Politics

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Not cutting it

December 1, 2019 by 0 Comments

The final month of the decade, which I still haven’t got to grips with at all, is almost upon us. In New Zealand it already is. I feel firmly entrenched in 2005, or perhaps a few years earlier. I feel grateful that Romania, in some ways, has let me step back in time.

It hasn’t been a bad week of lessons. Before my usual 90-minute session with the teenage boys, I had a half-hour “taster” with their mum, who told me she could understand English but couldn’t speak it. Then I asked her to at least have a go at speaking it, and of course she could. “I have forty-four years,” she said. Well OK, that’s not perfect, but it gets the point across, and for any of you reading this blog now, just you try to say your age in Romanian. Bet you wouldn’t have a clue. Yesterday I had the session with the two younger boys, and their mum is now happily hands-off; she knows I don’t need a translator.

I made an appointment for 2pm on Thursday to get my hair cut. The place I went to the last two times has closed down, so I thought I’d try this new place. But when I got there, they weren’t having any of my shoulder-length hair. They told me that either it’s a number 4 or whatever, or it’s no can do. My hair is part of who I am now, so I walked away. I’ll try another place next week.

I had a long chat with my dad on Thursday night. We talked at length about my aunt, whose tale is a rather sad one. In her (much) younger days she had the fortune (or misfortune, perhaps) to be handed everything. The looks, the brains, the lot. She was on all the sports teams, received a string of top grades in her O-levels, and so on. Then she met an RAF officer while still in her late teens, and she was married before her 22nd birthday. She trained as a physiotherapist, but never practised. In fact she’s never had a job at all. Her husband earned enough to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed, and being married to the RAF was her job. Mindless lunches and parties and balls. She had two children, who were conveniently shipped off to boarding school at the age of eight, and neither of them now have any time for her. They see her at Christmas, but it’s a chore. Her adult life has been dogged by a complete lack of purpose. Everything she’s done has been play. And probably as a result, she’s suffered from ongoing depression. Unfortunately she’s never listened to anyone – as Dad says, she transmits but doesn’t receive – and has lacked the presence of mind to think, oh shit, if I carry on down this path things are going to turn to something pretty custardy pretty damn fast, so I’d better do something to arrest the slide.

Sometime in the nineties my aunt developed a drink problem, to go with her smoking habit, and that hasn’t exactly helped. She used to shop till she dropped, to give her a high about as temporary as the alcohol did. Her husband, an intelligent, kind man who at least provided some semblance of stability, died of lung cancer in 2002. When I saw her in 2008 on a trip out from New Zealand, she seemed positively evil and more than a little mad, and thankfully she isn’t like that anymore, but her world has gradually shrunk. She’s now almost completely isolated. Both my brother and I get on perfectly fine with her (unlike her children, she doesn’t perceive us as a threat) and I’d have been happy to spend Christmas with her, or heck, bring her out to Romania, but anything along those lines is a total no-go.

The UK election isn’t far away now. Right now I’d say there are three broad scenarios: (1) a sizeable overall Tory majority of 50 or more; (2) a smaller Tory majority, perhaps even just a working majority; and (3) a hung parliament. And I’d attach roughly equal probabilities to all three scenarios. (A Labour majority would require a massive shift from where things currently stand, and is highly unlikely.) I’m pinning my hopes on scenario 3.

Language learning - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Romania

Take the money and run

November 24, 2019 by 0 Comments

After a no-show this afternoon (there’s nothing more annoying than that), I finished my week with 29 hours of teaching. It felt more than that – there was a lot of biking to lessons this week, and maybe that tired me out. I didn’t put an end to my lessons with that slightly weird woman after all. She told me yesterday that she’d kept pages of notes in pencil about me (what?!) and in particular she wanted to know what was going with my face. She asked me if I was a drug addict. What a question. (I’ve had flaking skin on my face for the last three weeks or so. How being a drug addict would cause that I don’t know.) After yesterday’s session I figured she was strange but ultimately (hopefully) harmless.

