The numbers are down to a fraction of what they were two months ago. People are still dying, but the spike in the deaths chart is due to a catch-up in reporting of deaths from months past. The bad news though: most people won’t touch the vaccines. Unless that turns around pretty sharpish (and why will it?), Romania is probably screwed.
I’ve stopped pinning this to the front page, and won’t update again until the picture changes. Right now it’s crystal clear.
After that train wreck of a lesson, I didn’t sleep much on Monday night. Or Tuesday night. Even last night I didn’t do particularly well. Maybe I am just a bigot who can’t tolerate people with different views from my own. But in between I’ve had a bunch of lessons that have gone perfectly well, including one with am easy-going guy who said that Romania was better under communism and the country now suffers from “too much democracy”. Yikes. He’s 33 and would have been a toddler when the Ceaușescus came to a sticky end, so he has no more memories of living under communism than I do, but that’s his opinion and he’s entitled to it. But nobody is entitled to get on trains and planes and attend weddings and see Fiddler on the Roof at the fucking opera and potentially expose hundreds of people to a deadly virus. Sure, some people are hesitant and that’s understandable. What are the side effects? Haven’t these vaccines been concocted rather quickly? (Yes. And it’s one of the great feats of mankind.) How does messenger RNA work? You can reason with these people. The point-blank refusers, however, you can get fucked.
Last night I woke up suddenly. Where’s that awful music coming from? Then I remembered I’d set my alarm for 4am so I could watch Graeme’s funeral, streamed live from Timaru. I was a few minutes late and I when I connected, my cousin from Wellington – Graeme’s eldest daughter – was speaking (very well, as she always does). There was a big extended family present – he leaves behind his wife, five children and a baker’s dozen (as they put it) of grandchildren. Not everybody could make it because the Ashburton bridge, now shaky after the torrential rain, is making it hard to travel south from Christchurch. The speeches were brilliant, honestly. He was appreciated much more than I realised. He was a very good man, a family man, with a big heart. (His propensity to fart in inappropriate situations didn’t come up in the speeches, strangely enough.) I always got on very well with him – he could have conversation about almost anything – and my memories of him go back to our trip to New Zealand in 1986-87. I spent quite a lot of time with him in 2003-04 just after I arrived in NZ to live. He helped me find a second-hand car, and taught me what some of the farming equipment being auctioned off at the Temuka saleyards was. The last time I saw him was in Wellington in 2016, just before I left the country.
Three poker tournaments yesterday. I busted out of the PLO8 just before the money, then I came back from a poor start to finish third in the single draw for a $15 profit, then in the pot-limit badugi I built up a monster stack only to crash and burn for a min cash. My bankroll is $722. If and when it reaches $750 I plan to beef things up a bit, by playing five tournaments in a session instead of my current three, including the odd night session, and playing the occasional spell of cash.
It’s a beautiful sunny day here. Not a cloud in the sky. The birds are chirping away and the trams are clattering by.
So often in the past few months I’ve bristled at people’s anti-vax stance, and today I just lost it. If you’re an anti-vaxer, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Your actions are lethal, end of story. You are killing other people. The pro-vax and anti-vax positions do not have equal legitimacy. (She even mentioned her refusal to vaccinate her son, which is disgustingly irresponsible.) And that’s what I told my student in my tenth and last lesson with her today. I won’t go into any more details but it was an hour-long train wreck that I could (maybe) have avoided. Mercifully, it was only an hour. I was amazed when she pointed to a comment I’d made in a previous lesson about Romanians sometimes using English words in conversation because they want to sound sophisticated. She’d been offended by that. Like, how? If you get offended by that, I’m going to have a really hard time saying anything without piercing your tissue-paper-like skin. So that was it. I’m better off without her. I’ve also had lessons with her son, and they’ve always gone well. He has an impressive command of the language. I don’t know if we’ll continue. Pity the boy though. His parents have split up, and his mother seems a bit of an arsehole.
The anti-vax “debate” illustrates why we’d all be better off without social media. The evidence is crystal clear – just imagine where we’d be without mass polio vaccination. But so many people get all their “news” from Facebook that confirms what they want to hear.
