Politics

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.

Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Politics - Tennis

Don’t panic!

January 27, 2019 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I had my first “half-and-half” lesson with the teacher at Universitatea de Vest. In the Romanian half of the session, she kept complimenting me on my knowledge of the language, but said I need to relax a lot more when speaking it. I shouldn’t beat myself up when I can’t find the right word. Nor should I panic when I’m at the front of a long queue and I’m told to “Speak!”. That’s solid advice. She also helped me with those pesky pronouns. “She sent it to me.” Mi l-a trimis or Mi-a trimis-o, depending on whether the thing she gave me is masculine or feminine. You might add a mie at the end if you want to emphasise that she gave it to me and no-one else. It gets way harder than this, and after more than two years I still struggle.

I had a couple of Skype chats with New Zealand relatives, yesterday and today. They were shocked when I turned the screen around and everything was white; we’ve had another fairly major dumping of snow, including mega-snowflakes the likes of which I’d never seen before. My cousin and family might be coming over next January. Let’s hope so. I really miss the ten-minute drive to their place on a Sunday, seeing the three boys grow up, the roast dinners, the chats. Just as we were about to hang up, my cousin dropped a bombshell of sorts: her husband had just resigned from his job.

The watched the women’s Australian Open final this morning, and a bloody good match it was too. It lacked those long, scrambling, edge-of-your-seat rallies (the only point that fell into that category came at 5-5 in the first set and featured three net-cords), but apart from that, it was gripping stuff. The lefty-versus-righty match-up and the fact that they’d never played before added to the unpredictability. The drama dial got turned up to 9 when Kvitova saved those three match points. From 5-3 in the second set to 0-1 in the third, Osaka went through a stretch where she lost 11 points out of 12, then another where she lost 12 of 12. The stuffing had been knocked out of her. But she showed impressive fortitude in putting all of that behind her. At 2-4 in the third, Kvitova even fended off triple break point with a barrage of big serves, and at 4-3 Osaka might have cracked, but her own serve was brilliant throughout. Either player would have been a worthy champion (and don’t forget that Kvitova was stabbed two years ago) but Osaka has now won the last two grand slams and is the new number one.

Tomorrow we’ve got the men’s final. Djokovic against Nadal, yet again, in a repeat of the final from seven years ago, which might as well have been played on another planet. I’ll stick my neck out and say that this match won’t last almost six hours, because there’s now a super tie-break (boo!) if they get that far, and a proper shot clock. I can’t pick a winner though: they’ve both been in supreme form the last two weeks. The 2012 final was a bright spot in what was otherwise a shitty period for me. I moved house, something I wasn’t particularly interested in doing, everything went pear-shaped at my job, and my grandmother died. I still miss her. At times I wonder what she’d have made of my move to Romania. I think she’d have loved it here, actually. The late summer evenings, sitting out in the bars in the square, the buildings, the similarities between the Romanian language and Italian (she spent some time in southern Italy).

I’ve been watching the Brexit shambles, and it seems Britain of 2019 bears little resemblance to the country I was brought up in. A country of compromise, of pragmatism, of tolerance for others’ views. The actions of senior politicians in the last few months have been totally irresponsible. That includes Jeremy Corbyn, whose non-Brexit policies I have a lot of time for. Regarding Brexit, however, he just seems to want maximum chaos. As for Theresa May, I had sympathy for her in the early days of her tenure, but not any more. In 2017 she called an unnecessary election, thinking she could lead the Tories to a thumping majority without even showing up. That didn’t exactly happen, but she acted as if nothing had happened. Ten days ago her deal got annihilated in parliament. Still it was as if nothing had happened. In between, she has kowtowed to the extremists on the back benches of her party, while the country has become more and more polarised. The saga has become a game, where leavers want the gold medal they “earned” in 2016, they want it now, and sod the consequences. The tragic thing is that 2½ years have gone by since the referendum, and the multitude of reasons why so many people decided to give the middle finger in 2016 haven’t been addressed at all.

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

Social life – what’s that?

November 5, 2018 by 0 Comments

After last week I was absolutely knackered. To be honest I still am. I had 30½ hours of lessons, which is a healthy rather than a ridiculous total, but it was my biggest week since April. With more work comes more exercise: the most convenient way for me to travel to my “off-premises” lessons is by bike.

