Author: plutoman

I'm an English teacher in mad-as-a-box of-frogs Romania. Hope you like my blog! ✌️

Dreams - Photos - Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 3 of 3 (photos, and is it really worth it anymore?)

September 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

The night before last I had a weird dream in which I was forced to leave Timișoara and move to Cluj. I don’t know why the prospect was so frightening given some of the other moves I’ve made in my life. Cluj is a fine city; maybe I’ll go there with Mum and Dad if they come this way again.

It’s officially the end of summer. I don’t mind that one bit. (It got to 33 today all the same; I had to have a cold shower in the middle of the day after a bike ride.) This summer wasn’t in the same league as the infernal three months we had last year that just about did for me. A combination of the heat and the news made me feel that we were heading for hell in a handcart. A year later I’ve just about checked out of the news entirely; it’s got too much for me.

Moving to New Zealand in 2003 meant I missed out on a lot of potential travel opportunities in Europe. Now, with ever more globalisation and saminess and theme-park-isation, I wonder if it’s even worth it. It’s the differences that make travel interesting. Why not just look at the pictures while staying here? Here is more interesting to me than many popular destinations anyway, with all the funny little shops and bars and cafés. I’m reminded of an episode of Miranda where everyone thinks she’s gone on some exotic trip when in fact she’s booked into the motel down the road to avoid all the hassle. Then there’s the expense. On Sunday I played squash with Mark in Dumbrăvița, then we had pizza and beer at a place around the corner. He’d just got back from a seven-week trip (with his wife and their two dogs) around western Europe, all at unavoidably high cost.

I forgot to mention that I got a speeding ticket coming back from Slovakia. I was still in Slovakia when I was pulled over for doing 132 km/h when the limit was 110. (This was in the middle a short section when the limit dropped from 130. For the police it was like shooting fish in a barrel.) I expected the worst. When I got a fine of only €20, which I paid in cash on the spot, I was immensely relieved. I also think I might have got flashed by a camera in the Czech Republic at the start of my trip.

Here’s a selection of the pictures I took on my trip:

Firstly, Olomouc (which was lovely really) in the Czech Republic:

Kroměříž, not that far from Olomouc:

Příbor, still in the Czech Republic, birthplace of Sigmund Freud:

Bydgoszcz, Poland, where I spent most of my time:

The beautiful port city of Gdańsk in northern Poland:

Family - Life :) - Travel: the US

My US trip a decade ago and news from an ex-student

August 31, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s ten years since I took the train from Boston to Albany, New York to meet my cousin and his Italian wife to be. I spent two nights with them. We chatted over dinner and the Sam Adams beer that I’d brought with me from Boston, then they showed me around the local area. Best of all, we went for a hike in the Adirondacks, where the views were breathtaking, and visited Lake Placid. Then we made a trip to Flushing Meadow to see the opening day of the US Open. It was the first time they’d been to a grand slam, but for me it completed my set of four. I had a lovely time with them. I spent four weeks in the US in all, and when I got back I felt great. That trip – my first overseas trip for five years – gave me the impetus to do what I’ve done since. There’s a big world out there! Options. Ways to escape the cycle of hopelessness that had felt interminable. That was before the US went totally crazy. Even during Trump’s first term, it seemed his bark was worse than his bite. I felt some affinity with the US, having been there not long before. I followed baseball. I read Fivethirtyeight, my favourite website at the time. (It no longer exists.) Now I don’t follow US-based news because it’s just too appalling.

Yesterday I was in contact with the lady whom I gave nearly 200 lessons before and during Covid, until I said we couldn’t carry on. She was downright weird. And obsessive. And bored. Since then she’s become a hairdresser – having an actual job has helped her no end. Last year her son, whom I also used to teach – he got very good at English – was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Heartbreaking, really. He was a very smart cookie who wanted to be a pilot. We spent large chunks of lessons discussing passenger planes and routes, and often watched videos on the subject. He seemed to have all the right attributes for captaining a triple seven, including his excellent English. Then disaster struck. Dream over. His mother said he’s handled the last year remarkably well with all his treatments and analyses and tests. He’s just got his driving licence – his parents have bought him a Mercedes, as you do when your kid is 18, though I think in this case it’s a form of recognition for the very shitty time he’s had. They’re in the final stages of getting a house built in Mehala, one of my favourite parts of Timișoara, and should move in before Christmas.