It’s been a shitty day all round, really. This guy has been contacting me to help cheat on his English test in real time, and now he wants me to do his homework for him, as part of his stupid, nonsensical English course that won’t help him learn any English, not that he’s in the least bit interested in that. He just wants to pass. This morning I told him, this is not my job, but he insisted. I find him extremely aggravating.
My next lesson is in an hour. It’s with a guy I get on well with. Can’t wait. And Andreescu and Zidansek are at 7-6, 6-7, 7-7 in the first round of the French Open.
Yesterday I called my parents, and they told me that Graeme had taken a rapid turn for the worse and wouldn’t make it. Two hours later, he passed away. It’s all very sudden and very sad, even if he did extremely well to ever reach 80 after the lung problems he developed decades earlier that forced him out of work. I always felt a bit sorry for him. He helped bring up four daughters, who all turned out to be self-assured and successful, and one son who moved to Australia. He was always taking his daughters skiing or sailing, but despite all that, they treated him as a bit of an oddball and a joke in his old age. He was different from his wife who was has always been more active socially. She has always kept her cards close to her chest, and quite possibly he never stood a chance after his accident but she didn’t let on.
The funeral will take place in the next two or three days, but there’s confusion as to exactly when. South Canterbury is being blitzed by a weather bomb – relentless rain (approaching feet rather than inches) making Geraldine a virtual island.
Friday would have been both the 70th birthday of Dad’s cousin (who died in December) and the 99th birthday of Dad’s mother (who died ten years ago). Here’s a post I wrote about my grandmother’s 88th birthday, back on my old blog. That was the last time I ever saw her.
People getting old. Falling apart both physically and mentally. It’s such a dreadful thing to watch. Yesterday at the tennis court I watched it (the physical side of it, anyway). People’s bodies seemed to be falling to pieces. The guy with whom I played that unfinished energy-sapping match just before Christmas is having back trouble and is shadow of the man he was then. Viorica seemed even less mobile than usual. Then there’s Petrică with his kidney condition made worse by Covid. I kept thinking, heck, it must be my turn next.
Poker. In this morning’s PLO8, I almost fell short of the money but just before the bubble I escaped with a quarter of a three-way pot to survive. Straight after the bubble burst, I found myself almost chipless but ran my tiny stack up to something substantial thanks to some good starting hands, only for my opponent to hit a runner-runner wheel to eliminate me. Had I won that I would have been motoring, but it wasn’t to be. The pot-limit badugi was over in 20 minutes – I never won a hand. I made a monster, he made a bigger monster, and that was that. When that was over I was still in the single draw. (At one stage I was playing three tournaments, in three very different games, at the same time.) With eight remaining, I had a nice big stack and put it to good use on my short-handed table. I started the seven-man final table with 68,000 chips and the lead. With a following wind, or even just a gentle breeze at my back, I might have won the whole shebang and a load of bounties. Instead I faced a headwind. I did claim another handy bounty, but with four left I twice pushed with an equity edge but both times I lost out, and it was game over. Not a bad morning though – those bounties helped me make a $23 profit from the single draw – and after a slightly frustrating month in which I only turned a small profit, my bankroll is now $707. I feel I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough with Omaha hi-lo. A few deep runs and finally I might actually be getting it.
Yesterday I got my immigration card, so I’m now free to stay in Romania until 2026 under the provisions of Article 50. It’s a relief to get that out of the way. Now that I probably won’t be turfed out of the country, my next stop is to put down some roots here using the proceeds of the apartment I had in Wellington. But I don’t know where to start. A house or a flat? A new build or something more established? (The new blocks, and new areas, depress me.) Where I am now is perfect in many ways, but a huge rent hike is on the horizon, and I could do with being able to teach in a different place to where I eat. Plus I’d really like to have my own set of wheels.