On Friday night I joined S for drinks to celebrate her recent purchase of an apartment. After my experience, why entering the property market should be a cause for celebrating is beyond me, but I got to meet some of her work colleagues and we ended up at the Bierhaus where we tried some locally-brewed craft beers. S invited me to play board games last night, but I had two more lessons yesterday morning and after that I felt extremely sluggish so I said no. Normally I might have agreed, but tonight I’ll be seeing the film about Bohemian Rhapsody (which has the makings of a treat) with S and some of her friends. Three social events in a single weekend are one too many for me. Whatever happens with S, it’s great to have a semblance of a social life in Timișoara at last. I’m planning on joining S on a trip to Sibiu, either for Romania’s centenary on 1st December, or the following weekend. Either way, we’ll be there for the amazing (from what I’ve heard) Christmas market.

Interesting moments keep cropping up at work. One of my female students is a 23-year-old in her final year of a medical degree. Sometimes I also see her younger sister, who speaks English at a very basic level, at the same time. One time, when both sisters were in attendance, I did a lesson on directions, because the topic seemed appropiate for both of them. At one point I talked about pubs. “Is there a good pub near here? How do you get to the nearest pub?” The older sister then said that she didn’t do pubs, and could we please make the destination a church instead? She’s a devout adherent of the Pentecostal church.

After yesterday’s lessons I read a few chapters of The Handmaid’s Tale (S had given me a copy) and played eleven games of Scrabble, winning nine. I am improving, without doubt. My last game had just a 12-minute clock but I coped with that without too many problems. My next step (and it’s a big one) is to learn the words. I need to have the threes down pat and get a handle on their front and back hooks. I got my fingers burnt in a recent game by not realising ADRY was a word (why would it be?), and voilà, my opponent was able to hook an A onto the front of DRY and make use of the triple word square in the endgame, leaving me a-high and a-dry. I lost that game by three points. I get down plenty of bingos, but the vast majority of those are words I know from everyday life, and at some point I’ll actually need to study them in a way that isn’t a chore, if such a method exists.

Yes, the Red Sox are so-called world champions for the fourth time this century. Great city, great fans, you can’t say they don’t deserve it. What an incredible season they had.

The midterm elections take place on Tuesday night, my time. The Trump factor has focused the world’s attention on them in a way I’ve never seen before. According to Fivethirtyeight, one of my favourite sites, the Democrats will take the House but the Republicans will keep the Senate, so long as there isn’t a systematic polling error in one direction, which you can hardly discount.

Sodding Halloween, which shouldn’t be within 5000 miles of Romania’s borders, is mercifully over. It’s 4th November and it’s T-shirt weather here.

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

A cluster of random thoughts

September 9, 2018 by 0 Comments

I didn’t watch the women’s US Open final, but now wish I had, for the sheer drama alone. Serena is an incredible player but she’s also a bully, with a “Don’t you know who I am?!” attitude. She has a history of using her bullying tactics at the US Open in particular, where she knows the crowd will probably side with her (as, shamefully, they did in this match). This time she also made completely irrelevant comments about being a woman and having a daughter. I’m pleased that Naomi Osaka played great tennis and got over the line, even if Serena and an obnoxious crowd robbed her of that special moment of winning her first grand slam. Osaka even felt the need to apologise for winning. I suppose I shouldn’t feel too sorry for Osaka – she took home US$3.8 million, which is a crazy amount just for being rather good at whacking furry yellow objects over a net with a bat.

This year’s US Open has seen its fair share of upsets and retirements; the searing heat has been a major factor in the latter. The biggest shock on the men’s side was Federer’s loss to John Millman. I remember Millman from my first day at Flushing Meadows three years ago. I was queuing with my cousin and his fiancée, and Millman (who I didn’t recognise, but I saw his name tag) was at the next-door kiosk, trying to sort out something quite important for his match that was due to start in half an hour. I thought at the time he was clearly one of the have-nots of tennis. With his win over Federer he’ll make the world’s top 50, and he earns nearly half a million for reaching the quarter-finals, so he’s starting to do quite nicely from the game.

On a different day, Federer would have beaten Millman in straight sets, but on this occasion he wasn’t at his best on the big points. On the same day as this match, I watched the Red Sox beat the Braves by the totally flattering score of 8-2, a game in which they were outplayed for long periods, with the result in serious doubt until the eighth inning. After these two results in different sports, I thought about the importance of clustering and sequencing, in sport (and in life too). There are different concepts from timing, which obviously has a profound impact on results as well – a double fault or a walk can range in importance from meaningless to game-changing depending on when it occurs. Sequencing, or the order in which events happen, is also very important, as is clustering. As a rule, you’re better off if good things happen to you one after the other, but you spread your bad things out a bit. That’s very true in life too – we can often handle one issue at a time, but a pile-up of problems can send us into a tailspin. On the other side, achieving a major success (say, a deal with a large record label) relies on a series of positive events happening one after the other. Baseball analysts have tried to figure out what determines effective timing, clustering and sequencing, and the answer (in that sport at least) is very clear: luck.