I had another video call with my parents yesterday. Mum looked a lot better – on Wednesday she looked like death warmed up. So that was a relief, but sadly it’s just a matter of time until the next episode.

Cat - Family - Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 2 of 3

August 28, 2025 by 0 Comments

I got back on Sunday evening. The next morning I picked Kitty up from the pet hotel after one of the workers had introduced me to a monstrous moggy weighing eight kilos. Kitty didn’t especially want to leave, but as I write this she looks pretty comfortable in her favourite spot atop the tall cupboard in the living room.

As planned I paid Gdańsk a visit last Thursday. I was only there for three hours. Everywhere I looked the architecture was stunning. The first building I clapped eyes on was the rather nice railway station, and things only improved from there. Gdańsk is pretty damn touristy, however, and that’s why I didn’t spend much time there and certainly didn’t book any accommodation there. I’ve developed an allergy to tourism-based theme parks. The river is spectacular and they make excellent use of it, unlike what you see – or don’t see – on Romania’s waterways. Pleasure boats are almost nonexistent here. After I sent Dad a bunch of photos of Gdańsk, he filled me in on its history. It was a shipbuilding city – Lech Wałęsa, Poland’s first president after communism, worked at the shipyard. I’ve been reading up on Wałęsa who is still alive today (he’ll be 82 next month). The changes he brought about sound overwhelmingly positive. (I was ten years old when he took over, so I wasn’t paying attention.) In Romania, many of those who gained power after 1989 were part of the old guard anyway, but in Poland there was more of a clean break. That’s probably why Poland made a swift recovery from communism while Romania’s has been much more gradual. Poland was one of the countries I thought of moving to, but a lower level of development is actually what drew me to Romania instead. It would make life that bit more interesting. For instance, yesterday I saw an old lady – probably a gypsy – sitting on a grassy area in the middle of a city centre car park, knitting. On Tuesday as I was walking home, I saw a family (again, probably gypsies) in some makeshift vehicle, dragging some sort of cargo behind them. Bits kept falling out and falling off. I’m guessing I wouldn’t see these things in a similar-sized Polish city.

Getting out of Gdańsk to go back to Bydgoszcz was a chore. My GPS sent me round in circles; it couldn’t handle the road works. I thought I might never properly escape the city. I became pretty damn au fait with the eighties hits radio station. Because I was stuck in traffic I could Shazam one of two of the Polish songs, such as this one by Urszula which came out in ’84. I even started to pick up the odd word of Polish, like czwartek, which means Thursday. I began to doubt it would still be czwartek when I got back. When I finally did so, I grabbed a spicy pork dish from across the road.

My last day in Bydgoszcz was a relaxing one. I wandered to the other side of the river where there was even more impressive architecture and a great park. For lunch tried a Polish speciality from a kiosk – a half-baguette (cut lengthways) with some mushroomy topping and ketchup. It had a tricky name that I can’t remember; to be honest it didn’t do much for me. When I got back to the apartment I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and attempted to learn some Scrabble words.

On Saturday it was time to head back home. I’d managed to book into a place in Žilina in Slovakia by phone without any need for card. It was a 604 km trip to get there, taking me via a corner of the Czech Republic. There’s not much to say about Žilina, a large town whose centre is dominated by communist-era buildings. In town I had a tasty pizza with anchovies and a Czech beer called Bernard to go with it. My accommodation was fine. Breakfast was included, so the next morning I had bacon and eggs, though not as I know it. The strips of bacon were fried into the three eggs. Nothing wrong with that, just not what I’m used to. Then I was back on my way. A whopping 731 km to get home. The traffic was great; it only took me nine hours including various stops including one at Tesco (yes, Hungary has Tesco) just outside Kecskemét.

Mum and Dad have had all kinds of issues with their places in St Ives in the last few days, including a leak into the flat below theirs which seems to have nothing to do with them at all. They’ve been very stressed by all this. When I saw them yesterday, the atmosphere was beyond miserable. It’s horrible to see. Mum loses all sense of proportion when these things happen, which (because they’ve complicated their lives to this extent) they do with regularity. If I ever suggest that she takes a step back and sees that it really isn’t that bad, she’ll refuse to even talk to me. Bloody great, isn’t it?

I’ll put up the photos in my next post.

Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 1 of 3

August 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m writing this from Bydgoszcz. I’ve had two days here with two more to go, and then I’ll have the long journey back to look forward to.

