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We all need some things to stay the same

May 8, 2022 by 0 Comments

Dealing with other people’s systems and processes has always been a major struggle for me – that’s half the reason I’m a private teacher – and buying a flat in Romania on my own is all about having systems and processes thrust upon me. As soon as the vendor gets my money and the sale is confirmed, I’ll have to pay my rates (this will involve a long queue), sort out insurance, and call the administrator (Viki, her name is) to get myself on the official list at the new apartment block. They explained this to me on Thursday. I should have the keys in my hand pretty soon, but I’m in no rush to move in.

In other news, I had a good chat with my brother last Monday. He called me during the day – it was a bank holiday in the UK – and I happened to be in the park collecting water from the well. I was able to give him a tour of sorts. Earlier I’d had a Zoom chat with my cousin who lives in Christchurch. This was a delight – we hadn’t been in touch for ages. Her kids – a girl and a boy, born either side of the devastating earthquakes – came on the line. Unsurprisingly they couldn’t remember me from the last time we’d met seven years ago in Wellington. They seemed great kids.

The snooker which finished last Monday was a fantastic escape from everything else. I haven’t been so engrossed in watching sport of any kind, including tennis, for years. The highlight for me was a toss-up between the Trump–Williams semi that went all the way, and that astonishing 85-minute frame in Yan Bingtao’s win over Mark Selby (which I have since rewatched). Apart from an obvious improvement in standard in all facets of the game, the tournament looked just the same as it did 20 and even 30 years ago. In a world where flying insect populations are plummeting and seasons are all over the place, it’s nice to have a few constants, even if they’re just people potting the same coloured balls with the same sticks into the same holes.

Just after Easter, someone gave me a biggish slab of drob to take home. The word drob hardly makes one salivate, and neither does the description of it: it’s a kind of loaf made from sheep organs with an egg inside. I got through it in a few sittings. When in Romania I suppose.

I played tennis this evening. The walk back from the courts is always interesting. Usually someone points out a plant, seemingly at random, and talks about a tea or other infusion that you can make from it.

I had an interesting moment in a lesson last Monday with the twins. “If you could change one thing about Romania, what would it be?” I asked them. “The people,” they shot back in unison.

Here are some more pictures from the lake I visited last month:

Buying property - Other sports - Tennis

Stopped in our tracks

May 2, 2022 by 0 Comments

I played tennis this evening. After our session, the best doubles player on the court asked me once again if I wanted to play in his football team. I really wish I could play football. As a kid I found the whole thing a massive turn-off because it meant having to play with other kids. Footbally kids. They were the worst other kids. My dad had no interest in the game, and neither did my brother, so I never got into it. Instead I batted a tennis ball against a wall for hours on end with no other kids in sight.

I haven’t made any progress on the flat purchase since I last wrote. The lawyer business is a sticking point because I want to ensure I have my own lawyer, but the agent is pressuring me to use the same one that the vendor is using.

This afternoon I met the teacher guy and we headed out on our bikes to La Livada where we’d eaten and drunk once before. His bike is pretty dodgy, and his chain snapped after a kilometre or so. We went back to my place (I was slightly embarrassed to show him it in its current state) where he spent at least an hour trying to fix it using my tools and a Youtube video but eventually gave up. We ate and drank in the square (he always goes for more expensive options than me) and then his girlfriend picked him up and that was that. It was good to see him regardless.

Snooker. The semi-final between Judd Trump and Mark Williams was an extraordinary match, Trump winning 17-16. I was glued to it for most of its many hours. Williams had come from 12-5 down to lead 16-15 thanks to some amazing long pots, but Trump took the last two frames under immense pressure. I hoped Williams would win, because it would have made for more of a contrast in styles for the final. The final is a best-of-35 marathon, and Ronnie O’Sullivan is leading 5-3 against Trump after the first session. Just before I went to tennis, I saw O’Sullivan steal the incredible fourth frame on a respotted black after needing a snooker. The match resumes in a few minutes – they play nine more frames tonight. One of the few changes to snooker since I last followed it is walk-on songs. In 2003, these weren’t a thing. O’Sullivan’s is a great choice – Drops of Jupiter by Train, which came out in 2001. I thought song was a few years older, partly because everything about O’Sullivan screams nineties. The lyrics of Drops of Jupiter include “Milky Way”, as do (unsurprisingly) Under the Milky Way, a brilliant 1988 hit by The Church. Pondering those two songs made we wonder if there are companies or products out there called Milky Whey, and there are plenty.