My uncle Graeme, who turned 80 last month, had a major scare at the end of last week. He collapsed and vomited, and was quickly rushed off to hospital. There he had his aortic valve replaced, just like my father did at age 55. Graeme won’t be coming out of hospital for a while. This all reminds me of how Dad almost died following his operation. It really was touch and go. He had his valve replaced in the UK, while I was in Auckland. (Mum also stayed in New Zealand – we all make baffling decisions at some points in our lives, and this was her turn.) I spoke to him after the operation and everything seemed to have gone off without a hitch. But as he was on the verge of leaving hospital he couldn’t get out of bed. He had fluid in his lungs. My grandmother overheard one of the staff say that the fluid had probably coagulated and he was a lost cause. I remember when Mum called me, telling me to say a prayer for Dad because he might not make it. That was 16 years ago, around the time of the terrorist attack in London. I was studying for actuarial exams while also trying to devise a word-based version of Sudoku, the new craze.
When I spoke to my brother at the weekend it dawned on us. Mum and Dad might never come back to this part of the world again. I’d put the chance of that at 30%. We spent some time discussing the when and how of making a trip over to see them. As it stands, my sister-in-law isn’t allowed to set foot in the country.
Summer is almost upon us, and for the next four months I’ll be making regular trips to the outdoor markets. The strawberries have just started, as have the cherries, although they’re still rather pricy. The tomatoes are on their way. Soon we’ll have the watermelons and the stone fruit. All the lovely fruit and vegetables we get here are hard to beat.
Not much joy at the poker tables since I last wrote. I need to run better, basically. My bankroll is $690. Why am I doing this? Not for the money, clearly. I’m doing it for the mental workout. Can I at least get some way to mastering this game?
I got my second shot of Astra Zeneca on Wednesday morning. There were far fewer people there than the first time around. I think a lot of people became skittish about Astra Zeneca in March and April, and now Romanians who have taken Pfizer outnumber the AZ takers by eight to one. Because it was so quiet, I was done and dusted in no time. I entered the building at eight, the needle was in my arm at 8:10 – a young man administered my jab this time – and then at 8:25 my name was called and I could go. It’s always a bit funny having my distinctly English name called among all the Ciobanus and Popescus. They also called me by my middle name rather than my first name; that happens quite often and I don’t mind it – I like my middle name.
I was vaccinated in the youth centre, which is right next to the stadium where Poli Timișoara (the local football team) play, and just across the road from the main hospital. It’s also right next to the outdoor market which is full of local produce and is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so that was convenient. In the same area is a sports centre with several clay tennis courts, and next to that is an abandoned piece of land which was supposed to be a university building but never happened. I know this because there’s an old peeling sign there, dated February 2000 (I was in my second year of university then). They got as far as putting in the steel rods, but then they presumably ran out of money. Now it’s a wild area, full of trees and birds and the intermittent ribbit of frogs.
After my first jab I didn’t feel any side effects apart from a bit of a sore arm. This time was different. On Wednesday night I shivered in bed so I put on an extra duvet and of course I was soon sweating. I didn’t sleep well. Yesterday evening I had a slight temperature again and suddenly felt very tired. Thankfully I had a good sleep last night and now everything is back to normal. My symptoms were all pretty standard and a good indication that the vaccine was doing its job.
Four more poker tournaments since I last wrote, with little success. On Tuesday I made good starts to all three but could only scrape a min cash in the PLO8. Last night I managed to bust out of the fixed badugi after just 30 hands without winning any of them. That’s a new record. My laptop crashed in the middle, so I didn’t want to rebuy just in case it happened again. My bankroll is $699.
I was able to play last night because my 19-year-old student has decided to give up his lessons with me. Honestly I’m OK with that – he was never the easiest to teach – but I have lost a few people lately and it might be hard to get replacements with summer on the horizon.