I dropped Kitty off at the pet hotel at 9am on Saturday – it was fun to see all the other cats there – then I drove the most I’d ever covered on a single day: 717 km in all. Most of that was through Hungary. There were the expected hold-ups on the motorway – accidents, road works, heavy traffic – but it wasn’t too bad really. Romania’s acceptance into Schengen at the start of the year has helped matters. I paid the road tax as I entered Slovakia, but I didn’t pay the Czech tax so I had to ensure I was off any toll roads before crossing my third border of the day. Avoiding the motorway made for a more interesting last two hours of driving than what had come before. Being a Saturday there were weddings and other events; a lot of people wore traditional Czech costumes. After negotiating torrential rain – the worst I’d experienced while driving since my time in Wellington – I arrived at my perfectly adequate apartment at 7:10. The owner had been very helpful and had given me self-explanatory instructions including a video.

The next morning I drove the short distance to the smallish city of Olomouc which lies on the Morava river. It was many degrees cooler than Timișoara had been. Although it was Sunday I wasn’t sure about parking. Was I parked legally? How could I tell? I wandered around the town centre with its cobbled streets. The main square was a highlight, in particular the communist-era astronomical clock. It had several dials showing moon phases and whatnot, and incorporated mechanical figures representing people of industry who would come out every hour on the hour and hammer away. After an hour I went back to the car which was still there, untowed and unstickered, and I assumed I was safe. I went into various churches, including one in which its Sunday service was in full swing, and also the cathedral. The best bit was probably scaling the bell tower (206 steps), giving me a panoramic view of the city. Back to the car. Mine was still fine, but the one in front had been clamped. Yikes. It was only 2:30 so I got the heck out of there and went to Kroměříž which, like Olomouc, is a town full of splendid architecture. It also has a garden which belongs to some kind of stately home. This time I could ask someone about parking, and having determined I was safe, I had a good look around.

The following day necessitated another long drive – 621 km to Bydgoszcz in Poland. Dorothy recommended I visit Příbor on the way. It’s a very picturesque town – some of the narrow streets are quite beautiful – which sits about an hour from Olomouc. She suggested it because it’s the birthplace of Sigmund Freud, her great-grandfather. There was Freud signage everywhere; the square was even named after him. I tried to park in the square but I had no Czech cash and my card was rejected for some reason, so I parked further out. Because it was Monday, the day when none of these things are open, I couldn’t go in the house where Freud was born. Then the rest of my drive. Not much to say about that, although I got a message from my bank saying my card had been blocked. Over the border into Poland, the speed limit on the motorway rose to 140 km/h. On the stretches with only two lanes, you’re pretty much forced to do that speed too. As it became apparent that I’d arrive rather earlier than I said I would, I decided to check out Bydgoszcz before heading to the apartment. I found a car park, but oh shit, how am I going to pay? No working card, no Polish cash. I had no choice but to race to the mall (a 20-minute walk) which seemed to be the only place where I could get my hands on some złoty at 6pm without a card. (I was able to exchange some euros.) Straight back to the car park having hardly seen the city at all, then to the apartment. Nobody there. I call the number, a woman answered. Do you speak English? She laughed. No. Bloody fantastic. I then got a message full of indecipherable Zs and Ws and Ys which I put into Google Translate. This place is keyless – the doors all rely on pin codes – and I got myself in eventually. Stressful though. Just like the last place, it does the job just fine.

The town centre is within walking distance of where I’m staying. Yesterday I wandered around the river, Mill Island, the old granary buildings and the main streets in the centre. Everything is in very good nick. I also went up a water tower which is already up a hill, so I got some nice views from there. Perhaps the most incredible building is the 15th-century cathedral whose interior has a unique colour scheme with its striking purples and reds and oranges, like nothing I’d ever seen before. When I got back I got a takeaway from the Asian restaurant opposite. Its menu is vast. I took a picture of the Polish menu and went back to the apartment to figure it out before ordering an Indonesian curry. It was delicious and enough for two nights. Today I visited a museum of dirt and soap (why not?). They had a tour in English, thankfully. The guide was perfectly understandable despite his dodgy pronunciation. We started off by each making our own bar of soap by mixing glycerine with lavender and colouring and putting in a mould. At the end of the tour our moulds had all set. In between we had a (rather short) run-through of historical washing practices – both clothes and bodies. The most interesting bit was when he told us about the primitive washing machines and detergents – and even loo paper – that were used by Poles as late as the 1980s. Times were tough then. Later I went to a museum of explosives – it was an explosive factory during WW2 so visiting had a sinister feel about it – but a lack of non-Polish signage detracted from the experience somewhat.