Buying property - Other sports - The UK

A new box, perhaps

April 28, 2022 by 0 Comments

It looks like I might have bought a flat. On Tuesday I met up with the owner, a very bronzed lady in her forties, and asked her about the heating and why there are massive mirrors, covering entire walls, in what will hopefully be my teaching room. She said she used to run gym classes in there. I offered her €110,000, just €3k more than my previous offer, and later that afternoon the agent came back to me to say she’d accepted. (The original price was €120k, which she then lowered to €115k.) I now have about eight more questions I wish I’d asked her. With this property lark, there are monsters everywhere, as I know full well. The process shouldn’t take too long – this isn’t the UK, with such horrors as chains and gazumping – but what do I know about buying in Romania, really? I’m using a solicitor who has decided to take the whole week off after Orthodox Easter. Then there’s the question of getting the money across from New Zealand. Obviously the property stuff will be front and centre in my life for the next little while.

I’ve just read this long article about public phone boxes in the UK. The old red ones are a symbol of Britishness; I imagine one next to a parish council notice board or a village green, near a cylindrical post box of the same colour. I don’t know what it is about that shade of red, which was also the colour of the old Routemaster double-decker buses. When I was growing up, our front door was that colour too, and I remember my brother and I being disappointed when Dad decided to paint it green. Some of them have been converted to mini libraries, or now house defibrillators; many more have been removed. I remember them stinking of pee and cigarettes. I last used one as recently as 2016 when I washed up in the UK with no way of making a call on my mobile. I tried calling my aunt but each time I got her answer phone which was useless to me.

Snooker. I stayed up far too late last night to watch John Higgins edge over the line in a deciding 25th frame against Jack Lisowski. These evening sessions can run and run, and I’m two hours ahead of Sheffield where it all takes place. Today the semi-finals start. These are three-day matches, played over a gruelling best of 33 frames. Ronnie O’Sullivan will play John Higgins, while Mark Williams takes on the delightfully (!) named Judd Trump. It’s a heavyweight line-up, all right. O’Sullivan, Higgins, and Williams all turned professional way back in 1992 and have all won multiple titles. It seemed they’d been around for ages even when I stopped watching 19 years ago. Trump won in 2019 and is supremely talented too. O’Sullivan will surely be the crowd favourite. I’ll watch a frame or two – but no more than that – tonight.

It’s a drizzly, grey old day today, reminiscent of the Land of Red Boxes.

Life :) - Other sports

An Easter big break

April 26, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’ve had my latest Skype lesson with the eight-year-old girl in Germany. I needed a glass of wine after that. Next time I might have it before.

It’s the end of the long Orthodox Easter weekend here. I worked all of the four days, though less than usual. It’s been nice not being hassled by estate agents.

Yesterday (Easter Sunday) I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român. I thought nothing would be open but there was a bar which served barbecue food. I sat on a bench and read the first chapters of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. If the beginning is anything to go by, it’ll be the best book I’ve read in a long time. I had to give up when some inconsiderate twat decided to pump out music on his boombox. I then went to the bar and waited a very Romanian length of time for my barbecued pork and wedges. It’s frustrating when you’re on your own, as I so often am.

Saturday night was the Easter vigil, a huge event here. People turned out in their hordes shortly before midnight for a service that carried on into the small hours. They seemed desperate to partake in it again, after two years when Covid put paid to the whole thing. I ventured over from outside the cathedral (there was no hope of getting inside) to the church at Iosefin, across the river, but the scenes were even more chaotic there. At that point I figured I’d rather watch the snooker instead, then later when the crowds had thinned out I entered the cathedral (with my requisite candle) to see what the fuss was all about. I now know that the reply to “Hristos a înviat!” (Christ is risen!) is “Adevărat a înviat!” (Indeed, He is risen!). Many Orthodox Christians use these greetings in place of “hello” at Easter time.

Snooker. I’m watching the World Championship, after 19 years of not following the game. I used to be glued to the screen all through late April, then I moved to New Zealand where there was no TV coverage, and that was that. If the last few days are anything to go by, I’ve missed a lot. It’s such a deep game. An innocuous cannon on a brown can have unexpected ramifications down the line. One frame can easily last forty minutes or more, then the next can be over in ten. The match between Mark Selby and Yan Bingtao, which Yan won 13-10, featured a monumental 85-minute frame, the longest ever in 46 years of the tournament and the likes of which I’d never seen before. Selby, the clear favourite, had come from 11-7 behind to close to within one, which heightened the tension even more in the 22nd frame. After Yan eked it out, he then coolly knocked in a break of 112 in the following frame to wrap up an utterly absorbing match. It’s been great to see all these new players, especially those from outside the Anglosphere like Noppon Saengkham this afternoon, whose handshake after his defeat by John Higgins was quite wonderful.
Update: Neil Robertson has just compiled a maximum 147 break in his match with Jack Lisowski. I remember Jimmy White’s one (1992 I think), then Stephen Hendry’s, then Ronnie O’Sullivan’s iconic whirlwind one, but I only ever saw those after the event. They were extremely rare back then. This one I saw live, and Robertson made it look easy. He was in a deep hole half an hour ago, but from 10-7 down and looking decidedly scratchy, he’s now level at 10-10 in a race to 13.
Update 2: Lisowski has won in a nervy deciding frame, after Robertson had almost won in the frame before. What drama.