Politics is one area where clustering is of paramount importance, especially in first-past-the-post systems. The clustering of Democrats in urban areas was a big (and understated) reason for Trump’s win in 2016. Clinton ran up the score in those large cities, making her vote inefficiently distributed. It also affects the other branches of government. Because their opponents are neatly clustered in areas of high density, and because they’re arseholes, the Republicans are able to gerrymander effectively, and that’s why the Dems will need a hefty popular-vote win if they want to take the House in November. Clustering isn’t always bad for political parties, however. If you’re a big party trying to form a government, it harms you, but it’s to your advantage if you’re a small party trying to get some representation in parliament. An interesting case (and a terrible advert for FPTP) was the 2015 UK election, where 3.9 million people voted UKIP but they won just a single seat because they weren’t a dominant force in any geographic area. In the same election, the SNP managed to achieve the best of both worlds, by being entirely “clustered” in Scotland but very unclustered within Scotland. Their 1.5 million votes (half of all votes in Scotland) gave them a whopping 56 of 59 Scottish seats.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. The All Blacks v Argentina game was about to start, and they pointed the camera at the haka. It sounded like a great game. Mum and Dad had just spent a few days in a chilly Moeraki.

Last week I posted about 100 flyers in letterboxes in Dumbrăvița, and I got a reply. Hopefully this week I’ll be starting with a 17-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother.

Books - Other sports - Politics

Just a quick update…

August 27, 2018 by 0 Comments

Today I’ve been reading Station Eleven, a bloody fantastic book by Emily St John Mandel. I’m finding it hard to put down. I did however find time to prepare for tomorrow’s lessons and make a crumble with those plums I picked last weekend (but wouldn’t have done if I’d known someone was watching).

On Friday I heard that John McCain wouldn’t be continuing his brain cancer treatment, and less than 48 hours later he was dead. Although I was very glad that Barack Obama beat him to the presidency, I also felt that McCain would have done a fine job. Picking Sarah Palin as his running mate probably didn’t help his cause though. McCain was a staunch supporter of the Iraq War in 2003 but was seen as a maverick in more recent times; that’s more a reflection of how deeply conservative the Republicans have become than anything else. But his vote against the repeal of Obamacare last year was one of the more dramatic moments of Trump’s presidency to date. I’ve just read that McCain, who lived to 81, is survived by his 106-year-old mother.

Baseball. Yesterday morning I caught the tail-end of the marathon game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates. It went to 15 innings, finishing at quarter to one in the morning, local time. I was glad to see it because it was once-in-a-blue-moon crazy, and the sort of crazy that can only happen in the National League where the pitcher is forced to bat. The Red Sox, on the other hand, have lost five of their last seven, and are now only seven games ahead of the Yankees in the division race. That’s still a lot, but they have a tough run-in. It isn’t quite over just yet.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Romania

Don’t talk about the weather

March 6, 2018 by 0 Comments

I’ll soon be having a lesson with my Italian student who’s taking the IELTS exam in three weeks. His country went to the polls at the weekend. I watched John Oliver’s “explanation” of Italy’s political environment on YouTube because he was likely to make as much sense as anyone else. Like many young Italians, my 25-year-old student is a supporter of the Five Star Movement. It was a good result for them. I’m sure he’ll want to talk about the election in the lesson.

Two cancellations on Saturday meant I could go to Piața Badea Cârțan, my favourite market, in the morning. I was thinking, if I can’t do something as simple as this, it almost defeats the purpose of being here. I didn’t get very much: a few filled peppers, various hunks of rather chewy meat, and a sausage. Just one big sausage, as is the norm here.

Last night I spoke to my brother. He looked tired. Washed out. He’s currently in the middle of some kind of instructors’ course which, as he explained in no uncertain terms, he doesn’t see the point of. I imagine it reminded him of school, which for the most part he didn’t see the point of either.

On that note, my lesson with the near-ten-year-old boy on Saturday afternoon didn’t exactly get off to a rip-roaring start. I began by talking about the snow. He said to me in Romanian that “if we’re just going to talk about snow, I’ll die of boredom.” Right. Where do we go from here? I asked him if he wanted me to leave. He didn’t say anything. I then brought out my emergency pack of cards, and we played Last Card. He probably learnt a fair bit in those seven games: jack, queen, king, ace, the names of the suits, “pick up”, “put down”, and so on. He beat me 5-2 and mercifully the lesson was over.