Tomorrow I’ll probably visit Gdańsk, a bigger city on the coast, a two-hour drive from here. Then the following day, my last day, I don’t plan to do a whole lot. About my card, well I called the bank yesterday. I assumed they’d detected some “suspicious activity” because I was out of the country, but it had nothing to do with that. For some reason when I tried to renew my website (through a NZ provider) last week, my card failed. I was still able to make a bank transfer but it triggered something in the system and my Romanian bank blocked my card a few days later. They can’t reactivate it; I have to wait until I get back when they’ll give me a replacement card. Until then I’m relying entirely on cash. Good job I brought plenty of euros (€425) with me. That will awkwardise my stay on the way back. I’ll probably stay somewhere in Slovakia – at least they use the euro there – but booking.com is out of the question. I’ll have to rock up somewhere, after a drive in the high-600s km range, and hope for the best.

Family - Life :) - Music

Just before I go…

August 16, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m just getting packed up for tomorrow, having finished my last lesson. It’s much easier when I’m not having to fly anywhere. I’m including a kettle; in Romania there’s no guarantee you’ll get one and I have a feeling Poland will be similar.

I’ve spoken to all my immediate family today. My brother said he had a go at Mum for still driving even though her eyesight is equivalent to downing five pints. Don’t blame him – it’s inexcusable – but I’ve decided not to go there with Mum. He also mentioned his frustration with Mum and Dad’s negativity whenever he speaks to them. I feel the same as him. As an example, I got the Maori stuff again recently. Even though I broadly agree with them, I don’t want to hear it for the 85th time. If it was impinging on their quality of life to even a remote extent, I’d be a bit more receptive. Maybe negativity is something that comes with old age.

When I saw Dorothy on Tuesday, she had the order of service for the funeral of Samantha, a medical student from India whom I met twice last year at Dorothy’s church. I didn’t know she’d died in May at just 27. Around Christmas she contracted a rare disease – some kind of inflammation of the brain, Dorothy said – and was put in an induced coma. Even though I didn’t know her well at all, she seemed a very nice young woman; to have two-thirds of her expected life taken from her is very sad. Dorothy said she’d gone to a better place and so on, but that isn’t at all what I believe.

Today is Sfânta Maria, or St Mary’s Day. If you’re one of the millions of Romanian women called Maria or men called Marian or Marius, or numerous other variations, you get to celebrate your name day today. It’s one of the two biggest name days on the calendar, the other being St John (Ion, Ioan, Ionuț, Ioana, …) which is in January.

I don’t think I mentioned that the plumber had been. He created a U-bend under the sink, and after fiddling around with the shower for a while, seems to have got rid of the stench. Which is great.

At the market this morning I went past the stall where the guy often pumps out Depeche Mode on his speakers. Today he was playing something Depeche Mode-esque that I liked but hadn’t heard before. I Shazammed it; I was only the 183rd person to do so, it said. It was a British band called the Recreations with a song called Neoprene which came out in 2016.

It’s 36 degrees right now. Yeah, bugger this.

Cat - Travel: Europe

Off to a land unspoiled by vowels

August 15, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m off to Poland just 36 hours from now. I’m spending five nights in Bydgoszcz (say “bid”, then “gosh”, then add a “ch” at the end, and you’ll get pretty close to pronouncing this intimidating name). Because it’s close to 1300 km which is much too far to go in a single drive, I’m breaking up the journey by spending two nights in the Czech city of Olomouc (say “o-lo-moats” in three syllables). Bydgoszcz, which is in the northern half of Poland, has great architecture and isn’t touristy at all from what I can gather. Avoiding expensive touristy cities (theme parks, if you like) is an absolute must for me. Because I’ll have four full days in Bydgoszcz, I’ll have plenty of time to look around and maybe even make a day trip to Gdańsk on the coast, which does get a bit of tourism. I should accomplish two main goals: one, simply to get away (and visit two new countries which is a bonus), and two, to escape the heat. On the way back I’ll have a one-night stop – probably in Olomouc again.

