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Something on the horizon

December 23, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’m feeling reasonably good at the moment, maybe because I have two things to look forward to. One, the books getting published, fingers crossed. And two, Mum and Dad coming over in May. When you live by yourself without a family, it’s quite easy to be staring at miles and miles of barrenness. An endless desert, with not even a tree in sight. This is especially true when it seems that everything in the wider world is going to the dogs; you can be totally bereft of anything on the horizon to latch onto, whether personal or collective. So I’m grateful for these two things.

Recently Dad sent my brother and I a pair of tape recordings of us when we were little. They were dated 1984 and 1985. The ’85 one was mostly me, making up a story as I went along. I was surprisingly eloquent for just five years old. I had a habit of repeating myself, but some of that was because I was big into rhyme, which is to an extent repetitious. Dad would read me Edward Lear or something in that line, which I really enjoyed. In fact, by five I was perfectly able to read it myself. Sometimes I think I peaked then, and my life since has been four decades of managed decline.

Yesterday I only had one lesson – maths with Matei – and since then I’ve been cooking. Salată de boeuf, salam de biscuiți, and a crumble which I made with quince and four enormous apples, a variety of cooking apple I’ve never seen before. (On the market they were just called mere acre, or sour apples; in fact they’re not that sour.)

I’m going to beat last year’s number of teaching hours by a small margin. According to my records, I’ve so far done half an hour more this year than in all of 2023, and I’ve still got some sessions tomorrow and a few between Christmas and New Year. I’m glad I’m coming to the end of my Christmas-themed worksheets and spot-the-difference pictures. I’m reindeered out now, I’m telling you.

A few days ago somebody sent me this video of Michael McIntyre’s “Silent Letter Day” skit which he performed at the London Palladium. I know I’m biased because I’m a word-obsessed English teacher, but I thoroughly recommend it for McIntyre’s extraordinary timing and delivery. I’ve had all kinds of fun and games with silent letters in my lessons. A student will read psychology and say “p-see-hhho-lo-jee”, with a pronounced p and a guttural h, just like how the equivalent word (psihologie) is pronounced in Romanian. I then ask my student to have another go, interrupting him or her as soon as I hear the p-s. “P-see…” No. “P-sigh…” No. “P-s…” No. Then I tell them that the p isn’t pronounced at all, much to their surprise.

The darts. It’s been a mixed bag so far. Often I’ve seen either both players performing well together, or both struggling (by their standards, of course). Darts is a funny game in that it has an objective measure of one’s performance (your average score per throw) but it’s perfectly possible to have a better average than your opponent and still lose the game. The best example of this was Jim Williams, the Welshman who was visibly better than Paolo Nebrida, his Filipino opponent. He averaged 7½ points better than Nebrida – that’s a lot – but missed five darts for the match, losing in a deciding leg. He also spurned a bunch of chances earlier on, otherwise the match wouldn’t have been so close in the first place. Another match I thought might go the same way was Matt Campbell’s against Mensur Suljovic. They’re both likeable characters and I didn’t mind who won. Campbell was clearly the better player, and eventually he did win, 3-2 in sets. Last night I saw Luke Littler’s first match. It took him a while to kick into gear but when he did so he produced a record-breaking 32-dart fourth set, coming millimetres from a nine-darter. Such ridiculous talent. Ryan Meikle, whom he beat 3-1, played very well too but couldn’t do anything at the end there. Yesterday’s final match saw Aussie madman Damon Heta win. Heta was lethal on the doubles and also came very close to a nine-darter.

Dorothy has invited me to church; I’ll be leaving any minute. Tomorrow she goes to England for Christmas. After the church service there will be food. I’ll be taking some of my salată de boeuf along.

Dreams - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Politics

Dodging a bullet and getting up my nose

December 15, 2024 by 0 Comments

Last night I had two strange dreams. In the first, I was piloting a small plane and was in trouble (though I was surprisingly calm) until my brother got me out of it. I communicated with him via text or something. Soon after I had another near accident, which made me nervous about flying in small planes again. (In that dream, flying in small planes was a normal part of everyday life.) In the second dream I was in trouble at work for playing some kind of ball game (that I’d invented) during office hours. My boss seemed to quite like the game though, and thought I should market it. In fact he talked enthusiastically about a business opportunity. I was embarrassed about the whole thing and began to skulk around the office.