On Thursday I had my second lesson with the English teacher. She was marginally better this time, but now says she’d like to do two sets of exams, IELTS and Cambridge, both in the spring. She asked me how long it would take to get her up to her desired C1 level. I was honest – I said nine months at a push. This week I had – yet again – somebody who said her dream destination was Dubai. Women seem to really home in on that furnace of flagrant fakeness. I just don’t get it. For me, it would be way down at the bottom of any list that didn’t include war zones.

A popular discussion topic with my older and younger students is something I’ve called What If?, where they have to imagine what they’d do in certain situations. One of these hypothetical scenarios is where they find a package containing a large sum of cash. A majority tell me, unashamedly, that they’d take it. One of them even said, “well, I’d buy a car,” never considering an alternative to taking the money. There’s been a story in recent days of mystery bundles of £2000 turning up at random in a small town in north-eastern England, which was discussed on local radio today. The host was amazed that people were really handing the money in to the police.

Duolingo. I’m beginning to see its limitations now. A lot of intricate grammatical concepts are introduced too early, without any real explanation. In contrast, many very important words and phrases come into play too late, if at all. The Romanian course has fewer resources put into it than more popular languages do, and I don’t think the English sentences have ever been sense-checked. Some of them are worse than bizarre, they’re just meaningless non-English. At the higher levels the sentences often comprise ten or more words, and can be translated in many ways, but only some of the possible answers are marked as correct, so you’re forced to play a frustrating guessing game. The Italian course is better than the Romanian one. I’ll continue with both languages for now; the Romanian exercises have already been useful for drilling pronouns that I struggle so much with.

One of the best resources for learning Romanian I have at my disposal right now is the local radio station, Radio Timișoara. My favourite programme, when I get the chance to listen to it, is between six and seven on weekday evenings, where they play lots of older pop and rock music. This morning I listened to the sport show, even though I hardly follow sport these days. There were slightly amusing regular updates from Timișoara Saracens’ rugby match in Constanța, which the Saracens won 111-0. I heard the surname of their kicker (who must have got lots of practice in today’s match) is Samoa. The Saracens are perhaps the best team in the country, and they often make the European competition, but they’re no match for British and French teams.

Tomorrow is election day in Romania: the second of two rounds which will determine the president for the next five years. Klaus Iohannis is the incumbent, and he is facing off against Viorica Dăncilă, who was prime minister until the government fell last month. My students have quite strong opinions about Dăncilă. They aren’t flattering. They think she’s stupid and she’d be a disaster for Romania if she became president. From what I’ve seen of her, I can hardly disagree. But she came second in the first round, mopping up votes in rural parts of the country where people have lower levels of education on average.

Dad’s stunning sales in Geraldine have given him a shot in the arm. It’s great to see him (and Mum) so positive. Thinking he’s found the winning formula, he’ll be churning out rhododendron paintings like nobody’s business.

Politics - Writing a book

Could I write a book?

November 1, 2019 by 0 Comments

Lately I’ve been considering writing a book to help Romanians (specifically) improve their English. Three years and 90-odd students have given me a pretty clear idea of what pitfalls they face, and why. I’d divide the book up into chapters (confusing words, avoiding word-for-word translations, pronunciation, prepositions, verb tenses, and so on). There are plenty of similar books on the market here, but none of them are produced by native speakers as far as I can see, and most of them are brimming with misinformation. My Romanian is nowhere near good enough to write a book in that language, but maybe that wouldn’t matter, as long as I pitch it at people at intermediate level or above. It’s worth thinking about.

Yes, Britain will be having a general election on 12th December, the third in less than five years (the length of each parliament is supposed to be five years). The UK political system stopped being fit for purpose ages ago, long before the Brexit sham. It functions (if you can use that term) by making compromise almost a dirty word, and when dealing with something as divisive as Brexit it totally fails. I’ve watched snippets of Westminster in the last year, and with a few notable exceptions (Ken Clarke? Jess Phillips?) it’s been deeply depressing stuff from all the parties. The Tories (or at least those who remain in the party) have been the worst, though. So many complete and utter arseholes. And they now have double-figure leads in most of the polls. I honestly think any outcome would be better for Britain than a sizeable Tory majority, even the giant mess that a hung parliament would create, but that’s where we’re heading.

