Romania

Coming unstuck

January 29, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

The last few days we’ve had incredible weather. Today it was blue sky all day and we got to 18. I don’t think they’re getting much more than that in Geraldine.

On Sunday I managed to get myself into a slight pickle. I was in Blajova, a small village a half-hour drive from me, when I somehow backed my car out over a culvert, leaving my front wheel hanging in the air. A woman opposite heard me revving the engine (to no avail; I was stuck) and came out. Could you or somebody else help me? No. OK, thanks, have a great day. This is fantastic, I thought. I’m in the middle of nowhere here. I had a weak signal and called some tow truck people. They didn’t even know where Blajova was until I sent them my location. Right, we can come in 45 minutes. It’ll be 500 lei. Ugh, that’s a bit much. More than I earned all day yesterday. Surely someone here can get me out of this. The car isn’t damaged, I’m hardly in the bottom of a ditch or anything, it just needs some manpower. I wandered around and as luck would have it there was a guy in an orange hi-viz vest, the kind that David Cameron used to wear, and he was willing to help. He got his two mates and the three of them pushed but it wouldn’t budge. I’ll get my Jeep then. Within two minutes he’d got his Jeep and attached the rope, and I was free. I tried giving them 100 lei but they wouldn’t take it. In this place we help each other. We’ll help anybody.

These villages are full of farmers and practical people who tow stuff on a daily basis. Before I got stuck, I was walking along the road in the village when an older gentleman wound down the window of his car. He wanted to know how an unknown person could possibly be wandering through his village on a Sunday morning. Being defensive, I said I was a tourist from England. I’ve been to Romania a few times before, that’s how I can speak a bit. He was very pleasant and asked if I was going to the church service which was about to start. When I told him that I thought his village was beautiful, he added, “but poor”.

I was in Blajova because it was close to a nature reserve called Lunca Pogănișului and I wanted to go for a walk through it. After getting stuck I nearly went back home, then remembered the men’s final in Melbourne was going on. I saw that Jannik Sinner had taken the first set against Sasha Zverev and the second was close. If Zverev gets the set I’ll go home because there’ll still be plenty of tennis to watch. If not and Sinner goes 2-0 up, I’ll go for my walk. Sinner won the second set on a tie-break. Walk it is then. But the track down to the Lunca was so hopelessly muddy that I soon went home anyway. By the time I got home, Sinner had completed a comprehensive win. It’s a shame I couldn’t see the women’s final which saw Madison Keys pick up her first grand slam in a brilliant match with Aryna Sabalenka. I was happy that the American won, as was Mum when I spoke to her. Keys came through a bunch of three-setters on the way. Madison Keys, by the way, sounds like some somewhere just off Cape Cod where you’d moor your luxury yacht and that no mere mortals could afford to live in. (It’s getting on for ten years since I visited Cape Cod. That was a good day.)

In my last post about the FA Cup, I meant to mention the match I saw in January 2000 between Aston Villa and Leeds United in the fifth round. I didn’t (and don’t) support Villa, but that game was one heck of a spectacle. Villa twice came from behind to win 3-2, Benito Carbone scoring a hat-trick. We saw four of the goals down our end. (I went with some other uni students.) I remember Paul Merson being an absolute beast in that game. For some reason I also remember Carbone’s blue boots which I thought looked pretty damn cool. Villa Park was rocking towards the end of that game. The Cup was already on the wane even by then, but 25 years ago it still meant a lot. (Villa made the final that year, losing to Chelsea in the last FA Cup final at the old Wembley.)

When I spoke to my parents this morning, Dad talked about the destructive potential of AI. I don’t use AI myself (I keep meaning to for curiosity’s sake, but I can’t be bothered) and am scared of what it might unleash, outside the realm of medicine where it seems to be beneficial. Dad said that at least he won’t see the destruction in his lifetime. It’s all happening to fast though that I wouldn’t be so sure.

Before I finish, some sad news concerning Romania. A band of thieves blew up the entrance to a small museum in the Netherlands and stole some extremely valuable (and extremely old) Romanian artifacts that had been on show there. It was the last day of the exhibition. One of the artifacts was a 2500-year-old gold helmet which I suppose the thieves planned to melt down, though the value of the helmet far exceeds that of the gold.

I’ve been sleeping better and have had more energy as a result. Not Kitty-level energy or anything crazy like that, but a normal level, which is definitely something.