The “invented game” dream might have come from the board game I played with some of my students last week. This is the one Dad came up with back in 1993 or ’94 – racing cars around a three-lane track, where the fast lane gets you round faster, obviously, but requires more fuel. I refined his idea and a quarter of a century later started using it in my lessons. My 13-year-old student wanted a copy of the game that he could print out and play at home, so I sent him soft copies of the game board, the dashboards (showing fuel and completed laps), and the cards that you have to draw if you land on certain spaces.

On Monday night I started getting pain in my sinuses that continued through Tuesday and Wednesday. I also seemed to pick up a bug of sorts. I was devoid of energy for two days. On Thursday I was back to some sort of normal which was just as well – I had seven lessons that day. The pain hasn’t entirely gone away and I’ve had no choice but to take painkillers. Fatigue has been a major issue for a while; it isn’t helped by my waking up multiple times virtually every night.

On Monday morning I had my weekly Romanian lesson. Inevitably we talked about the election, or un-election. I suggested that Georgescu was similar to Viktor Orbán. Oh no, my teacher replied. Far worse. Cancelling the election so close to the final round was very clumsy and looks antidemocratic on the face of it. Oh shit, it looks like we might elect an anti-establishment figure that we don’t like, let’s cancel the election. But the truth is the election had been manipulated in a big way on social media. Georgescu’s assertion that he spent “zero lei” on his campaign was quite clearly a lie. And his credentials that I mentioned before – that’s he’s a scientist with a PhD – are probably made up too. Invalidating the election may have been cack-handed, but in the short term at least, Romania has dodged a major bullet here. Since I arrived here, the country has been moving, albeit slowly and unevenly, in the right direction. It is less poor than it was eight years ago. It came very close to throwing that progress away. By the way, Romania and Bulgaria have now been fully admitted to the Schengen area. That will mean that I won’t have to queue at the border to get into Hungary, whether in a car or on a bus or train, and more importantly, trucks won’t be held up for hours. There might still be checks until June; I saw contradictory information on that.

I had six maths lessons last week. In one of them I estimated pi using a round bowl, a tape measure and a piece of string. I got a value of 3.129, which was a lot closer than I expected.

The darts World Championship starts in London tonight. There’s a lot to like about the format, the colourful characters, and the fact that it takes place over the festive season. Last year I got fairly into it. This year I expect I’ll watch rather less: I really have to get the picture book finalised.

Autism - Films - Life :) - Other sports - Photos

Gradually, then suddenly (plus more pics)

December 9, 2024 by 0 Comments

Today I made another trip to Peciu Nou and Ciacova. (Pictures below.) The biggest benefit of having a car, after seven-plus years of not having one, is being able to easily see these beautifully rustic towns and villages. I rarely use my car to get around the city; when I’m in a rush (to get to a lesson, for instance) I find that massively stressful, and my bike is just as fast anyway.

In recent months I’ve been reminded of Ernest Hemingway’s famous quote, when he said that he went bankrupt “two ways: gradually, then suddenly”. I’ve felt a gradual societal decline over the last decade or so, but lately the process has kicked into an entirely different gear. Perhaps I’m in a better place to feel it than most, because unlike most people, I’m not busy playing the game. I walked off the pitch a long time ago, and now I can sort of sit back and observe. From my vantage point, things now look very ugly indeed.

On a similar theme, a couple of months ago I discussed childlessness with Dorothy, who never had children herself. It was a hot topic in the US presidential campaign: vice president-elect JD Vance basically said that if you don’t have children, you don’t have a stake in the future of the country, or I suppose the world. I imagine that’s quite a popular viewpoint: if you have kids, you care more about future generations. But if you think about it for five seconds, you’ll realise that it’s actually bollocks. Most parents aren’t really that bothered about the success of future generations; rather, they’re extremely bothered about the success of their own specimens of future generations, which isn’t the same thing at all. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that; it’s simple human nature to want your own kids to succeed. But maybe that means that if you don’t have kids, you’re able to invest in future success in a more dispassionate way.

This weekend I watched a two-part BBC documentary on autism. Presented by the British naturalist Chris Packham (who revealed his autism diagnosis a few years back), Inside Our Autistic Minds showcases four autistic people, all under 30, though all very different. One of them is the son of Ken Bruce, the radio DJ, who is highly intelligent but non-verbal. Chris Packham teams up with animators and other creative people to produce short films to help illustrate their autistic lives better. Very well done (Britain tends to be really good at this stuff), though I’d have liked one or two of the participants to have been older. Naturally I compare myself to these people. On more than one occasion I thought, I’m more extreme than you. When it comes to avoiding social situations and generally keeping out of people’s way, I’m pretty damn extreme.

