Tuesday, 15 March 2005

Dishonourable discharge?

First time I talked to Deckker, I asked him where he was. He said he was at home getting some books for a lecture/tutorial, and that he didn't want to talk. He just told me to go read UTS Online. I felt a bit rejected, but the feeling went away.
I actually read UTS Online right away; just worked on my assignment for a while. When I did go on UTS Online, I got kicked out by the next tutorial class about five-ten minutes after logging in.

Saw Hyde waiting for the JASS meeting on one of the couches, and was like, "O_o she's in the IT building!" Ranted a little to her about my lecturer-person for Networking having been fired.
Then saw Deckker walking off home, waited till he got out of sight, and sort of ran after him, but quietly, so the bell on my bag zipper wouldn't jingle too much. Followed him up to the Q sign, then sort of wandered around a bit before turning around to go back to the uni. Noticed that Easy Way was closed for 'refurbishments'. Probably replacing those signs that had the words all run into one long word.
Got on webmessenger as soon as I got back to the IT building and said, "Still busy?" to Deckker. He apologised for the way he had acted earlier. I knew why he'd done it now though, so it was ok. He asked if we could meet downstairs, and he'd try to make it up to me somehow. I am not so arrogant as to refuse him if he wants to try and redeem himself. So I said yes.
I sort of loitered around building 10 a bit, before finally figuring out that he probably meant outside his apartment. By then, it was more than likely that it was past the 2minutes I'd said I'd meet him by. Oh well. I just walked anyway.
He was there, of course. The first thing he asked me was if I'd read UTS Online. I had. The first thing I asked him was what he'd done to deserve such a thing.
He was given the reasons:
1. He played music in the class
2. He had been rather insistent for access to the staff area
I said they sounded like pretty crap reasons to me, and that there must have been something else that the powers-that-be had decided not to tell him. Perhaps it was a conspiracy of some sort.
Deckker told me that he had signed his part of his teaching contract and returned it to UTS for the university to sign their part; however, they had never returned their signed section back to him. Thus, he was never really employed in the first place.
The meeting was also on Tuesday, rather than Monday. Monday, us students could still change our allocations. Tuesday, we could not. (Except later, they let us, because they'd assigned 33 ppl to a lab which only had 30 computers.)
Second hand information - third to me - is that what Deckker had heard from the other staff about Tu was not very nice. Their general advice to Deckker was to ignore Tu as much as possible. (There was no getting away from him; Tu is Networking subject coordinator.)
And although this probably has nothing to do with the decision to fire him, Tu is apparently racist against chinese. Tu himself is Vietnamese.
(Tu is ugly. Hideous, in fact. That's not saying all Viet are ugly, just Tu. Dooie is rather cute.)

In brief:
John Vo Tu asked to see Deckker on Tuesday
Deckker and Tu met around 11:30
Tu brought Deckker directly to Elaine Lawrence's office
Elaine told Deckker that he would not be teaching any more classes, effective immediately
Deckker went home quite upset
Deckker had to go to class of some sort

Deckker and I met, sat and talked at his place for a long while. Mum called me around 15:00 to tell me that I didn't have to go to the doctor's after all. I was glad. I didn't want to leave Deckker the way he was.
Jane (yellowshirt) called. Deckker went to meet her and give her something. He let me stay behind in his place. I sort of walked around a bit, did a tiny bit of cleaning up (for some reason, I couldn't help it; normally I wouldn't care. Maybe it was from me feeling sorry for him. Hopefully it went unnoticed, the place was messier than usual). Noticed pieces of scrunched up paper on the table.

Deckker came back after a bit. He was still feeling like crap. At one point, he sat on the stairs, and I stood next to a chair. He was talking, and I randomly noticed blue underwear on the stairs. I kicked it around a bit - I think he stared, he certainly went silent - before kicking it over to the pile of clothes, sort of giggling embarrassedly and going back to the chair, muttering, "I'll go back to the chair now..."
I actually did it to ensure a relatively clear path up the stairs - I didn't want to be slipping and hurting myself again.
After some more talking, I went and sat on the step above him and gave him a hug from behind. It was sort of awkward, but he is too tall for me to give him a normal hug. He smelt clean. It took a while to convince myself to do that. I did not want to inadvertantly link again, but I also wanted to do what I could to comfort Deckker.
I think we talked a bit more until nearly 17:30. We left his place probably 17:20-17:25, because he had a meeting with a lecturer at 17:30. He pretended to try and poke me. I sort of walked around to get away from him.
Bumped into his neighbour, who was coming up on the lift we were taking to go down. It probably looked weird to her, since I was the only one with Deckker.
Walked Deckker up to level four, walked around in a large circle until the guy who'd taken the lift with us was out of sight, then said goodbye to Deckker.
Went up to the roof for a bit, then wandered around the top level until ~18:20 because I didn't like rush hour trains.

Met this guy on the platform who had obviously gone to my school, but I didn't have a clue what his name was. He was going to USyd, planning to do Music for a career. We talked about random things. He asked me several times why I wanted to see the sunset when the train went over the bridge. We missed the sunset; the train was an all-stops to Epping sort.

At 19:09, Deckker told me he had lost his access to the forums.

I arrived at Epping ~19:40, in time to see the moon in the sky, and dusk in the far distance.
"White first quarter moon in blue dusk.. a work of art free to view but oft unnoticed by many..."
I had mixed feelings about sending that to Deckker. Reluctant to share with him what I had only ever shared with Net147 before, but wanting to help Deckker get his mind off the incident as well.

...I will not link with Deckker. He will remain as just a friend, no more. One relationship formed due to helping another through dark times had a bad result. I couldn't form any common ground with Net147. I am starting to think that I do not have the ability to do so.
I refuse to expose myself to that sort of hurt again. I WILL NOT LINK. That is one agreement to myself that I intend on FULLY KEEPING.

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