I put it to my dad a couple of weeks ago that all the time he lived in the ultra-safe Tory constituency of Huntingdon, he never really had a vote. What? Of course I had a vote. You did, but in name only. You physically marked an X on a piece of paper, but it didn’t matter. But I had one vote, just like everybody else. No! Some people’s votes in different parts of the country were dozens, hundreds of times more important than yours. But there was no point going on. I then mentioned (which I basically never do) that I have a maths degree and also passed a bunch of actuarial exams, so I really do get this stuff. He got a grade 9, which is the equivalent of an F, in his maths O-level. (They’ve recently changed the system once again, so that a 9 is the top grade.) Anyway, first-past-the-post is complete garbage, but maaaybe it’s garbage you can get away with if the (two!) major parties themselves are broad churches, but certainly not in the highly polarised environment we see today.

There are two recent election results that illustrate some of the problems with FPTP. In Canada, where they also have that insane system, Justin Trudeau was re-elected despite his Liberal party losing the popular vote to the Conservatives. Luckily, the Liberals would likely also have formed the government under a sensible proportional system, because they have a natural left-wing partner that got 16% of the vote (but not many seats). So it was really a case of two wrongs making a (sort of) right. Then in Wellington they had the mayoral election, which doesn’t use FPTP, but preferential voting instead. The incumbent Justin Lester was leading until the final count, when Andy Foster took the majority of the votes from the third-place candidate to win by just 62 votes, although Lester has requested a recount. Whichever way that goes, it seems totally fair.

It’s the second half of the week, and that means kids. Two of them coming up.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Politics

Turning it up to eleven

September 25, 2019 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I watched live coverage of the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous and damning verdict. By an 11-0 margin, they ruled that Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament for five weeks was unlawful. Yikes. I never expected that for one minute. I mean, silencing parliament for more than a month just so you get your own way should bloody well be unlawful, but the law so often makes little sense. Lady Hale wore a very striking (and symbolic?) spider brooch as she read out the decision, and she bore a slight resemblance to my grandmother at a similar age. This latest episode in the Brexit saga has brought to the fore a pair of eleven-letter words that I wouldn’t like to have to say once I’d had a few (which hardly ever happens these days): prorogation and justiciable. To be honest I’m not entirely sure how to pronounce the latter of these even though it’s 9am and I’m stone-cold sober. I think I’d go with /dʒʌˈstɪʃəbᵊl/ (jus-TI-shuh-buhl), but it’s a weird word.

Boris was in America yesterday. He met Donald Trump, and the two of them are looking more and more alike. Trump now has a pair of eleven-letter words of his own to contend with: impeachment proceedings. (OK, an impeachment inquiry.) I was hoping it would never come to this, mainly because the impeachment process, if that’s what we get, may well galvanise support for Trump. Then on Monday we had 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg giving a very powerful and emotional speech in front of the likes of Trump. So much has happened already this week and we’re less than half-way through.

On Sunday I spoke to my parents. They’ve booked their flights to Europe; they’ll be coming this way in May and will stay here for ten weeks. Can’t wait. (But it is a very long wait.) They’ll be flying direct, which I warned Dad never to do. “But we’ll have three hours in Dubai,” Mum said. Bloody great. We ended up talking, for some reason, about the Māori language. In the three years I’ve been away, it seems to have exploded. Ring up your bank now, and apparently you get a Māori (or should I say Te Reo) lesson while you’re on hold. As if the god-awful music wasn’t bad enough. My parents and aunt and uncle resent all of this, and I don’t blame them. A lady in my apartment block just forwarded me a letter she’d sent to some MPs about our situation, and at the beginning and end of the letter she’d written a sentence in Māori, complete with macrons (which represent long vowels), like the one I’ve put on the a in Māori. This woman is 0% Māori, but presumably she thinks slipping into that tongue for a few lines will help her cause when dealing with politicians. It’s a beautiful, powerful language (and the argument that it isn’t a real language because it wasn’t originally written down is absurd), but Māorification seems to be going too far, and who knows where it will stop.

It’s real Autumn here now, and I don’t mind that at all. Spring and autumn in Timișoara are lovely.