Yesterday many parts of the UK were buffeted by storms. When I got back from my lessons in Dumbrăvița I tuned into the match between Barnsley and Birmingham, thinking it might have succumbed to the elements. But no, it was on. At times the corner flags were near-horizontal, such was the wind. The first half was mostly uneventful. Barnsley dominated the early stages of the second half and took a deserved lead, only for Blues to hit back immediately with a screamer from Jay Stansfield. Later Barnsley had a player sent off for a second yellow card, and then Stansfield scored what proved to be the winner for the away side. Barnsley were a bit unlucky not to at least get a draw. Thanks to the copious added time, the game was still going on when my online lesson started. I make it the fifth time already this season that Blues have come from behind to win a league game. That’s a lot.

Two weeks ago, or was it three, I decided to self-block YouTube, thinking all those videos are a huge time-waster. I only applied the block to weekdays, but I’m finding I have no desire to watch it at weekends either.

I hope that in the coming days I’ll take delivery of the batch of books I’ve ordered. I’ve missed having a good book to read.

Here are today’s pictures from Ciacova. I’m not sure how that Cadillac ended up there. The guineafowl (bibilică in Romanian, plural bibilici) were all tightly bunched in a corner before I disturbed them.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Romania

Enshittification: it’s pouring out now

November 28, 2024 by 0 Comments

Yesterday some candles suddenly appeared in the stairwell. When Elena (the lady who owns the flat above me) called me from Canada, I found out what they were for. The woman on the ground floor had just died. She was only 68. Her husband died at the beginning of this year.

It’s been looking pretty grim for a while, but 2024 has taken enshittification (Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year) to another level. (How did the en- prefix get there?) At every turn we’re sinking deeper into the mire and I don’t see a way out. We’re now systemically prevented from finding an escape. Most of us aren’t even trying anyway. We’re all ordering up pointless crap on Amazon and sharing memes on TikTok that last about five minutes before the next one comes along. At least I think that’s what people do on TikTok; I honestly don’t know.

On Sunday we had the first round of the Romanian presidential elections. Călin Georgescu, pro-Putin, pro-dictatorship, anti-NATO and a conspiracy theorist on every matter imaginable, came from nowhere to top the poll with just under 23% of the vote. He didn’t run a traditional campaign, but he was all over TikTok and Facebook. Since I use neither of them, his popularity passed me by. Also, in Timișoara where I live, Georgescu didn’t do very well. But now I know. He’s 62 so he’s been around the block a bit. He got a PhD in soil science 25 years ago and has since been involved in sustainable development and held positions within the UN where he investigated the adverse effects of dumping toxic waste. So it seems he’s got a brain on him and he did some good stuff before rapidly morphing into, well, toxic waste.

Second place was also a shock. Elena Lasconi, a centrist pro-European, edged out Marcel Ciolacu of the PSD (one of Romania’s big traditional parties) by the tiniest of margins, 19.18% to 19.15%. Ciolacu had a big lead over Lasconi on Sunday evening but his advantage narrowed throughout the night. I watched the results from the last few polling places (out of about 20,000) come through on Monday morning. Lasconi finally poked her nose in front with just 18 of them left to declare. Surprisingly there was no recount. I was glad Lasconi made it to the final two. She’s inexperienced, but the PSD are mired in corruption.

Dominoes are falling all around. Lasconi must beat Georgescu in the run-off on 8th December, or else Romania will be the next to tumble. A lot of Romanians don’t even care. Does anyone care about anything that actually matters anymore? On the radio yesterday there was open discussion of Romania being under attack. Hypothetical, but still.

Today I had four sessions between 3:30 and 9pm. A boy of eight, a girl about to turn 18, then a boy of nine, and finally a woman in her late forties. Last night I had a nightmarish session with a woman of 23. We discussed success and failure. She said that success to her means having a family and a good career. Fine. A shallow definition, but not an unusual one. But then I put it to her that I have neither a family nor a traditional career. Does that mean I’m a failure, then? Yes. I burst out laughing at that point. The rest of the 90-minute session was like talking to an AI bot. Last week I asked her to name one thing she thought could improve Romania. More cars, she said. Hmm, there seem to be enough cars here already. In fact when I’m getting around the city, I’d really like there to be fewer cars. Are you saying that if Romanians became richer then people would have more cars? Or that if Romania’s road infrastructure improved, more cars could be accommodated? Her responses are one word, no words at all, or just utterly bizarre. It’s the same story with almost all women I see that were born between about 1998 and 2008. When I saw the older woman this evening, I told her how great it felt to finally talk to someone like a normal human being.