Family - Photos - Politics - Romania - Writing a book

Good news about the books, an un-election, and some pictures

December 8, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I see I somehow neglected to mention my meeting with the publishers, so here goes. It was a weird meeting with the mother and daughter that lasted all of two hours. The mother likes to talk. She’s a French teacher, and sometimes she even switched from Romanian to French. Like I said, weird. At the beginning I was presented with a print-out of both the picture book and the A-B section of the dictionary. I started to comment on the picture book – for the love of God, don’t stretch or squoosh Dad’s illustrations as you’ve done here – before zooming out to the big picture. Before we start talking fonts and formats and stuff, can you assure me that this book, I mean these books, are actually going to see the light of day? The answer was yes, which was by far the most encouraging thing in the whole meeting. I was worried that everything Dad and I had done to this point might be in vain. It seemed EU funding will pay for a large chunk of it. (Of course, this is Romania, so until I actually see the books in print I can’t be 100% sure of anything.) Sometimes I struggled to articulate – in Romanian – what I wanted to say, but we managed to flesh out some important details. Surprisingly, I’m in charge of the layout, not them, and I agreed to a deadline of 15th January to get the small book sorted. This won’t be an easy task because the pictures won’t all be the same size, they’ll need varying amounts of explanatory text, and so on. We agreed that both books would be in B5 format, roughly 7 inches by 10, though the picture book will be landscape and the dictionary portrait. I have no plans for Christmas, which means I’ll have time to spend on the books.

Yes, Romania, where you can’t guarantee anything. Even whether elections actually happen. On Friday they (Romania’s supreme court, I think) invalidated the first round of the presidential election, less than two days before the second round was due to take place. (In fact, overseas voting for the second round had already begun.) This was a major shock. A couple of days earlier, documents were made available that showed that Putin supporter Călin Georgescu had been hugely promoted, probably by Russia, through algorithms (and money) on TikTok, which is Chinese-owned. The re-run of the election probably won’t happen until March, and it’s unclear if Georgescu will be allowed to run again. Last weekend’s parliamentary elections are still valid as far as I know, so presumably Klaus Iohannis (the current president) will stay in place, with the new parliament, until March. But really, all bets are off.

I spoke to my parents this morning. Mum had her shiny new crown. She described the space-age process of X-rays followed by scans from every angle that enabled the crown to be 3D-printed. None of this business of having to bite into a mould; it’s all cutting-edge stuff. The price is cutting-edge too. I could see a lovely painting of Dad’s which they’d hung in the kitchen; it was of the fruit and vegetable market in Cambridge. We discussed my brother, who has been pulling out every imaginable stop to complete his latest assignment for his master’s. Master’s. Where on earth has this motivation come from? He called me during the week for help with a spreadsheet. Luckily I spent quite a few years dealing with spreadsheets in a previous life. Only six weeks until I’ll be getting a niece.

I had four lessons yesterday – two English, two maths. Matei wanted to talk about the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a gargantuan American health insurer. Delay, deny, defend: that’s apparently what was written on the shell casings. Matei said that his death was being celebrated all over TikTok. I suggested that celebrating the brutal killing of someone with a wife and family who was just doing his job isn’t really OK, even if the company is as parasitic as the one he headed. But at least this has shed a light on the unforgivable state of US healthcare and insurance. Unfortunately I suspect it will all just blow over like everything else in America. It’s headline news for a week or two, but ultimately nothing happens. Just think of George Floyd. Or the numerous school shootings. Or the 2008 financial crisis where the big banks got bailed out as people lost their homes, and people shrugged their shoulders. They just put Trump back in, after all.

Last Sunday I went out for a spin, visiting Peciu Nou, Cebza, Petroman (which isn’t far off my online name) and finally the decent-sized town of Ciacova which its cobbled streets and square. My brother called me while was in Ciacova, so I gave him a bit of a tour. I still hope one day he will visit me in Romania. After getting off the phone, a dog bit my leg, completely out of the blue. He or she (I didn’t pay attention to that) didn’t draw blood, otherwise I’d have seen the doctor.

On Sunday evening I went into town and saw the parade of army men with torches, for the national day celebration.

I sent this picture of Peciu Nou to Dad, who wants to turn it into a painting. He wanted to see the other side of the street, so it looks like I’ll be making another trip there.

Various pictures of Ciacova

No trains have been down this track for a while

National day celebrations. Eight years ago, this was all so new and exciting, even though my feet froze.