Most languages have words that seem too long for what they represent. English, for instance, has understand and disappointment. Today, pedestrian came up in a lesson, and I’ve never liked that word – it’s too long, too cumbersome, and I suppose too pedestrian. French has maintenant, which is far too long for something that means “now”. By the time you’ve said or written the word, now has passed. Romanian also has its fair share. The numbers from 11 to 19 are all stupidly long – 17 is șaptesprezece – and most people shorten them in everyday speech. But the biggest culprit, literally, in almost any language, has to be dumneavoastră, which is the Romanian formal version of “you”, just like vous in French, only (unlike in French) it doesn’t also serve as the general plural “you”. It’s also used for the formal “your”. When I first tried learning the language, I was immediately intimidated by this 13-letter monstrosity, which literally means “your lordship”. Surely they don’t actually use this in conversation? But they sure do, in all its glory. Fortunately, Romanian is a “pro-drop” language, which means you can get away with just using the verb form without the subject, so you can often dispense with dumneavoastră. But you can’t always, and when it serves as the formal “your” (rather than “you”), you’re forced to use it. Yesterday I played tennis, partnering a bloke of a similar age to me. Hmmm, can I use the informal tu with you (I hardly know you), or should I play safe and use the formal version? In doubles, it’s fairly common to shout something to indicate that either you or your partner should take the next shot, but you can hardly say dumneavoastră, can you? That’s practically a whole sentence. By about the third syllable the ball will have whizzed by. So what can I say? Yesterday I decided on the English “go!”. I mean, go is universal, right? I’m pretty sure you pass go in even the Romanian version of Monopoly. My partner unfortunately interpreted my “go!” as eu, which means “me”, and our communication breakdown cost us the point.
Last night I realised how much work I still need to do if I’m ever really going to get good at Romanian. Someone from the police called me, and I was lost. In our five-minute conversation, or should I say monologue, he must have said over a thousand words. Just too damn fast, and of course it was on the phone and that makes it even harder. Plus it’s the sodding police – what have I done? It seemed that I hadn’t done anything, and one of his colleagues wanted me to translate something into English later this week. He gave me the phone number, I called this other policeman (I assume that’s what he is) and that was indeed the case.
It tipped it down yesterday morning. Good weather for poker. I got up early and FaceTimed my parents before the tournaments kicked off just after eight (while I was still eating my porridge). I made a decent start to the PLO8, then while that was going on I fired up a single draw in which I broke the best hand to bust out after 40 minutes. Never mind. I was now in the process of amassing a giant stack in the Omaha hi-lo, which was helped immensely by making quad threes to inflict a very unfortunate bad beat on my opponent. I easily made the seven-man final table, and from there anything could have happened. There was a Romanian who hurled insults at me in his native language for some bizarre reason (he could see I was playing from the same country) and I just blocked his chat, before knocking him out in fourth place. The final three were all pretty evenly stacked, but I had basically zero experience at the game short-handed. After a decent number of hands I was out in third place for a $22 profit after just over five hours. By that point I’d also made the final table of the knockout pot-limit badugi (two final tables simultaneously is a rarity for me) and came back well from being relatively short to make the final three. Then, crucially, I was dealt two pat nines that helped me chip up and eventually knock out a good player and grab his healthy bounty. I had a big chip lead as I got heads-up with an inexplicably passive opponent, and soon I’d won a bounty tournament for the first time, making $62. A lucky day. I made $81 overall, and my bankroll is now $705.
Slowly but surely, we’re edging back to something resembling BC – before Covid. Today, for the first time in ages, we’re allowed to roam mask-free in open spaces, with the exception of markets, bus stops and the like. I’ll get my second AstraZeneca jab on Wednesday (I’m one of relatively few takers of that in Romania – for most people here it’s Pfizer or nothing) and after that I’ll see about taming the great rodent-like mop on the top of my head.
Today I had my weekly lesson with the young beginner couple. After that I was thinking I’d benefit hugely from daily lessons with beginners. Think of all the Romanian I’d get to speak. I still get confused, as evidenced by the lesson with the eleven-year-old girl on Thursday. She asked me to translate whole sentences, and she could see I was struggling. (She can laugh as me as much as she likes, but if she pronounces “pie” as pee, I’m not really allowed to return the favour. I guess I did laugh when that boy pronounced “yanking” as wanking; I just couldn’t help it.)
I finally got through to my aunt on the phone. She said she’d been suffering from a bout of depression, although she seemed bright when we had our chat. She’s a highly intelligent woman after all. But ever since the nineties, when her husband was still alive, she’s fallen deeper and deeper into a cycle, and has lacked any sort of willpower to try and break it. For me, that was what coming to Romania was all about. I had to do break the cycle, goddammit, or at least try. It’s sad that despite her considerable brainpower, she’s never even sought a way out.