I recently saw some photos my brother had taken of the little one in the snow, with a mini snowman behind him. They’ve had a real cold snap over there; snow in November is highly unusual. We had a few flurries ourselves last Friday.

When I finished work at 9:30 last night I spoke to Elena and then watched the rest of Birmingham’s match at Exeter. A pretty nice football ground, I thought. It’s called St James Park, and often comes up in British pub quizzes. (Newcastle’s ground is, famously, St James’ Park. Which other team’s stadium is called St James Park?) Exeter sounds like a pretty nice city too; I’ve never done more than pass through it on the train. I’ve sometimes thought that maybe Exeter should vote to leave the UK. What would that be called? Blues were already 1-0 up when I turned on the game. They were dominant but couldn’t put Exeter away until they got (and scored) a penalty ten minutes from the end. Two-nil was how it finished.

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Pretty vacant

October 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

Seven lessons yesterday. It’s rare to have that many. All that talking gets quite tiring, especially when it’s online. I’m hoping to keep Sunday free (unlike last weekend) and hop over the border to Szeged in Hungary. I’ve heard good things about the city. I may even make a detour on the way there or back to take in the beautiful autumn colours.

When I spoke to Dad this morning, I mentioned the difficulty I have in connecting with young women aged between 15 and 25 or thereabouts in my lessons. Dad said that’s to be expected on account of the age gap between us, but I disagreed. There’s a certain vacancy there. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. Eight hours a day on Instagram, with its laser focus on image, will do that to you. When my university friend came to stay we talked about this. He reckoned that 10% of young women will suffer long-term damage – they’ll be confined to a (permanent?) zombie state – as a result of their social media use. Yes, boys and young men have their own issues, mostly around gaming. They’re up half the night and can’t stay awake in class. But I get the feeling that it’s something they’ll grow out of. They also do normal stuff like go out on their bikes or play football. One teenage boy had just been to football practice before our lesson. I got him to do an exercise where he had to choose between two verb tenses. Sometimes he wanted to use a different one. “Sorry mate,” I said, “You’re offside!” I raised my arm as if I was a linesman. He thought that was funny. With most girls, that sort of interaction just isn’t possible.

Talking of sport, Mum was pleased that Team New Zealand had won the America’s Cup. I think of it as an obscene waste of money. In other sporting news (from probably two weeks ago now), Rafael Nadal announced his retirement. The extraordinary two-decade-long rivalry between three titans of the game is now over; only Djokovic still remains. I also saw that Wimbledon is doing away with line judges in favour of automated line calling. I’m surprised they didn’t do this back in 2021 for the first tournament after the Covid cancellation; the tech certainly existed then. I read an article by an ex-line judge at Wimbledon. It’s something I wouldn’t have minded doing. As for being a ballboy though, bugger that. I’d have been terrible anyway. As a kid, trying to coordinate myself with other kids just wasn’t going to happen.

I should also mention football for the second time in this post. Earlier this year I wrote regular updates on Birmingham City’s eventual tumble through the trap door into the third tier of English football. A lot had to go wrong for that team to be relegated. A lot did go wrong. In their first season in such a low league since 1995, Birmingham have so far played eleven games, losing one, drawing one, and winning all the rest. They spent big over the summer and getting sell-out crowds to watch some pretty exciting football. There’s a sense of optimism around the club not seen in more than a decade. It’s funny how things turn out.

Just eleven days until the US election, and I have a strong sense of impending doom. (I wonder if anything else but doom can be impending. I never hear anyone talk of an impending root canal, as frightening as it must be.) This morning I saw two polls, one showing a tie nationally, and another showing Harris with only a three-point lead in New Hampshire, a state outside the “swing zone” which Biden won by more than seven points in 2020. Just two polls, but there have been several now that depict a race inching slowly but surely in Trump’s direction. My gut feeling, and that’s all it is, is that Trump will win the seven swing states 6-1 or even 7-0, perhaps even taking a “non-swing” state in the process. He may even win the popular vote or at least come very close. In that case (or any other of the many scenarios that see Trump elected again) I’ll want to log off from global news for my own sanity, keeping just my Romanian news app. I don’t think I could bear to see that grotesque excuse for a man day after day. Dad said that Harris hasn’t been charismatic enough, and charisma is all that matters over there, but what would “acceptable charisma” in a woman even look like in the US? A very “charismatic” woman would be perceived as too boisterous or not feminine enough. No matter what she does, she’s facing an uphill battle in those swing states simply because she’s a woman.