Life :) - Politics

Feels so normal

September 8, 2019 by 0 Comments

It all feels so normal now. Hopping on an elderly tram full of mostly elderly people, many of them engaging in serious arm action whenever we happen to pass a church. Gypsy women getting on in their customary brightly-coloured dresses. Today one of the women was so large she took up about as much space as Jacob Rees-Mogg did on the front benches of parliament last week. This morning I took the 7 tram to Flavia, the very popular (and large) second-hand market, although I didn’t buy anything. I then visited Shopping City, one of (so far) two malls, and picked up a whole load of practical stuff for teaching. I’m trying to expand and jazz up my already extensive collection of handmade cards and games that I think of as my trademark as a teacher. Make everything as manual as possible. My students seem to like that, but it involves many an hour spent printing, cutting and sticking.

I had a chat to my parents this morning, just before I got on the tram. These days we’re in touch at least twice a week. They said how lucky they are to have the two sons they have. It felt wonderful to hear that. On balance, I think I’d prefer to be in my brother’s shoes, despite my successful lifestyle change. His longer-term future is rather more secure than mine. He’s married, he’s got good, close friends, he’s got a work pension, and all that stuff. Whether I even have friends is debatable, and somewhat scarily, the people I know don’t know each other. One of them could die and I might never find out. And then there’s the bit about potentially getting kicked out of the country I live in. Right now, and in the short term, things are absolutely fine. Heck, if I step back a bit, I can hardly believe how well my Romania plan has worked out. But give it five years, or ten…

Back to the present. On Thursday I had my first Romanian-English session for several weeks. I got a bit frustrated at the number of basic mistakes I was making. Those pronouns. I never quite get them. My fellow teacher was surprised to learn that someone as apparently bohemian as me (in her words) spent ten years in the insurance industry. She’d been to Poland and gave me a can of Polish beer. I gave her a bottle of Rakija I picked up in Stari Bar. She said she’d been looking at enrolment forms for her course which begins later this month, and seeing 1999 and 2000 birth years. Two thousand. How did that happen? We even have, for the first time, a 2000-born grand slam finalist in Bianca Andreescu. I note that on Tuesday, I’ll have spent as much time in 20-something as in 19-something.

Brexit. The drama dial turned to max for three days solid. But good god, it should never have come to this, whatever “this” even is anymore. The debate was worth having, but a binary, in-or-out referendum on something as complex as Britain’s relationship with its European neighbours, without any plan for a Leave result, was a terrible idea. Invoking Article 50, firing the starting gun on the exit process, without any plan as to how you might actually leave, was a terrible idea. Boris Johnson. Prime minister. Terrible idea. Suspending parliament. Terrible idea. (It’s a national crisis. MPs should be sitting every hour god gives until this is sorted out. Spending less time than normal in parliament is crazy and reckless.) Leaving without any sort of agreement with the EU at all is a terrible idea, and the 21 responsible and courageous Tories who voted against it, as the country looked into the abyss, got booted out of the party instantly. (What sort of democracy is this supposed to be?)

I watched some of the speeches at Westminster last week. The best was by Ken Clarke who was Chancellor when I was in my teens. One of those responsible Tories I remember from the deep, distant past. Clarke said that the referendum was a bad idea, he didn’t like the result, but democracy must be respected and the verdict should be implemented. But given the narrowness of the result and that wrecking the country he’s served for almost half a century doesn’t exactly appeal to him, a soft Brexit is the only sensible outcome.

Robert Mugabe is, finally, no more. Good riddance. I mentioned the news to two of my students yesterday; neither of them had heard of him. That reminded me of a time I mentioned Paul McCartney, who was unknown to my 30-year-old student. It’s not that my students are stupid, just that their “window” of knowledge is different from mine. On the other side, I was embarrassed when my 18-year-old student talked about the gruesome murders of two teenage girls in Caracal in southern Romania, and I hadn’t been following the national news.

Autumn seemed to start abruptly (as seasons do here) on Tuesday, and right now it’s tipping it down.