Kitty has added an extra wrinkle to planning this sort of trip. What do I do with her? As an experiment, I dropped her off at Dorothy’s on Tuesday morning, just for the day. Dorothy got a kitten in June. Maybe the two felines would get on fine, even though mine was twice the size of hers, in which case a longer stay could work. No such luck. Her kitten was scared of Kitty (don’t blame her) to the point where she hid for four hours. Dorothy couldn’t find her. They had to be separated, and even that didn’t entirely work because their scents lingered… So I’ve booked Kitty in for nine nights at a so-called pet hotel in Timișoara, at a cost of 540 lei (£90 or NZ$210). In the longer term I’ll have to think about what to do. Kitty’s lovely and everything, but if I want to be spending a month in New Zealand and stuff, I’m sad to say she might not be worth the hassle and expense.

I got a surprise letter in the post from the Romanian equivalent of the IRD, saying that I hadn’t declared my foreign income for 2019. What the hell? That’s six years ago. Did you mean my NZ rental income (which I’d already paid tax on) or what? I went to the office yesterday but the queue was a mile long. This morning I got there much earlier and they told me it was to do with the £51 of interest I’d apparently received on my Barclays account that year. When I get back from Poland I’ll have to make another trip there – it sounds like I’ll have to do something on a self-service kiosk. Some of the stuff you get in Romania is laughable.

On Monday morning after my Romanian lesson I got a call from Mum and Dad. Sunday was a stinker (we topped out at 38) and it didn’t drop below 22 that night, so I slept terribly. Talking to them was a struggle. I can’t wait to escape that.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Scrabble

Mum’s good idea

August 9, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum has always just wanted the best for me, even if she sometimes hasn’t known what “the best” is, which isn’t entirely her fault. Last week she said, wouldn’t it be nice if you were earning a bit more, and couldn’t you do that by giving online maths lessons? To Brits and the like, and be getting three times what you’re making now? That’s actually a very good idea, Mum. One of your best, in fact. Now, implementing it is a whole different matter. Drawing graphs, drawing shapes, writing equations – so much of maths is outside the realm of simple text, making online teaching quite challenging. I’d need a bunch of equipment, such as a stylus pad and a camera that focuses on my desk. That could get expensive. I’d also have the job of rigging up and dismantling all those gizmos as I switch from online maths to face-to-face English or whatever I happen to be doing next. Then there’s getting the students in the first place, and if I do, finding time in my schedule for them. I can envisage some late nights. Finally, if I go down this route, the stakes increase. I’ll probably have to set up my own company. I mentioned this to a student of mine (an accountant) on Wednesday; she said there were two ways of doing this that each come with their pros and cons. It would be fantastic to be earning enough to bomb around Europe for a month every year without feeling guilty about it, but although I’m often busy with work and don’t take much time off, my work life in Romania has so far been pleasantly low-octane, and online maths teaching would certainly change that. The idea is worth considering, all the same.

On Thursday I had a new student of English, my first for a while. He’s 16 and wants to do the B2 Cambridge exam in November. He was a nice enough guy, though I couldn’t help look at his tattoos. He had two Roman numeral dates (day, month and year in full), inked conspicuously just below his knees. They were dates in the seventies I think, so I’m guessing they were his parents’ birthdates. I have no idea why you’d want to do that, but each to his own I suppose.

This morning I picked some plums from the trees in Mehala. I picked a fair few from outside the cemetery, because they clearly didn’t belong to anybody. (Last year one lady complained that I was stealing them.) As well as the usual purple plums, there was also a greengage-type variety. They’ll mostly go into a crumble. I also went to the market there for the first time in ages – it was like stepping back in time in a nice way – then bought some eggs from a vending machine on the way home. I won’t be going anywhere for the rest of the day. It’ll simply be too hot. As for tomorrow, forget it.

The football is back up and running again. Birmingham and Ipswich were two divisions apart last season, but last night they faced off in the opening Championship fixture. I didn’t see the game, but Ipswich scored from a last-minute penalty to eke out a 1-1 draw after Blues had dominated. I don’t know much about footballers these days; I often just go by their names. Blues looked likely to sign a striker, currently at Ajax, called Chuba Akpom, which I thought was a great name (it even has pom in it), then Ipswich looked like they would get him instead. Maybe they still will. (That’s one reason why last night’s game was fairly high-profile.) Blues did ending up getting someone called Marvin Ducksch, which is a pretty fun name too, if hard to type. I doubt I’ll be watching much football this season. It’s too much of a time sink. And then next summer there will be the World Cup, now bloated to the max. It’ll never stop.