No sign of a buyer yet for my parents’ house in Geraldine, and winter is on its way. Maybe my cousin was right. Who would want to part with bucketloads of cash just to live in Geraldine? Every second time we talk, Mum and Dad go on about Maori issues. I have little to say about the subject, but it seems things have clicked into another gear, and one my parents find uncomfortable, in the time I’ve been away. As an example, look at how Maori, or should I say te reo, now dominates Wellington City Council’s home page. What I would say is that the last thing New Zealand needs is to be a divided country. There’s generally been an impressive lack of division in NZ. That’s mainly why they pretty much kicked Covid into touch. They’d do well to keep it that way.
Poker. I had two goes at that those SCOOP Afterparty thingies this week, and didn’t get very far. I started OK in the PLO8 but I couldn’t flop anything and I made a mess of my bust-out hand. Then in the single draw I was extremely card dead to begin with, and did well to still have 80% of my stack by the first break. I had a bad table draw – regulars, hyper-aggressive players, and even professionals – and I was just gagging for a table move that never came. After the break I made some half-decent hands, and at one point Mason Pye, a young British guy who promotes mixed games on the streaming platform Twitch, moved to our table. He got short and I called his all-in as a slight favourite. If I’d won that hand, maybe I’d have been in business, but I didn’t, I then went card dead again, and the end wasn’t far away. The good news is that I avoided those late nights and I had some time to look through my hand histories and figure out where I might have ballsed up. In my last dozen tournaments I’ve only managed one small cash, but my bankroll can withstand that kind of run and far worse. I’m sitting on $624.
I had a good chat with my brother earlier today. We talked about his long-running course where he has to teach very scary army stuff and be assessed on his teaching ability, and then we chatted about old family photos. He sent me a picture from the VE Day 50th anniversary celebrations in 1995 (26 years ago yesterday, in fact), with our extended family, including my grandparents who’d been there. We were all giving a victory salute. I think that might have been the first time I got slightly drunk.
Thursday and Friday were a bit of a dead loss because I had heel pain which almost stopped me from walking. My shoes were to blame. I tried icing my heel but in the end I figured I just needed to rest it, and now it seems just about back to normal. I hope I can get back on the tennis court next weekend – the benefits of that are enormous.
Just before Orthodox Easter, a woman rang me asking me if I’d consider teaching at her language school. It sounded like the lesson times at the school would clash with my private lessons, but I thought there’d be no harm in meeting her, so we arranged a meeting. Then she called me to say she was going away for the long weekend, so could we meet on Tuesday, then I never heard back from her. That’s all pretty Romanian. When I arrived here I was offered a job at a language school, only for them to un-offer it to me just before I was due to start. Another very Romanian thing is that the new owners of my apartment said they’ll keep my rent the same until 1st May next year, after which they’ll put it up by 50%. Nothing much, just a slight increase. At least they’ve warned me. So that gives me a deadline to find somewhere else.
I’ve lost some students of late, so I’ve just put up a couple more online ads. I’ve also bumped my prices up, but not by 50%.
Poker. I’m going through a bit of a barren run. When that happens, I feel I don’t know anything anymore. How did I ever win? Last night I tried a new game called Big O, which is Omaha hi-lo with five cards instead of four. I first watched a stream from a live Big O game played in San Antonio last November, a few days after the election. Covid was raging in Texas then. Nine men, including the dealer, were huddled around a table, fingering chips and dollar bills that had been god knows where. OK, they were masked, but I wouldn’t have been within a mile of that table. I felt particularly sorry for the dealer who was just doing his job. I then found out that one of the players, a middle-aged bloke, has since died. I don’t know if it was Covid-related. My first go at Big O didn’t go too well – it played nothing like on the stream (people just wanted to gamble) and I was mostly card dead. In a rare bright spot, I had a decent run (and a small cash) in a standard four-card Omaha hi-lo game this morning. I plan to have a crack at a couple of big-field events in the next week, as part of the so-called SCOOP Afterparty. My bankroll is currently $635.