Buying property - Life :) - Other sports

The most promising place so far

January 5, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’ve finally found a flat that might fit the bill. It’s fully furnished, just in case you haven’t had enough Fs yet, and it’s on the third floor of a block built in 1986, just off Calea Aradului, one of the arterial roads through the city. I say just off, but it’s pretty much on it. I had a look at it yesterday. At 110 square metres, it’s big for just one person – the same size as the place in Wellington that I’m thankfully no longer burdened with. I found that too big, but in my new situation bigger is better: I need the space for work. This place has three bedrooms (I could convert one of them into an office) and two bathrooms – or rather one bathroom and an additional loo. Crucially it has a hall with the rooms leading off it, unlike more modern designs. I shouldn’t have problem parking a car there, if and when I eventually get one, assuming I haven’t completely forgotten how to drive. As always, there are minuses. The third floor is right at the limit when running a business in a lift-free apartment block. The location is very handy to everything, but it’s not exactly quiet. (I even went back there this afternoon and stood outside the block with a decibel meter that I’d downloaded as an app. Over five minutes the average reading was 76, and when a truck went by it hit 90. Where I live now, slap-bang in the centre of the city, we average 72 in the daytime.) I’ll have very little of the green space I’ve enjoyed in the last five years, although there is a park within walking distance. I’m still unsure how much sun the place will get. So there’s plenty to think about.

New Year’s Eve with the neighbours was nice, if a little tiring. By two o’clock I could not longer stay awake, and I really didn’t need all that food. I realise now that under normal circumstances (that means no jokes or obscure subjects) I can manage fine in Romanian. I should be proud of that, I guess, even if I’m far from fluent. For the second year running, Covid put paid to the big fireworks display, so a lot of people let off their own. Hospitals had a busy time of it. On New Year’s Day I met Mark, the teacher, in town. We sampled the food from the market – mutton, which was a first for me in Romania – and then went for a beer.

Last night I stayed up to watch the darts final on a temperamental stream. A good match, with Peter Wright beating Michael Smith 7-5, taking home £500,000 for his efforts. (Smith got £200k.) The second leg of the match was almost like two blokes down the pub, it took so long for someone to finally hit double one, but the level improved markedly from there. The best match of the few I saw was Wright’s 5-4 quarter-final win over youngster Callan Rydz, needing a tie-break to just about get over the line.

Here are some pictures from my New Year’s Eve bike ride. Below is the semi-derelict church at Bobda. I sent the photo to Dad, who said I shouldn’t put in an offer on it.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - New Zealand - Other sports - Tennis

The benefits (perhaps) of big sport

November 20, 2021 by 0 Comments

I’ve got tennis this afternoon, straight after my lesson with the young couple. It’ll probably be singles again with that super-fit guy. We chatted after last weekend’s game, and he attributed his fitness in part to growing up (and going to school) under communism in the Nadia Comăneci era. Sport was a top priority then, as it simply wasn’t when I grew up in the UK, and isn’t now in 21st-century Romania. Sure, we all did gymnastics and swimming and team sports, but unless you were one of the best at football or cricket, we were pretty much going through the motions. I know I was. We certainly didn’t have scouts visiting schools to eye up the best young talent, as they did in Romania. I was, however, exposed to a higher-priority regime when I spent those six months in New Zealand as a nine-year-old. There were inter-school tennis competitions, inter-school athletics competitions, and cross-country runs. I participated in all of that and hated the lot, even tennis, a sport that I otherwise liked.

I saw two more flats yesterday, both in the same block in the Fabric area, which is to the east of where I live now. The block was designated U4, as in “U4 me”, but I don’t think those places were quite for me. In Romanian, U4 is pronounced “ooh patru“. They weren’t bad apartments at all, but do I know what I’m taking on here? I left feeling more confused than anything.