Last Sunday an important pair of votes took place in Moldova, Romania’s baby sister, which I would like to visit one day. (My first introduction to Moldova came from reading Tony Hawks’ Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, a funny but thought-provoking read.) The first round of the presidential election saw pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu come top with 42%, but she now faces a second round in nine days’ time against Alexandr Stoianoglo who is pro-Russia. There’s no guarantee that Sandu will win. There was also a referendum on amending Moldova’s constitution to include a path towards EU membership. The vote passed, just: 50.4% voted in favour. If Sandu doesn’t remain president, I expect that will be knocked on the head.

Any way you look at it, we’re living in fragile, unpredictable times.

Driving - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Maramureș și mai departe — Part 2 of 2 (with photos)

August 7, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’d been to Maramureș twice before, and it still felt a world away. In every village you saw babe – old ladies who probably weren’t even that old – dressed almost identically in dark clothes and a shawl. Once I saw a woman spinning wool with a spindle and distaff like I’d seen in videos. But on Friday morning I left the region and made my way to Turda (which is nicer than it sounds), only 30 km from the major city of Cluj-Napoca.

It was a three-hour drive or so. The first half of the journey, which took in the beautiful county of Bistrița-Năsăud, was a pleasure, but after hitting the town of Beclean it all became dull and industrial. I reached Turda earlier than I’d told the apartment owner I’d be there, and tried to park in the city but the payment on my phone didn’t work. I wished we still had self-explanatory coin-operated meters. Then I found a Dedeman which is one of the most useful things in the whole of Romania. As well as being a hardware store which sells anything you could possibly want in that vein, you can also park for free, pee for free (a big deal in Romania) or get a coffee for not far off free. The apartment was in a pretty seedy part of town to be honest, full of brutalist blocks and semi-derelict shops. I hung around a bit more, finishing my book, before calling the owner who let me in. As is often the case, it was much nicer on the inside than the outside. It had everything I could possibly have needed.

We don’t want your dirt here

That evening I watched a bit of the Olympics which I haven’t otherwise bothered with. They were showing the athletics. Mixed relay – what’s this? The British stadium announcer did a great job. The world and Olympic records for the women’s 800 metres appeared on the screen. Some Russian set those records in the early eighties and they haven’t been equalled since. All totally undodgy, nothing to see here, according to the Romanian commentator. The event I got into the most was the decathlon high jump. So far Romania have claimed seven medals (three gold, three silver and one bronze), all of them in water – five in rowing and two in swimming.

From the museum. On Sunday morning I tried to visit the Roman site – the castrum – but it was closed off.

On Saturday I visited a museum in town; I was the only customer which meant I was watched the whole time. Turda was conquered by the Romans, at which point it was called Potaissa. I was impressed with the presentation of the museum, and the translations into English were excellent. My only gripe was a lack of way-finding signs; this meant I was constantly told to go this or that way, to my slight embarrassment. After the museum I tried to get a coffee from a bakery, but the woman there was spectacularly unhelpful. Olympic-level stuff. Eventually I did get my hands on a simple coffee.

The main reason I visited Turda was to see the salt mine. Salt was extracted there over centuries; the mine closed in 1932 but was opened as a tourist attraction in 1992. After standing in a half-hour queue, I entered through a tunnel and descended into a cavern which is now a sort of theme park with a ferris wheel and assorted games, then went down another 13 flights of stairs to the bottom where you could row boats on a salt lake. I guessed it was 200 feet deep in total, but in fact it’s about twice that. I read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series 20-odd years ago and the whole place seemed somehow Pullmanesque. I rushed back from the depths of the tunnel to avoid going into a third hour of parking fees. I had lunch in the car on the hillside just outside the town centre; it was pretty there in a Romanian sort of way. Then I hung around the town for the afternoon; I had a very nice boysenberry-like ice cream.

I bought a melon from one of the least helpful stallholders I’d ever encountered (this anti-service still takes me aback after all these years in Romania), then grabbed a shaorma for dinner. I ate it in front of the judo finale – France beat Japan in a sudden-death tie-break to win the team event – then it was back to the athletics. I couldn’t get properly into it. I realise how anti-big I’ve become in the last eight years; the Olympics, the Champions League, the soon-to-be-expanded football World Cup, it’s all got far too big for me. (Olympic controversy has erupted here in Romania – I only knew about it when a student told me. The 18-year-old gymnast Ana Bărbosu won bronze and celebrated with the Romanian flag, only for the Americans to successfully appeal a minute later. The American got a 0.1 boost to her score, shunting Bărbosu down into fourth. She was in tears. Now we’ve got Nadia Comăneci weighing in and the Romanian prime minister boycotting the closing ceremony.)