Maths teaching - Politics - Romania

A manifest danger

December 1, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s 4:35 and daylight is fading on the last day before winter officially starts. I’ve only had a pair of two-hour lessons today: my 90-minute maths session with the 11-year-old girl got cancelled. I’ve still got one online session to come. Matei wanted to discuss the presidential election with me this morning. Regarding the ongoing recount, he said he thought they’d “put Marcel Ciolacu through” to the next round, overturning the original result in which he was pipped by Elena Lasconi for second place. This comment amused me. Put him through? Is this what Romanian elections are like? A kind of X-Factor, instead of, you know, checking the votes to see who has the most? If the process is above board (big if here I suppose), whoever was ahead originally should win after a recount more than 50% of the time. That’s just basic probability. Like most people, Matei doesn’t have a great handle on probability. His fancy new graphical calculator has random functions where you can toss coins, roll dice, or draw cards. But they aren’t random, he said, pointing to the clusters of heads or threes or spades or whatever. I tried to explain that clusters are exactly what randomness gives you. (His calculator functions in fact aren’t strictly random – it’s impossible to make such processes truly random – but they’re indistinguishable from being random.) A course on probability and statistics would be more practically useful than what we’re actually doing. Matei had been following the election pretty closely, but he said he’d never even heard of Georgescu beforehand. That gives you some idea of how a big a shock the result was. The subject has come up quite a bit this week. At my school we have to learn English, German and French! Soon you might be learning Russian too.

This recount is a logistical pain: there are 9.4 million votes including those from overseas. (Just 98 votes were cast in New Zealand.) The second round is supposed to happen a week tomorrow, and right now we don’t even know whose names will appear on the ballot paper. If the recount does put Ciolacu in second, I don’t know what would happen; he’s already said he won’t participate. Would Georgescu then win unopposed? That wouldn’t go down well. If Ciolacu decides to run in the second round after all, then Romanians have got (as I see it) two total disasters to pick from. Tomorrow we’ve got the parliamentary elections, so it’s all happening. I went through Piața Operei on Thursday night as I came back from a lesson. A protest was starting up. A small one, but who knows where it might lead.

Last time I said that enshittification had been named Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The Cambridge Dictionary gave the honour to the verb manifest. There’s nothing new about manifest as a verb: things can manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. What’s new though is that people are now using the verb transitively: you can now “manifest success”. In other words, achieve success by pure force of will. Maybe if I did that I wouldn’t be the irredeemable failure that my 23-year-old student said I was. This manifesting sounds like total woo-woo to me. Woo-woo is sadly on the rise; astrology is booming, for instance. It goes with all the social media-fuelled conspiract theories. None of this will end well.

Another thing I’ve noticed about the young women I teach: many of them have no discernible sense of humour. As I said last time, it’s like you’re communicating with an AI tool. My Romanian teacher said on Tuesday that Georgescu’s very limited sense of humour is a bad sign. I see what she means.

Tomorrow is Romania’s national day, which should mean a parade of military and emergency vehicles. How it will pan out on a Sunday morning, when so many people are at church, I’ll have to see.

A lovely piece on a Romanian news website today. How Europe is preparing for World War Three. From Poland’s Iron Dome to the awakening of an old military giant.

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

Enshittification: it’s pouring out now

November 28, 2024

by plutoman 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.

Books - Dreams - Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Music - New Zealand - Politics - Romania

Pulling teeth

November 22, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

A storm ripped through last night at 3am; for an hour and a half I couldn’t sleep. It’s still blowing a gale (or something at around a force 6 or 7 at least) now. And it’s raining hard. Either before or after the storm – I can’t remember – I had my first dream to feature Donald Trump. I was in a small town or village on a sunny day, having been on one of my excursions in the car, when he appeared. There was no rally or anything; he was just there, surrounded by a handful of people. It was all very civilised. He seemed to be at least six foot six. My instinct was to get away from him for fear of being shot. In the same dream, or perhaps the next one, my laptop caught fire.