That replacement watch strap I bought in January broke after just 41 days. I couldn’t find my receipt anywhere, quite possibly because I never actually got one (this is Romania), but thankfully they gave me my money back. Hopefully I can get one in Cambridge.

Three games of Scrabble at the weekend and three wins, although I failed to break 400 in any game. I’m sure my play was very sub-optimal.

It’s warming up a bit now.

Life :) - Politics - Romania - Travel: Romania

Timișoara with people!

September 29, 2017 by 0 Comments

My friends (or my parents’ friends really) arrived on Tuesday night. It’s been fun having them here in this wonderful city and meeting up with them in breaks between lessons. I feel perfectly comfortable with them. The highlight so far was perhaps eating out on Wednesday night. We ate at Timișoreana in the square. They both had fairly substantial meals while I was lumbered with a hunk of pork on a bone, with horseradish covering about a quarter of the plate. The pork was perfectly fine, but something with it would have been nice. We then went to a decidedly frill-free basementy “restaurant” alongside Piața 700 so I could properly fill up. The staff there were much older, male, and couldn’t speak English. There were no other customers. I had something advertised as sausage and bean soup, but “slop” might have been more accurate. We also had a beer each, and the whole lot came to 20 lei. Four quid. My friends couldn’t believe that. Yesterday, after visiting the Museum of the Revolution, we checked out a street food festival in Parcul Rozelor (the rose garden). Yes, oh-so-trendy “street food” has landed in Timișoara. The festival was sponsored by a bank or insurance company or something awful like that, and it was all basically overpriced mall food. You could hardly get a sandwich for four quid. We couldn’t get away quick enough.

This morning we’ll be going away, but where and how are still very much up in the air. I’m not looking forward to negotiating Timișoara traffic in a strange car on a strange side of the road. I’ll be meeting them at their hotel in just over an hour.

Last Saturday I met up with my student. We had a few drinks at a bar on the storm-stricken bank of the Bega. We spoke Romanian. I sometimes accidentally invented a word like “profesorile”, which she thought was funny.

Watching coverage of the New Zealand election last weekend and seeing people like John Campbell and Russel Norman, I got ever so slightly homesick for the first time since I left a year ago.

I might be starting my new job on Tuesday. More on that next time perhaps, but I’ve really got to go.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Time zones

September 23, 2017 by 0 Comments

There’s a lot to get through so please bear with me.

Summer ended last Sunday afternoon and I thought the world might end with it. A freak storm whirled through, splitting tree trunks down the middle, lifting tiles from rooftops, and smashing windows. Debris swirled as if in a washing machine. A large copper sheet flew off the cathedral, whose clock stopped at 3:31. After only 15 minutes, all was calm. I was so lucky to be inside at the time. Tragically eight people lost their lives including five in Timiș district. One person was killed at the zoo by a falling tree, another by the large overhead sign at one of the entrances to Timișoara that crashed down on his car as he was driving. The storm was unforecast; people were just enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

As the storm hit I was making some animal cards for my latest student, a 4½-year-old girl. I’m not sure exactly where my teaching comfort zone is yet, but kindergarten-aged girls aren’t even on the same continent. On Monday I made my way to Dumbrăvița for a one-hour lesson with Alexandra, armed with my animal cards, number cards, and a simple board game that I’d painstakingly drawn out. Alexandra was lovely. But she was shy and didn’t want anything to do with me. When her mother’s request for her to come downstairs was met with “De ce?” (“Why?”) I knew I was in for a tough time. Teaching quickly became secondary to the task of making any sort of connection. Sadly I didn’t have much success. Both her parents were there, and that only made me more self-conscious. Of course, being the first lesson, I didn’t know what she knew, even in her native language. She did know her colours and farm animals in English. Next time (apparently there will be a next time) I’ll probably just bring my laptop and put on some cartoons.

There was a funny moment in one of my lessons on Wednesday. This was my 34th lesson with my first-ever student. We’d done plenty of reading, listening and speaking since November but very little writing. I had three subjects face-down on sheets of paper, and asked him to pick one at random and write about it. “Write about someone you admire.” He didn’t particularly fancy this topic. I told him he could do one of the others instead, but he said, “They’ll all be the same shit.” He was half-joking, and in the end wrote quite a moving paragraph about his aunt.