On Sunday morning I drove back home. The super-fast motorway made this the easiest trip of the lot. (Romania’s motorways are great. There just aren’t very many of them.) My Peugeot was very happy bombing along at 130 km/h. On the way I stopped at Deva. Back in 2016 it was the first Romanian town I visited after Timișoara. Its main feature is the fortress on the hill. Eight years ago I took the lift to the top, but this time I walked up. If there was a proper paved track, I didn’t see it. I practically hiked to the top, then when I got up there I bushwhacked 300-plus degrees around the wall of the fortress before eventually finding the entrance and other people. Then I scaled 240 (?) steps to the actual top, took a few pictures, and walked down via the paved track like I did in 2016. A couple of hours later I was home.

Two students have so far raised eyebrows at my decision to go camping alone. Boring? Ever so slightly dangerous? (At 30 lei per night, it was certainly cheap. It was basic but it had a hot shower, a fridge, and even low-G internet. I saw a deer but no bears came near the tent.) The trip as a whole was fine, but I never felt I could fully relax. Very early tomorrow morning I’m flying to Luton; relaxation is the entire goal of my stay in St Ives. Very few places to go or people to see; it should be great. (Unfortunately I’ll miss my brother who flies to New Zealand on Saturday.)

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Better late than never

July 23, 2024 by 0 Comments

My hours are way down again. That means I can tackle my pretty lengthy non-work to-do list, but that also means making decisions about how and in what order and that in turn means increased stress. When I’m busier with work, my stress levels tend to go down if anything. Tomorrow I’m getting the car’s brakes looked at because they squeak when I brake for more than a few seconds and I’d rather not have dodgy brakes when I’ve got some long trips planned. It would have made sense to do that when I had the ITP done two weeks ago (that’s the equivalent of a WOF in New Zealand) but the chap at the ITP station wasn’t that easy to deal with. (The car passed its ITP without any trouble. I always got very excited when my car passed its WOF in NZ. That only happened three or four times in all the years I was there, and those inspections were six-monthly.)

Biden has pulled out. Far too late, but still, hooray! They must have read him the riot act because he seemed pretty sticky for a while there. I have nothing against Biden, but if he’d clung on, a Trump win (plus Republican control of all branches of government) was a virtual certainty. It may still turn out that way, but there’s some chance now of a non-terrifying outcome. Kamala Harris is just about nailed-on to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Yesterday I watched the final round of the golf. I’ll be honest, I was hoping for mayhem. Howling gales, horizontal rain, scores drifting into the Firth of Clyde and sailing off the map entirely. That’s basically what did happen in rounds two and three. Guys with all their fancy laser tech being outdone by the elements. But what wind there was died down over the last round. It was chaotic over the first few holes because the sheer number of contenders made it hard to keep up, but around the turn they gradually whittled themselves down until one player – Xander Schauffele – pulled away. He shot a virtually error-free 65 and won by two shots over Billy Horschel and Justin Rose. I remember Rose’s incredible finish as an amateur at the 1998 Open, back when I watched it every year. He turned professional immediately and (famously) didn’t make the cut for absolutely ages, but since then he’s forged a successful career for himself, including a win at the US Open. Just like in ’98, they showed a close-up of the engraver about to etch the winner’s name on the trophy. With a name like Xander Schauffele, there were plenty of ways to mess up. I’m glad I watched the golf, even though the sport (like so much else) has entered the dark side recently. The third round in particular was pure theatre. I noted that the metric system has yet to make into the world of golf, in either Britain or America. I don’t mind a bit of good old imperial occasionally, but when a British commentator described the sea water as pretty chilly at only 54 degrees, that’s where I draw the line.

I can’t wait to get away. The UK trip is the one I’m looking forward to the most. No obligations, nowhere I have to go, no people I have to see.

Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe - Travel: Romania

A Scottish summer in full swing (plus my travel plans)

July 21, 2024 by 0 Comments

Our two-week heat wave has come to an end, for now at least. Yesterday the temperature dropped ten degrees from the day before, and finally I could breathe again. First I dropped over a quarter of a ton of crap off at the tip – bags of hardened cement, big sheets of MDF from an old wardrobe, and one of those old-style TVs. That felt good – the small room next to my office, which had become a junk room, could be pretty useful. There’s still a horrible carpet in there that I need to get rid of. Then I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român and back – only the second trip I’ve made on the new bike since I bought it.