The vagaries of the Julian calendar, the spring equinox and phases of the moon mean that today is Orthodox Easter Sunday. Sometimes it falls on the same day as what they call Catholic Easter (and what I would call “normal Easter”), sometimes it’s a week later, and sometimes (like this year) it’s a whole month later. Easter is big in Romania; I’d call it a tie between Easter and Christmas for which is most important here. Last night the tennis-playing couple (who live next door but one) gave me some salată de boeuf which, despite its partially French name, contains chicken rather than beef. They also gave me an egg painted the traditional reddish-brown using red cabbage, and invited me to “knock” it with another of their painted eggs. The “knocker” said Hristos a înviat (“Christ has risen”), then the knockee became the knocker and said Adevărat (“really”). Although I was unaware that it was a game, apparently I won because my egg remained almost unscathed through all the knocking.
At quarter past midnight I was woken up by the Easter vigil service at the cathedral. A huge throng of people with candles spilled out in front of the cathedral as a sermon played over the loudspeaker, much of which I actually understood. I wonder how many of those “vigilantes” picked up Covid. There have been services and processions and bells ringing out all this long weekend. I missed my first two Romanian Easters because I went to the UK. Then last year the restrictions meant that everything was far more muted. That leaves 2019, and I think I must have slept through the vigil service that year because I don’t remember seeing it. My blog posts from two years ago aren’t helping me. Just like last year, the Easter market has gone by the board, but they’ve Easterised the end of the square where I live, as in a normal virus-free year.
I still watch John Campbell’s informative Youtube videos on coronavirus, but I’m less dedicated than I was. After I watched one of his videos last week, Youtube suggested that I watch a different one from a American medical doctor and religious nutcase, called “Why I’m not taking the vaccine”. It had three times as many views and likes as Campbell gets (and he gets a fair few), and it attracted a long stream of comments saying that the deep state are trying to force us to take the vaccine and I’m not having any of it. I’m defiant! Six hundred thumbs up. Many commenters referenced the Bible. No Covid vaccine! Matthew 7:25 says so! I really doubt that the Gospel of Matthew said anything about vaccination or herd immunity. (I picked that verse at random; it happens to be about floods and storms, not a pandemic, but I’m sure you could find a connection there if you really wanted to.) Covid has been an eye-opener. I knew we had fake news and echo chambers, but here we have millions of people, some in positions of authority and influence, willing to dispense with the truth even when it comes to matters of life and death. I’ve even seen this in my own brother. A supporter of Brexit and the Tories, he’s happy to divorce himself from the reality that the British government have done a breathtakingly shitty job that has cost many thousands of lives unnecessarily, just because it’s his team. It’s become just like football.
I’m two-thirds of the way through Inocenții, a Romanian book that one of my students bought me for Christmas. It took me a while to get going, mainly because the language is hard. But I’ve made some headway finally. It’s all about a woman’s childhood in Brașov in the sixties, the early Communist period. The book is full of humour, though it certainly has its dark moments too. I’ve been jotting down words I don’t know, including some that I’ve come across before but forgotten, so I can look them up later. I think it’s the sixth Romanian book I’ve read.
Poker. Lately I’ve been playing tournaments exclusively. I’m at a bit of a standstill, with a run of tournaments in which I’ve either just missed out on or just made the money. I’ve been persevering with Omaha hi-lo, with little joy. Unlike the other games I regularly play, I can’t hand-read in Omaha hi-lo. That’s partly because the tournament buy-ins are tiny and people play any old junk, even hands that are real disasters like the 9993 that someone raised pre-flop with this morning. My bankroll is $661, although I expect that to drop a few dollars when I play the fixed badugi this evening. Pessimistic I know, but that tournament with its eight-minute levels plays like a turbo, especially in the early stages, and most of the time you’ll fail to make the money no matter what you do.
Update: As expected, that tournament was a waste of time. The game is played with three draws, but if I’d had ten I still wouldn’t have hit anything. Bankroll now $655. (I don’t exactly risk much of my bankroll in these tournaments.)
I’ve gone back to the dictionary part of the book I was writing, after losing heart when that Romanian teacher decided she had better things to do than help me. I’m now on the letter R, and I hope I can make some more progress this week.
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