Yesterday I had a three-hour lesson with a woman just two years younger than me. She was 15 minutes late, which is good going for her. We had what I’d like to think was a fun and productive lesson. Pronunciation Battleships (a game I basically invented) raised a few laughs. It’s like normal Battleships, except the coordinates are pairs of words that almost nobody in the whole of Romania can pronounce, so instead of a square being B3 or F5, it’s rough–queue or bought–fruit. I certainly get some interesting pronunciations of “queue”: I’ve so far had kway, kwee and kwee-wee. I gave her a writing exercise: she had to write about a country she’d like to visit. She picked Australia, full of mountains, museums, castles and beautiful villages. I was flummoxed by this; I didn’t twig that she meant Austria. It was tipping it down outside and I mentioned to her that I had to take the bus to Dumbrăvița for my next lesson (with Matei). At the end of the lesson she offered to drive me there, but only after she did some stuff in town. This was awkward for me – there was obviously no way I’d get to my lesson on time once she’d done her stuff, but she didn’t see that teaching is my job, and being on time for my job is important to me. I’d rather have taken the bus, but I felt it was impolite to refuse her offer. Even the clock in her car was three to four minutes slow – that would drive me insane (a stopped clock or one that showed an obviously wrong time would be much better because I could simply ignore it). I was 15 minutes late, but neither Matei nor his dad seemed to be too bothered. Even though my 35-year-old student lives on a different time zone to me, we get on well. I’ve invited her out for a drink tomorrow at three, so if I leave at ten past I should have heaps of time.

By then, a picture should have emerged from New Zealand’s election. I haven’t followed the run-up much – the last three years have seen so many high-profile elections and referendums that I feel electioned out – but from what I can tell, people have been far more engaged than last time around. The Jacinda effect is surely a part of that. And this time serious issues that actually matter to people are getting talked about, unlike in that ghastly 2014 campaign. The massive and increasing gap between rich and poor, the housing crisis, immigration, the mental health crisis (let’s not mince words here), education (the burden on teachers in NZ increases every year and they don’t get paid nearly enough), the dairy industry messing up the environment – there’s a lot that’s badly wrong. I still expect National to form a government, just.

Some friends from St Ives are coming to Timișoara on Tuesday and are staying for a week. On Friday we’ll head off in a car and go… to be honest we’ve got no idea where. They’ve never been to Romania before, so I probably need to decide. They’re very free-spirited people so it should be fun.

Mum and Dad have both had the flu lately and haven’t been able to shake it off. It’s been sending Dad’s warfarin levels all over the show. They’ve just been put on courses of antibiotics. Let’s hope they do the trick.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

I get all the news I need on the weather report

July 30, 2017 by 0 Comments

Last week I taught for 16 hours, a new record! The more work I get, the better I feel. It really is that simple. I did have to navigate some fairly heavy seas on Monday night when my new student (yes, she turned up!) wasn’t at the level I’d anticipated. Our conversation was slow going. Time slowed to a crawl. Will she even want to come back? But she did, on both Wednesday and Friday, and will return again on Monday. She’s a student, just 21 or thereabouts, and like so many young women here, she’s very attractive. She was born and bred in Moldova, where the levels of corruption (as she described them) make Romania sound like, well, New Zealand.

This move has been nothing short of life-changing for me. I now have a purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. My work is extremely satisfying, and in between lessons, I can relax in this beautiful city. I’m longer in this vicious cycle of doing things I don’t want to do so I can do more things I don’t want to do, year in, year out. Yeah, I’d still like a few more hours and the extra money that would bring; I’m having to be pretty frugal. I’d like to meet more people, do cultural stuff like go to the theatre, and of course travel. But Romania wasn’t built in a day. Completely overhauling my life will take time.

I try to avoid most political news now. It feels like it’s been wall-to-wall politics for the last three years, and I can’t be the only one who’s had enough. Still, the failure of the Republicans’ zombie-like healthcare repeal bill did put a smile on my face. As for the weather, last Monday night we had an electrical storm which gave us respite from the scorching weather for the rest of the week, but when I look at the seven-day forecast I see a high of 34, another of 36, a quartet of 37s, and even a 38. The title of this post, by the way, is from Simon and Garfunkel’s brilliant The Only Living Boy in New York. I remember one time that song came on the radio as I was about to go through Mt Victoria Tunnel in Wellington on the way home, but I went the long way instead to avoid missing the song.

I spoke to my brother earlier today. It was his 36th birthday on Thursday. He seemed happy for me.