Family - Language teaching - Politics

All fun and games

July 27, 2019 by 0 Comments

Since I last wrote I’ve spent three hours with my youngest student, over two sessions. It’s felt closer to three days. What on earth do I do with him for 90 minutes?! He’s a nice kid, and he turns six next month. Last night I had a long chat to my university friend, and we agreed that things are fundamentally different below the age of about seven. The language stuff becomes secondary. The whole concept of reading gets tricky. Simple games with dice are no longer so simple. What exactly is six plus five? Is that even a number? At that age, it’s hard even to get kids to sit still. In the last two sessions I’ve done Simon Says and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, and one or two other bits and pieces involving animals or food; otherwise I’ve just let him play. I’m not complaining in any way here. Dealing with children so young is an interesting challenge for me, and one I certainly haven’t solved yet. (I wish I’d stood my ground when I first met his mother, though. An hour is plenty long enough.)

On Sunday and Monday I created and introduced a new card game. First I sourced 52 images from the internet; for each letter of the alphabet, two pictures began with that letter (for instance, umbrella and unicorn for U). Then I painstakingly printed and cut out all the images, and glued them to pieces of card. I added a 53rd card that acted as a joker; I was going to allow it to stand for any letter, but figured that would make life too easy for anyone who happened to draw the joker, so instead I allowed it to represent any vowel. At the start of the game each player receives seven cards, and you pick up and offload cards rummy-style. The winner is the first player to have cards showing images beginning with seven consecutive letters, such as QRSTUVW. The game was a success, I’d say. It helped with my students’ vocabulary and got them to think about the alphabet and vowels and words that begin with Q and W and the like, that basically don’t exist in Romanian.

If I find the time I’ll try and create some more games. I’ve got the idea of a pizza-related board game running around in my head, as well as ones that involve building skyscrapers and climbing mountains, although actually making those last two might prove beyond me.

Last weekend I had a Skype chat to my cousin in a fairly wet Wellington. We spoke later than we normally do, and the boys were either elsewhere or tucked up in bed. Normally when I ask about the boys, everything is always damn near perfect, with their achievements running the gamut from A-pluses to gold medals to virtuoso performances in underwater debating. But this time, with the boys away from the camera, it was different. The oldest and youngest boys were still going great guns, but the middle one seemed to be suffering from significant mental health issues. He’s only 14, but that’s plenty old enough, unfortunately. It was sad to hear that, and it made me wish I was still ten minutes’ drive away, and could pop round and chat to him. I suggested to my cousin that with all his schoolwork and extra-curricular activities, his life is quite high-octane for a 14-year-old, and maybe it would help if he slowed down a bit. That might not be the reason at all, though. Quite possibly he’s being bullied at school.

Boris. He got voted in as prime minister by a two-to-one margin. No surprises there. My friend from Birmingham suggested we could be heading for a general election, which he tips the Tories to win, and a no-deal exit. Looking at the people he has brought into his cabinet (and those he’s replaced) I can’t think much beyond “holy shit” at this stage.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

My best decision: the world of work

May 25, 2019 by 0 Comments

This morning I had a Skype lesson with a very pleasant woman who speaks well but loves to say “of course” when she’d be much better off with a simple “yes”. It’s a common problem. In our first lesson we discussed the difference between “I smoke” and “I am smoking”, and I asked her if she smoked. “Of course,” she proudly proclaimed. C’mon, this is Romania, dammit! Her job involves making short films. She showed me one of her creations, which was all about Transylvania’s legends, and asked me to check the subtitles. One of the words that appeared in a caption was “landshave”. I was baffled. Landscape? Something about mowing the lawn? The penny dropped the next morning. It was missing a space between “lands” and “have”.

Then it was off to the other side of Iulius Mall for a four-hour stint with the Cîrciumaru family. The mother still only spoke English on rare occasions. There’s no convincing her of the importance of actually speaking the language. It’s rather frustrating. Teaching the boy is starting to get easier. Maybe he’s a bit more comfortable with me.

From there it was a short bike trip to see the 7½-year-old boy. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Faster and faster. Supercharged Simon Says. Throwing and catching. His card collection. His pen collection. Various forms of bingo. Glorified snakes and ladders. Games of luck that, unfortunately, he can’t always win. Vain attempts to read to him. All in all, he’s a nice boy, though.

