn’t awoken by any calls, so my complaint was actually disregarded in the end.
Wednesday classes consisted of only one Rethinking Culture lecture and tutorial. The class is interesting and should be relatively easy. I figured out how to print documents from the UTS Library (at 11 cents/page), had a long overdue workout with Chuck at Broadway Gym, and had a quiet night, getting some much needed rest.