After my Moderna booster, I felt fine for the rest of the day, but at night I got the shivers and slept no more than three or four hours. The next day I felt a bit tired and groggy, but soon I was back to normal. Some short-term grogginess seemed a small price to pay for the level of protection that the extra jab should give me, especially seeing that I’m in Romania where getting a severe case of Covid is a riskier proposition than it would be in New Zealand, for instance.

Mum and Dad missed out on seeing their one-in-800-year near-total eclipse of a blood-red moon. It clouded over at just the wrong time. I had a chat to them this morning. All is well there, although they have taken on a pretty big project with their new house. I also spoke to my brother, who was on his own – my sister-in-law was attending a conference in Liverpool.

Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Time to make something happen

July 13, 2021 by 0 Comments

I ended yesterday’s post saying I hoped England’s first major final in 55 years wouldn’t go to penalties. It damn well did. The game started with a hiss and a roar. We had the rousing Italian national anthem (the less said the better about England’s dirge) and then within two minutes of kick-off, Luke Shaw (or as the Romanian commentator said, Luke Show) had scored. England didn’t really ever look like adding to their lead, and Italy dominated the second half. England looked buggered in extra time. Thirty minutes of that, then here we go again. As soon as I saw six-foot-five Donnarumma (awesome name) square up against Pickford, I thought, this looks ominous. I had no idea how massive the Italian keeper was, and what’s more, he’s only 22. The fall-out from the match has already been nasty and insular, as it would have been had England won. Race-based idiocy and irrelevant bollocks about Brexit. Mum will be happy – her mate Novak won Wimbledon to make the grand slam tally between the Big Three 20-20-20, and England didn’t win. So that’s my fleeting interest in Big Sport over with for a while.

I’ve been reading back over the early days of this blog. I was buzzing, wasn’t I? These days I’m on a pretty even keel, and that’s way better than where I’ve been in the past, but I wouldn’t mind getting late 2015 back, or even late 2016 when I washed up in Romania. So how can I do that? First, I’ve gotta gotta gotta move away from this flat, as fantastic as the location is. I need a place of my own, with an office just for teaching. Some comfortable furniture. A record player. A car, so I can push off from time to time and see more of this beautiful country. It’s time I established something. Made something happen. I’ve also got to get back to this damn dictionary. More about that next time.

Getting away will help me plan at least some of this. I’ve booked my train journey from Timișoara to Iași (15 hours – travelling by train makes Romania seem massive) and four nights in the city that almost borders the Republic of Moldova. I leave early next Tuesday morning. Then I’ll explore the surrounding villages, though I haven’t booked that part of the trip yet. We’ve got more scorching weather this week: 38 tomorrow and a ridiculous 40 on Wednesday.

Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Slow-motion setting finally switched off

July 12, 2021 by 0 Comments

I might be back in business, finally. Lately I’ve been mooching around my flat, just about getting by, but then the moment I step outside, ugh. Heavy going. Putting one foot in front of the other has been a major effort. I’ve felt frozen by the hot, beating sun, if that makes any sense. Now my cold is still there, but this morning I found myself walking at just about my normal pace and managing with the sun. That’s a relief; feeling close to normal means I now feel safe booking trains and accommodation.

This morning I got a surprise call from my aunt; I spoke to her last weekend following her husband’s passing. She’d called me by accident – she meant to call her only son, who lives in Perth (she has four daughters). Soon after that I had a lesson with the young couple. The river of classes has slowed to a trickle, so a bonus lesson on a Sunday was welcome. It was one of my better sessions; we went over the present simple verb forms – positive, negative, question, to be and not to be – before moving on to food. They said they were rooting for Italy in tonight’s Euro final against England. I expect most Romanians, if they’re following it at all, will do the same.

It’s finals weekend at Wimbledon. Ashleigh Barty made all the running in the final against Karolina Plíšková – she won the opening 14 points as Plíšková seemed anaesthetised, as a Romanian commentator put it – but it oh so nearly slipped away from her. When she finally held on in the third set, you could see how much it meant. Wimbledon was the one. Then the women’s doubles final managed to be even more dramatic. The all-Russian team of Vesnina and Kudermetova led 6-3 5-3, had two match points, and could only have been millimetres away from wrapping up a comfortable win. Fate somehow conspired against them, and Elise Mertens and Hsieh Su-wei dragged the match into a third set, which extended into overtime. The last time such a match had reached 6-6 in the third was in 1998, when Hingis and Novotna beat Davenport and Zvereva 8-6; back then, top women’s singles players were serious about doubles too. The Russians served for the match again, at 7-6 in the decider, but Mertens and Hsieh broke back and won the following two games for victory. Both teams won the same number of points, 112, but the contrast in emotions at the end could hardly have been starker.