After that, I grabbed lunch and sat back and watched round three of the golf. Round two had been dramatic enough. The howling wind, even worse than on the first day which was bad enough, sent scores skyrocketing. Pity the poor Japanese guy who made two successive nines (on a par-four followed by a par-three). At the end of the second round, roughly half the field would be cut. I was strangely emotionally invested in what the cut line would be. Would it be five or six over par? It could have gone either way as the wind dropped for the last few players out on the course, but six it was, and that allowed ten or so more players to come back for the weekend. Nice. The more the merrier. Then on to yesterday. After some better weather in the morning, which helped a Korean player in a Hawaiian-esque shirt hit a hole-in-one, sheer madness followed as it sheeted down with rain. The wind, which is affected by the tide, also picked up. Spectators and players were like drowned rats out there. The temperature plunged. Commentators described hands as being prune-like. But it was all beautiful in its way too.

As this wonderful advert for a Scottish summer was playing out, it was time for me to play tennis. It seemed the weather system had moved south-eastwards in some style. Florin and I got there. We hit for 15 minutes when it started spitting, then after another 15 (following our best rally in which I finally got the ball past Florin at the net) the spits had become drips and drops and there was fork lightning in the near distance. Time to call it a day. When I got back, the golf was still on. Our shortened tennis session and the crazy weather in Scotland (which made everything take longer) meant I saw more of the closing holes than I otherwise would have. It’ll be one heck of a final round. Billy Horschel is on his own at four under par; six players are just one shot behind, including Dan Brown (not the Da Vinci Code guy) who was desperately unlucky on the final two holes. There are a further five players at even par or better; the winner is extremely likely to come from those dozen men. There could quite easily be a play-off, which would add even more excitement. I haven’t seen the weather forecast.

Travel plans. It looks like I’ll go up to Maramureș a week on Monday or Tuesday for five days or so. Then I’ve got my UK trip from 8th to 14th August. After that I’m thinking of four days in Maribor in Slovenia (19th to 23rd, or thereabouts), then there’s Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Too much, too fast

July 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

Wednesday’s 90-minute Romanian lesson was curtailed when our teacher, based in Deva, lost power. We finished the session this morning at ten, so Dorothy and I met up at eight for a coffee. She’s in the last week of her sixties; her 70th birthday is next Thursday and she’s having a party of sorts two days later (my brother’s birthday, in fact) in Buzad. She sometimes intersperses Romanian words into her sentences, such as grătar, which means barbecue. (She plans to have one of those in Buzad.) At one point she said that something was grătarred. We pondered how this should be spelt. I said that it should definitely be with double r because grătar has final stress; she said she’d employ an apostrophe instead. Dorothy asked me how my mother was. She remembered Mum’s cancerous lump. I’d almost forgotten about that Tuesday until I reread the WhatsApp exchange I had with my brother. All the swearing and panic. Dorothy and I always have good chats. I often feel more comfortable with people of a very different age (up or down) from my own, or with people with different cultural backgrounds. They’re likely to think, oh he’s young, or he’s old, or he’s British, when in fact he’s just weird.

In the last week or two I’ve felt a sense of impending doom. This extended heat wave has left me confined to home in the daytime and starved of sleep. Other, richer, parts of the city (such as Dumbrăvița which is technically outside Timișoara) have suffered regular power outages. Up there they almost all have air con and many even have swimming pools and pumps. The grid can’t cope. It’s been a particularly weird heat wave; Europe has been split by two air masses – a cool one in the west that has pushed up and intensified our scorching one.

It’s not just the heat. It’s the darkness everywhere. Trump has picked Jance Dance Vance (or whatever he’s called) as his running mate. Someone who compared Trump to Hitler eight years ago. Trump is talking about God a lot. God kept Trump alive when he was shot. All those evangelical idiots are lapping it up. Unless Biden pulls out of the race toot-sweet (and maybe even if he does), things look very ugly indeed. I wish I could just ignore it all, like Formula One. I’m not interested in Formula One (even though I made a game for kids that is loosely based on it), so I can happily ignore any headlines or articles on the subject. But American politics profoundly affects us all. It doesn’t help that I’m out here on Ukraine’s doorstep. There was a wonderful feeling of relief following the UK election. Those experts, rather than yes-men, brought into government in a clean break from Tory incompetence and corruption. Sadly though, the UK is bucking the trend.

There have been IT outages all over the show today, caused by a software update by a firm called CrowdStrike. The name sounds bloody scary. My initial reaction was that if this pisses off a few tech bros for a few hours then good, a bit like last year when I saw scenes of orcas ramming luxury yachts. Good on ’em. But then I saw that public transport and even hospitals have been affected. Everything is growing too fast and is now, slowly but surely, coming apart at the seams. (WordPress, which this blog uses, is still running I think.)