My work day isn’t over yet. Soon I have another Skype lesson with a guy in the UK who will become a father any time now. Yesterday I had just two lessons, including a tricky one with two boys aged 15 and 12. I met the younger boy, and we entered the older boy’s room. He was in bed. At 4pm. The 12-year-old was glued to his phone. I said out loud, Why am I even here?! What’s the point? Between us we read nine news stories from the “funny” archives, but the comedy clearly didn’t work on them. I gave them a crossword, then we just talked, and I was glad to see the clock roll around to 5:30.

My job does have its awkward moments, but honestly I wouldn’t change it for the world. On Wednesday I had a lesson with a 17-year-old girl (who will be taking IELTS) and her father. We concentrated on speaking. I asked the girl to tell me about the best decision she’d ever made, and she mentioned her choice of high school. I then said that my best decision was to live and work in Romania. She was amazed by that (she has every intention of leaving the country), but I would say it’s true.

It’s just about the end of May, in more ways than one. Theresa has had to navigate some very heavy seas since she took over the helm in 2016, and her captaincy hasn’t been up to it. I’m just worried that whoever takes over will be like the captain of the Costa Concordia a few years back, and people will be wishing they could have May back, a bit like how some people view George W Bush in the Trump era.

The weather has been shocking. After Saturday night’s storm, we were hit by another, more intense one the following night. As soon as the cathedral clock struck eleven, all hell let loose and people outside began to panic. We’ve had more torrential rain and electrical storms this week.

I must get going; the Skype lesson starts in a few minutes.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

I need to get out more

April 8, 2019 by 0 Comments

I haven’t written for ages, because I haven’t had a whole lot to say. Work is absolutely fine (and that’s a big thing to be absolutely fine) but it would be nice to have a bit more of a social life. Spring has sprung and I can hear the pleasant ping of fluffy yellow objects hitting strings on the nearby courts, but I don’t have anybody to play with. (The concept of a club which you join and instantly have a playing partner or three doesn’t exist here. Not unless you’re willing to pay the earth, anyway.)

It’s safe to say that it’s all over with S. Lately she’s had to look after her grandmother who is nearly 90 and not in the best of health, but regardless of that, it’s obvious that she’s got better, more important things to do with her time than spend it with me. And soon she’ll be leaving the country to go on another of her grand tours.

As well as meeting people and getting out on the tennis court, I’d quite like to travel. There are extraordinarily beautiful regions of Romania that I haven’t yet been to (like the north-east of the country) or have been to but haven’t properly explored (such as Maramureș). So I plan to take at least a couple of weeks off in August, and perhaps a few days before then too. My friends from St Ives had planned to come over around now – we’d had the idea of going to the Danube Delta – but for various reasons they’ve had to knock that on the head.

A few of my students have said that I get quite animated in my lessons, in contrast to their experience at school or with a non-native tutor. They seem impressed at the various games and activities we do, even if continually coming up with new ones presents a challenge for me. I think I come alive in my lessons in a way I struggle to in “normal life”.

I’m finding Brexit compelling and exasperating in equal measure. Most British politicians are not arseholes, but the arseholes – the hardest of the Brexiteers – are certainly getting their moment in the sun. They are like bullies at school (and quite possibly were bullies at school), and make ridiculous comparisons between the Brexit crisis and the Second World War. The most likely outcome now would seem to be a long extension, but there’s a chance (15%?) Macron et al veto such a delay, the government refuse to revoke Article 50, and Britain are out of the EU on Friday night. In that case, Scotland will very likely exit the UK in short order.

I’ll post some photos of the very Eastery scene outside – the market started up over the weekend, and with temperatures soaring to 23 degrees, it was heaving out there.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

A beautiful day

March 25, 2019 by 0 Comments

It has been a glorious Sunday, with weather I’d describe as just about perfect. This morning I biked to Sânmihaiu Român, a village about 13 km from here but it feels a world away. Typical of a Sunday morning, there was almost nobody around, save those fishing in the Bega. There were plenty of animals though, such as a mother goat with her two kids that could only have been days old. At the village I drank a cheap coffee in the sun, then sat in a park to do some Romanian homework, then rode back. Though my bike is probably 40-odd years old, it has been a godsend. I’m able to get a decent amount of exercise and travel to lessons in a reasonable time. This afternoon I asked the lady at the nearby tennis courts how and when I can play. It isn’t a club as such; I’d need to actually find someone to play with. Not that easy. I’ve suddenly got the urge to play again.

