Paedo

I used to be quite friendly with strangers I met especially if they were older, female and looks normal(no signs of being a psychopath)...by saying friendly I mean I would have conversations with them if they were the ones who greeted me first..(this doesn't include guys who spend time on the street harassing any female passersby)
Ever since my friend told me about her being harassed by a paedophile at a train station, I'm always cautious with friendly old man...
I always came across this old man when I go for grocery shopping in Clayton...I noticed that he likes to approach Muslim girls and have a chat with them whenever he can...there was this one time when he asked us if we are Malaysian and asked if we can speak arabic..I can't remember the exact question he asked about Islam but he totally annoyed us at one point...he didn't sound like someone who is interested in Islam but he's questioning our teaching..He is about 70++y/o...I can't tell what nationality he is as he doesn't sound like a mother-tongue English speaker and I heard him talking to a woman in the bus yesterday in a foreign language..I couldn't tell if it was Spanish or Portuguese or Greek or Italian...
I took the bus on my way from the hospital a week ago and at this one stop, I noticed he was among the passengers hailing the bus...At the sight of him, I quickly put my bag on the seat next to me and looked down pretending that I was busy reading my Obstetrics book...I thought I was successful hiding from him until I reached the next stop when he came asking me to put my bag away as he'd like to have the seat...As if, there aren't any free seats left in the bus...
As I'd expect, he started making conversations...I'm trying my best to ignore him without being rude by answering his questions with minimal number of words..I guess he's the type who just won't get it...he kept on talking about his wife who died of breast cancer and he live by himself and about his son who is a doctor bla-bla-bla....Suddenly he asked me if I was single?(gosh..how inappropriate he can be!!)...I don't wanna sound defensive by saying I'm married or engaged when clearly I don't have a ring so I settled for I'm in a relationship...ahhaha..but I guess it didn't sound convincing and he continued on saying, "U're beautiful" which puts me in a very uncomfortable position...I couldn't stand sitting next to him for any longer so I finally end up stopping one stop earlier...
Yesterday, I had another encounter with him on my way to the hospital...I took the front-most seat which is not as spacious than other seats and then suddenly someone came to sit next to me...I didn't realise it was him initially but I felt weird that someone would cram into a small seat when there were more vacant seats than occupied ones...I took quick glance of a stranger seating next to me and was surprised to see that it was actually him!!I was determined to ignore him and as usual, pretended that I was so into my medical books...I didn't even look around even though I was worried I might I missed my stop...he did try to make conversations with me by asking if I did medicine and if I worked at the hospital..he told me that he noticed that I was reading a medical book...I just answered him half-heartedly and I was lucky that there was another woman that he was having conversations with as well...

Now that I know that particular old man often takes that bus route, I would be even more cautious choosing where to sit...I'd probably just sit next to a woman even if there were many vacant seats...or perhaps, if I encountered him again, I might just excuse myself and sit somewhere else...or just stand up instead...

I've had another pretty similar encounter with a stranger last year when I was in a grocery store at Clayton...I was aware of an Indian guy looking at me for quite sometime and at last, he came to me asking if I'm an Indonesian...I told him "No" & I excused myself...n then he came back to me saying, "Can U teach me Islam?".....which put me in a difficult position...I couldn't deny someone's right to Islam even if I thought he behaved strangely...Not knowing what's the best thing to say I told him that I may not be the best person to teach him but I would be more than happy to refer him to someone more knowledgeable...so I asked for his contact number and my mistake was that I took out my mobile phone and saved his contact details in it...he asked for my mobile number which I dismissed initially but he was quite persistent and I finally gave in as I thought he couldn't do any harm to me by just having my mobile number...n then came the question, "Are you married?","Can U be my best friend?"...at that point, I'm pretty convinced that he is a fraud but I still tried to overcome my prejudice against him...
When I went home, I emailed MUIS (Monash University Islamic Society) president, Adhnan, telling him of what happened and asked him to contact this man...
A few days later, I kept on receiving calls from this guy which I didn't pick up and he finally send me an sms saying, "How are you?"...now that didn't sound like someone who wants to learn about Islam....
I didn't follow up on what happened to him afterwards but I know that Adhnan has arranged for them to meet up...I also found out that he actually lied to me about his real name...