It’s a shame that I don’t enjoy watching sport anything like I used to. It was once a biggish part of my life. Even in 2017 (which was a great year, looking back), I filled in Wimbledon draws and watched baseball. But everything growing too big, too fast, has turned me off. This week the Open golf is on – it’s being played at Troon in Scotland – and because golf happens at a slow pace I thought I’d dip in. Today they’re playing the second round of four. It’s worth watching for the views of the isle of Arran, which I visited in February 1997 (I became quite ill there – I wasn’t equipped for the extreme conditions), and the trains clattering by alongside the 11th hole. They have three commentators at the same time – one too many in any sport – and the ads are infuriating. I saw something from Accenture that talked about “Gen AI”, “unlocking insights” and “putting a digital trove of information into users’ hands”. I know golf is corporate and all, but I couldn’t be the only one shouting “Piss off!” at the screen. (Accenture are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and hardly anyone knows what they even do.)

Dorothy said I really should get away in between 14th August (when I get back from the UK) and 29th August (when we go to Vienna). I think I will.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Two near misses (well, one was actually a near hit)

July 16, 2024 by 0 Comments

Firstly, the Trump shooting. I don’t feel sorry for him in the slightest. All he’s done for the last nine years is sow hatred and division. More guns, more violence. Then after being shot, he raised his fist – Fight! Fight! Fight! (against what exactly) – with the American flag as a backdrop, creating perhaps the most enduring image since 9/11. That I suppose is why he’s such a good campaigner – he knows what buttons to press. In America, those are the “playground bully” buttons. The cesspit of social media makes his strategy all the more effective. It’s now even more likely that Trump becomes president again (unless Biden gets out of the way I’d say it’s a racing certainty) and living on the doorstep of Ukraine I fear for what will happen next. After the last election I thought that Trump running again in 2024, or Biden for that matter, would be ridiculous. Common sense, in the shape of two new faces, would prevail. How naive I was.

When we were playing tennis on Saturday, a bird in a tree sounded as if it was being strangled. My partner identified it as a jay – gaiță in Romanian. He said that some people’s voices are said in Romanian to be like a gaiță, and I immediately thought of Elena (the 80-year-old lady who lives above me). She’s lovely, but her voice cuts through these thick walls. Yesterday morning I took her to the airport – she was flying to Toronto via Munich. She yapped and screeched the whole way in the car – all very distracting for me when it isn’t in my native language and I’m trying to drive – and I missed the turn to the airport. No problem; it was easy to turn back and we had plenty of time. We went to the brand spanking new Schengen-zone terminal which smelt of rotten fish. Her 10:50 flight wasn’t on the board, but a 9:40 one was. It seemed Elena had got the wrong time. When we got to the check-in desk at 9:03, it had officially closed three minutes earlier. (I was cursing my wrong turn.) The check-in lady made a phone call and eventually Elena and her suitcase were allowed on the plane. Phew. By this point Elena was hot and flustered and had trouble navigating the snaking security line. I’ve just had an email from her daughter to say she arrived safely in Toronto.

I saw a comment after the Euro final: “I’m beginning to think that football doesn’t want to come home. It seems to like it better elsewhere.” I liked the commenter’s A. A. Milne-style gentle humour. I wish there was more of that instead of the tedious memes, piss-takes and in-jokes. I watched the second half of England’s match with Spain – it was very watchable. Spain were clearly the better side and it would have been something of an injustice if England had won. It’s funny watching England games now – I hardly know any of the players, even if I’ve heard some of the names. When Cole Palmer equalised (great goal, by the way) I thought, ah yes, that’s the guy Luca said was his favourite player. (Luca is a 13-year-old boy I teach.)

I watched the men’s Wimbledon final, having not seen any of the men’s tournament prior to that. A fairly major wobble for Alcaraz when he served for the match, but in the end he beat Djokovic comprehensively. The sky’s the limit for Alcaraz. People are already talking about 20 grand slams. (He’s already 20% of the way there.) It’s very possible; the differences between the surfaces and the grand slams in general is much smaller than it used to be – the days of a Sampras who was imperious in two of the slams but always fell short at Roland Garros are over.

The Olympics start soon, apparently. I can’t be bothered with them.

This is the longest, deepest heat wave in Romanians’ living memory. I’m seeing 34s and 35s for the coming weekend – that will feel like some respite.