The men’s final is just a few minutes away. Matteo Berrettini has been very impressive and his raw power could cause Djoković some problems. I expect Djoković to win yet again, but we’ll see. Then a bit later Berrettini’s countrymen will take on England at Wembley. Dreams will be made and shattered. Twelve men will be immortalised, or not, largely due to events out of their control. One or two might even be villainised – think David Beckham in ’98 or Gareth Southgate himself after missing that penalty in ’96. Heaven forbid it goes to spot kicks.

Family - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

The park

July 9, 2021 by 0 Comments

I’m on day twelve, at least, of feeling like rubbish. Going to the park this morning was the most exciting thing I’ll do all day. I brought a flask of coffee and read a couple of chapters of my book. It was already 30-odd degrees, but at least there was a breeze. I FaceTimed my parents, expecting my battery to die at any moment, but just like me, it ran on fumes. They were fine. They’ve now had both doses of Pfizer, with no side effects to speak of, and the sale of their house will go unconditional any day now. We discussed the tennis, and briefly the football. Dad thought England had already won the competition, when in fact the final against Italy takes place on Sunday night.

When we hung up, two men in their sixties, one grossly overweight, sat down on the bench next to mine. They talked about the football, then switched to politics. After some time, a friend of theirs showed up on his bike. He wore a Germany football shirt that he’d almost certainly bought at a second-hand shop, and on his left forearm he sported a faded blue heart-and-arrow tattoo with an illegible name underneath. He talked extraordinarily loudly, his sentences punctuated by laughter and filler words like ba and păi. Then a fourth man arrived, also on his bike. His name was Ghiță, a diminutive of Gheorghe. He wore a red-and-white striped shirt, with just a single button done up in the middle. The tattooed bloke had a conversation with him, mostly one-way, cutting across where I was sitting. I find people talking across me unbearable in any language and at any volume, let alone the combination I faced then, so at that point I upped and left.

The lady from tennis, Magda, also phoned me when I was in the park. For the second week running I had to say I wouldn’t be playing.

I hadn’t watched any of the Euro matches, but did stay up to watch England’s nerve-jangling extra-time win against Denmark. They’ve got a very good team and a fantastic manager, and now they stand on the brink of history. Staying up until after half-twelve was no issue; my body clock is way out of whack. I had no work the next morning either; my hours have suddenly dropped through the floor.

Wimbledon has had its moments. I haven’t followed it as closely as in previous years. Ashleigh Barty’s win over Angelique Kerber yesterday was one of the more enjoyable two-setters I’ve seen. Barty will be a very popular winner if she beats Karolina Plíšková in tomorrow’s final.

I’ve been planning my trip. My idea is to take the train to Iași in ten days’ time (I hope I’m up to it by then), and then visit some towns and villages in the middle of nowhere, before taking a trip on the mocăniță (narrow-gauge train) from Vișeu de Sus, and eventually coming back home.

Books - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Trying not to do a lot

July 5, 2021 by 0 Comments

For the last few days I’ve been living in the crawler lane, bogged down by coughing and headaches and lurid green mucky slimy custardy gunge. It’s been particularly bad first thing in the morning. I soldiered on with my online lessons on Friday and Saturday, and intentionally haven’t done an awful lot today.

Lately I’ve played poker on Sunday mornings, but today I did something much better. I had a FaceTime chat with my aunt, whose husband died at the end of May, and my cousin who lives in Wellington but was staying with her mother in Timaru. It was a great pleasure to catch up with them, particularly my aunt. I’m looking forward to the day I can fly over and see them. I fear that will be still some time away.

Before and after our longish chat, I watched three episodes of a documentary series on Netflix (which included a depressing part on deforestation in Romania), then I spent most of the afternoon on a bench in Central Park, reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. The weather was pleasant, and it was quiet; I couldn’t hear much apart from the jet of the fountain, the occasional train, and the clatter of tiles and dice from people playing rummy and backgammon. I’m fortunate to have such a lovely park on my doorstep. On one side is the river, on the other the train tracks, and I thought about how I might be on a train two weeks or so from now.

No tennis today, either playing or watching. For the last time, Wimbledon is taking a rest day on the middle Sunday. Next year they’ll play on all 14 days. It’s a sensible move. And I definitely was in no fit state to be running around a court.

I haven’t watched any coverage of Euro 2020, but after a 2-0 win over Germany and last night’s 4-0 thrashing of Ukraine, England are daring to dream.