Yesterday I joined S and her friend at a wine-tasting session at The Wine Guy, a small wine store near Piața Unirii. We spent 3½ hours there, almost half of which involved listening to the Wine Guy himself talk (in Romanian, so a good lesson for me) about the way wines are produced and classified, the process of becoming a sommelier, the varieties produced in Romania, and so on. Finally we got down to business, and tried out seven wines in all: three whites, one rosé, and three reds. We swilled them around, sniffed them, and eventually tasted them. People came up with all sorts of exotic aromas that they could supposedly discern, but to me it was a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Still, it was interesting, and I realised how much we neglect our sense of smell in 21st-century life. Wine tasting seems enormously subjective to me, and at times I was pining for a ten-dollar bottle of full-bodied Pinot Noir, instead of the far pricier stuff we tried last night with their subtle notes of raspberry or caramel. This was only the third time I’d done wine tasting; my best experience by far was in Birmingham back in 2001, when our session was hosted by Oz Clarke of Food and Drink fame. On that occasion there was no messing about as we drank New World wines in proper quantities.

The topic of wine came up twice in lessons last week. Once because cork oak trees happened to be the subject of an IELTS reading exercise; the other time was in my Romanian lesson when I told my teacher I couldn’t for the life of me pronounce the first word of the popular Romanian wine Tămâioasă Românească. It’s a beautiful-looking word, but the pile-up of vowels in Tămâioasă requires a form of mouth gymnastics for me. She then said she struggled with pile-ups of consonants in English, and wondered why the difference. I told her that English was considerably more consonant-heavy than Romanian (at least 60% consonants, as opposed to around 50% or perhaps a shade over), she then looked at a line of text in both languages, and saw what I meant.

The New Zealand government’s response to the Christchurch shooting, in particular that of Jacinda Ardern, has been very impressive. Decisive, compassionate, genuine, in touch with the people, everything you could want. Whatever your political persuasion, New Zealand’s 21st-century prime ministers have all been very good adverts for the country. The leadership shown in Britain, of course, has been the exact opposite. There were several “We want Jacinda” placards at yesterday’s anti-Brexit march. I watched Theresa May’s brief speech from Downing Street on Wednesday night and it all felt so wooden. As Dad said, it was typically British. I might be more inclined to say English. Regarding the shooting, when the subject came up in conversation last week, my student made an inadvertent joke. When I mentioned that the shooting was in Christchurch, he said, no it didn’t take place in Christchurch, it happened in a mosque.

Albert, my 7½-year-old student, is certainly a live wire. Last time I spoke to Mum, I asked her how on earth she managed with thirty kids of that age, five days a week. Albert is a nice kid, although games present a problem, because he isn’t quite mature enough to realise that you can’t always win.

Scrabble. You meet all kinds of weird and wonderful people on ISC, the Romanian-based site I play on. A little while ago I played an 80-year-old woman from Sydney who talked very positively about the tournament scene down under. She mentioned somebody by the name of Bob, assuming I knew who he was. Excuse my ignorance, but who’s Bob? Apparently she was referring to Bob Jackman, a veteran Scrabble expert. I’ve also now played three games with a semi-retired actuary. Last weekend I played a lady from Scotland who had played 31,000 games. She was bemoaning her bad luck and lack of improvement. Maybe it would help if you took a break. She then mentioned that she suffered from ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, and often struggles to leave the house. Yesterday I had perhaps my worst experience to date. My English opponent’s notes consisted of screeds of information about all sorts of things that piss him off about all sorts of players. I quite often see this (seriously, get a life people), and it rings alarm bells. Anyway, we play, he starts, I reply with a bingo, and then play short words on my next three turns because I can’t see any other options. Then he writes “you won’t be playing with me again”. I ask why, but a message flashes up on my screen to say my opponent has already added me to his no-play list, which means no-speak, too. Lovely. He then plays an obscure nine-letter bingo (a rarity which I would always congratulate, but of course I’m on his no-speak list) and I fall behind. Late in the game I find another bingo and lose by a single point, not that I particularly care by then. Perhaps that’s his tactic all along. Unsettle people by being an arsehole, so they no longer care about winning. To me it’s baffling.