Last night I played Scrabble online for the first time in ages. I was strangely nervous; there were some crazy people on there the last time I tried. I just played one game and won by 130 points. I put down one bingo: SLATERS, another name for woodlice. (I just looked it up. It says the word “slater” is only used in that sense in Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. All that time in NZ made me think it was a universal name for the little bug.)

I’ve had a good few weeks on the weight-loss front. I’m down to 72.5 kg, or eleven stone six. I’ve dropped twelve pounds since March.

On Thursday there was a national day of mourning after Ion Iliescu, the controversial first post-revolutionary president of Romania, died at 95.

Cat - Family - Life :) - Music - Writing a book

We need more Mikas

August 6, 2025 by 0 Comments

On Saturday I made another trip to Jimbolia. My parents called me while I was there. I tried to give them a video tour of the town but they were struggling to stay awake. Jet lag has hit them both hard this time around, though I think they’re just about over it now. After Mum’s ongoing irregularity, she’s all of a sudden very regular indeed. A more pressing problem for her is her eyesight. Dad says it’s got worse since I saw her in the UK, which must mean she’s practically as blind as a bat now. And she’s still driving a car. Yeesh. It doesn’t bear thinking about. As for me, it’s taken me a heck of a long time to get over the bug I probably picked up from my nephew. My doctor gave me some soluble pills last week and they seem to have worked.

On Saturday night I went to a free concert in Parcul Civic. I say free, but there were ample opportunities to buy overpriced food and drink if you wanted. I only turned up for the end of the concert to see Mika, the British–Lebanese artist who had a biggish hit with Grace Kelly in 2007. He’s had a couple of other hits since then that I didn’t even realise were him. I really enjoyed his versatility, his enthusiasm, his humour. He’s a bit mad, which helped. He could even speak a few words of Romanian. I was impressed. I mean, întoarceți-vă (turn around) isn’t the easiest phrase to articulate. He lived part of his childhood in Paris, so he probably grew up bilingual (at least), which would make learning other languages easier. I came away thinking, he’s a good guy, isn’t he. The world needs more Mikas.

Not much other news. The ex-owner of this place left behind an expensive-looking speaker system (and much more: a Gucci watch, a load of books including Grey’s Anatomy and a bunch of novels I’ve since read, and family photos). I’ve only just got round to getting the speakers working. I’m now able to play music through them from my laptop. I’m impressed with the sound quality. (Right now I’m playing Kiwi band The Phoenix Foundation.)

Later today a plumber should be coming over to look at the pong in the bathroom. It’s been a problem since I got the bath leak fixed last year. Dad, who’s more clued up on these matters than me (who isn’t?), couldn’t tell where the stench was coming from any more than I could. I really hope the plumber (not the same one as last year, obviously) won’t have to dismantle the tiles around the bath (again) to get at it.

I’ll try and persuade Dorothy (who now has a kitten) to have Kitty for a trial 24-hour period. If it works, great. I should be good to go to Poland or wherever for a few days and I can offer to take her cat in exchange. If not, well at least I tried.

Only two lessons today. With a bit more free time, I’m getting back to the book about my tennis partner. I had to reread the first five chapters – I couldn’t even remember what I’d written, it’s been so long.

Getting a view of Mika through the foliage

A couple of Kitty pics

Family - Language learning - Maths teaching

Daily dose of maths

August 2, 2025 by 0 Comments

This week I’ve had five 90-minute maths lessons with a girl who is 16 coming 17. I taught her the basics of trig, which she took to like a duck to water. It’s always good on the (relatively rare) occasions that they just get something. In today’s session, after we’d been through some constructions with a compass and straightedge, we did part of a past paper. The question she struggled most with was what I considered one of the easiest. Sophie uses two-thirds of a litre of milk per day. A bottle of milk contains 2 litres. Show that she’ll need to buy 3 bottles to last her 7 days. Soon there was an opaque soup of fractions and common denominators and who knows what else on her page.

That’s a lot of time spent with one person in a week. Her parents clearly have no problem affording that many lessons, and it may well be more of the same next week. She turns up in a car that cost more than mine did, wearing clothes that cost more than mine, with a phone that cost much more than mine, and so on. I think she’ll do fine in her IGCSE next year. And in life. She’s fine, but she’s just the sort of person who becomes the kind of manager that I’d prefer not to have. I mentioned her car – well, in Romania you’re allowed to drive an underpowered “toy” car at 16, which is what she has. Only at 18 can you drive a standard car.