I hope this fantastic weather continues.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

9/3/99

March 10, 2019 by 0 Comments

Last week was an exhausting one. I’m not sure why – my 30 hours of lessons were pretty standard – but after yesterday’s final lesson I didn’t feel like doing a whole lot. It might have been the late finishes (on five consecutive days) and all the extra to-ing and fro-ing that happens when I teach kids. With the exception of one boy, a 14-year-old, all my lessons with kids involve a trip.

When I turned up nine days ago for my lesson with seven-year-old Albert (I’d seen a Victoria earlier in the day), my heart sank. He stood almost pinned to the back of the sofa, cowering, wondering why this strange man had entered his lair. I felt sorry for him. Look, I said, it’ll be fine, knowing of course that I had an hour and a half with him, and it was likely to be anything but fine. But to my surprise, I was able to put him at ease. Being able to communicate with him in Romanian was a huge help. Unlike some kids who expect me to be fluent in their mother tongue, Albert seemed quite impressed with my Romanian skills. He had a pretty good knowledge of the basics: numbers, colours, animals, simple food items. We played a simple board game I’d created involving frogs, and before I knew it our time was up. On Friday I had my second lesson with him, and he ran up to me when I arrived. It was quite incredible to see that. He spent half the lesson wanting to run: he was a bundle of boundless energy. Simon says for god’s sake stop running! It truth it’s much easier to teach someone like him than a kid who looks perpetually bored and whose favourite words are “no” and “I don’t know”.

Yesterday I had a pair of new students – an ambitious 20-year-old couple – who want to do the Cambridge exam and perhaps move to the UK. They were both at a good level, around a 7½ on my 0-to-10 scale. They specifically mentioned Birmingham as a city they’d like to live in. The bloke marvelled at what I see as my extremely standard British accent. I get that from time to time from people who have been brought up on a diet of American movies and games. With this couple, I’ve now had 76 students (but no trombones) since I started back in November 2016.

My grandfather (Dad’s dad) passed away twenty years ago yesterday. It was a Tuesday, I was in my first year of university, my brother was in his first year in Army uniform, and my parents had been in London to try and fix up a teaching exchange for Mum in New Zealand. As it happened, New Zealand was booked out, so my parents decided to spend 2000 in Cairns (Australia) instead. My grandfather, who had been a physically strong and debonair gentleman, with quite a sense of humour to boot, spent the last decade of his life in the ever-tightening grip of Alzheimer’s. It was all very sad, and extremely hard for my grandmother. His problems came to the fore when they visited New Zealand in the summer of 1989-90 (we were living there at the time). He, who had always been a lover of the outdoors, became dizzy and disoriented when exposed to the sun. From then on it was a downward spiral. My grandmother tried to keep things as normal as possible, even going on holiday in Barbados with him and my father as late as 1996, but it was very hard work. I remember the speech my dad gave at his funeral – a very good one, especially for someone who doesn’t normally speak in public.

Last weekend S and I watched an unusual film about Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president. It wasn’t an easy watch – it brought back some ugly memories of the early 2000s: that awful election, 9/11, and the Iraq War which Britain, and of course my brother, got dragged into. I learnt plenty about Dick Cheney and the machinations of American politics at that time, but it was hard not to watch it and feel angry. It was all just a bit too close to home. S disagreed with me, but it showed to me that elections can and do matter. Had Al Gore been the victor in 2000, which he perhaps would have been if the Florida recount hadn’t been stopped by the Supreme Court, the world would be a different place now. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people’s votes in elections matter, but that wasn’t my point.

Scrabble. Five games yesterday, and just one win, despite averaging 402. At the level I play, that kind of average is likely to give you four wins rather than four losses, but it wasn’t my lucky day. I lost one game by five points when my opponent played an out-bingo, and in another game I was a long way behind, but found a bingo and some other high-scoring plays, only to fall short by three points. Even in my final game I was made to sweat a bit when my opponent played a 97-point bingo to the triple, making several overlaps, but I managed to edge over the line. My rating has dipped into the low 1300s, which is probably an accurate reflection of where I am right now.