I’ve done a bit better with my Romanian of late. The odd extra YouTube video or phone call or chat at the market. Visiting the market in the evening, when it’s quieter, is better for that. Some of the stallholders are intrigued. I mean, us non-native speakers of Romanian are thin on the ground, so they want to know the story. The nice ones do, anyway. One or two take my imperfect Romanian as an affront to their ears.

Mum and Dad are suffering a bit from jet lag. More than they did when they arrived in Romania, and that’s despite them breaking up the journey. At least Dad had decent compression stockings this time, so his feet didn’t swell up alarmingly. He’d just been to see the doctor who complimented him on keeping his warfarin levels well within the safe range. If only Mum could see the doctor too. When I asked her about her regularity, she succinctly said, “my irregularity, you mean”.

I recently unearthed this blog post from February 2021 in which I said I was “all for” my parents’ move. Yikes. I really had no idea, did I? I seriously thought they’d be simplifying their lives by moving into somewhere smaller. I trusted them fully – they knew about houses and stuff, I didn’t. And I didn’t quite appreciate how good their old place was. And was it really 4½ years ago?

Some problems from the linguistics competition:

This was a fun one. I managed to nut it out without too many problems.

This family-based one was a bit trickier, but I got there in the end.

As for this one with the fish, not a chance!

Cat - Family - Language teaching

Mum and Dad back in NZ, plus the benefits of benign weather

July 30, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s a busyish day for the time of year: three lessons down, two to go. At the start of the first lesson, Kitty was energised by the intercom bell as usual. My student’s father came up to my door, apologising for being late. Could I extend the lesson beyond our scheduled time? Doorstep chats don’t work very well with an energised Kitty, and sure enough she ran out the door and up the stairs. No harm done – I picked her up easily – but it was a dramatic start to my work day all the same.

Mum and Dad arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday morning, their time, having been away for the best part of three months. They said their flight from Singapore was the worst they’d ever experienced in terms of turbulence. These storms have been occurring at higher altitudes for some reason and planes are unable to fly above them. The day they left Singapore, they had an 11am checkout from their hotel. They both slept in until then, which was only 4am in the UK, entirely by accident. It didn’t seem to be a problem, and they could even use the hotel pool until they were ready to leave for their early-evening flight. My parents are fans of the city state. It’s clean – the draconian litter laws help there – and, for them, predictable: they’ve stayed there several times before. I’m on the fence about the place; criticism of the governing party (which has been in power for just about ever) doesn’t go down too well. I’ve been there twice: once when I was nearly seven (the colossal plazas and space-age-seeming tech were fascinating for a small boy) and again in 2008.

Temperatures in Timișoara approached 40 towards the end of the last week. Pure hell, in other words. My sleep was broken at best. Doing anything became a real challenge. Then on Saturday night a storm ripped through. The temperature nosedived by 15 degrees in a couple of hours. A number of concertgoers were injured in the storm and ended up in hospital. Since then, our highs have remained in the mid-20s and there’s often been a nice breeze. What a welcome change. It’s helped me think more clearly and get some odd (but important) life admin jobs done.

Last weekend, when I was still reeling from the hot weather, I attempted to solve some sample problems from linguistics olympiads. Yes, the linguistics olympiad is a real thing in which high school students compete both individually and in teams. (I like that they do both.) This year’s edition has just taken place in Taiwan, while next year’s will be in Romania. There were 15 or so problems, ranging from very doable to (for me) impossible. They’re really just logic puzzles. If word A in some obscure language means X in English, and word B means Y, what does word C have to mean? No prior knowledge of the language is required, which is why they choose obscure languages (so speakers of that language don’t gain an unfair advantage), but knowledge of how languages work in general, and the features they can have, is a must. There was one problem involving seven fishermen each describing their catch in the language of their remote island, with accompanying pictures (out of order) of what each man had caught. You had to match them, with the added wrinkle that one of the men was lying. I was all at sea (!) there. The language clearly had features that I’d never seen before, and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it in terms of how the size and number of fish were expressed.

I hope people didn’t go down to Caroline Bay to see the tsunami generated by the earthquake off Kamchatka (which I only know from the game Risk). In 1960, tens of thousands did just that following the massive Chile earthquake. The tsunami, which they called a tidal wave back then, never came.

I still need to decide if I’m going anywhere and what to do with Kitty if I am.