Here’s a map of the weather warnings that were put out yesterday. The combination of high winds and (in higher terrain) blizzards has made for quite a complex picture. I’m in the orange zone:

Last night I had a chat with Mum. What’s happened to your tooth? A crown had fallen out. She’d already been to the new gleaming-white state-of-the-art dental practice in Geraldine; in ten days she’ll get a replacement crown at a cost of $1800. Dad then came on the line to say he’d just sold a painting for the same amount (I don’t know if that was net or gross). It took me three days to do that! As if three days was a long time. I immediately thought, just imagine being able to make $600 a day doing what I’m doing. I told Mum that if she could hang on for six months (!), she could get it done in Romania for a fraction of the cost. Coincidentally I’d just been reading David Walliams’ Demon Dentist with a very bright girl of almost eleven before this talk of dentistry with my parents. After the dental talk, conversation turned to the various haka and hikoi that have been going on lately in New Zealand.

In a lesson on Tuesday my student went through a long article about career choices. The author of the article likened career decisions to an octopus where each tentacle needs to be fed and accommodated. Tending to your “practical” tentacle too much can mean you neglect your “social” tentacle, and so on. It mentioned that as your salary increases, your expectations increase likewise. You’ll never be properly satisfied. Reading this sort of thing emphasises how atypical my own experiences have been. In January 2008 I went to Melbourne for eight days to attend the Australian Open. And to see Melbourne, which I liked a lot. Then when I got back to work everything got pretty crap pretty quickly. I’d muddled along for a few years as one of the young guys, but all of a sudden a bunch of actual young guys and girls joined the department and I was 28, supposedly a level above. The others at my level were suddenly doing life stuff like buying houses, getting married, having kids, and spending proper money on cars. They were progressing. It became obvious, within the space of a few weeks, that it wasn’t going to work for me. So I actually cut down on my spending, squirrelling away $500 a week for the rest of ’08 and the whole of ’09, until the end finally came in December. When I was in New Zealand last year, I stumbled upon some old payslips from 2007. Oh really, that much? That was the last year, in fact the only year, that I was at least somewhat into my corporate job. I was part of a team of just five. That all felt an awfully long time ago.

Tuesday was when some of the more notable lessons happened. In the morning I asked a 28-year-old what he thought the worst (or most destructive) invention in modern human history was. He quickly shot back: social media. There are several other contenders: leaded petrol, cigarettes, landmines, nuclear weapons (though they may have prevented destruction), and plastic. But all of them were invented even before my parents were born, in some cases centuries before. If you’re talking about the worst invention in the last 75 years, social media must be it. It’s destroying the fabric of our society like nothing else, and it’s horrifying to watch this destruction unfold in real time. That evening I had a 90-minute session with a 23-year-old woman. Teaching women of that age is invariably hard, but this session was excruciating. I got one-word answers from her, if that. Look, this isn’t working. I’m saying five words for every one of yours. (I was being generous.) I was getting a real Demon Dentist feel about the whole thing; it was like pulling teeth.

It’s been a slightly frustrating week, with an above average number of cancellations. I’ve tried to make the most of the annoying downtime by making new games and exercises, for both English and maths. I made a set of cards with the numbers 1 to 100, to help with understanding factors, multiples, primes, and all the rest of it. I’d planned just to go up to 40, but then thought I may as well go the whole hog. I’m happy with the system I came up with. Black for odd, red for even (like the suits of a normal pack of cards), a purple border if the number is prime, squares in the corners to denote a square number, and a small triangle on the right if the number is triangular. It was important not to make it too busy. On the back of each card I wrote the prime factorisation and all the factors of the number.

I’ve been playing my Primitive Man LP by Icehouse (an Aussie band who were big in the early eighties) a lot lately. Icehouse came on Radio Hauraki a lot back in 2007, that one year when my job was meaningful. It was usually Great Southern Land, or sometimes Hey Little Girl. But there are other very good songs on that record too, like Goodnight Mr Matthews. A lot of the tracks remind me of Split Enz who were big at around the same time.

I gave up on Honey & Spice in the middle of the fifth chapter. Whoever the target market is for the novel, I’m as sure as hell not it.

It’s an important time for Romania right now. Citizens (i.e. not me) go to the polls three weekends running. This Sunday is the first round of the presidential election. The parliamentary elections follow on 1st December, which happens to be Romania’s national day, with the second round of the presidential election taking place on the 8th. The far-right anti-everything-except-Trump-and-Putin party will surely increase their vote share. If they gain power, Romania could go the same way as Hungary. Let’s hope not.

I’ve got an important meeting this evening regarding the book(s) I’ve been writing with the help of Dad. More about that next time; it’s been a long post.

Family - Life :) - Photos - Romania

Eight years in this crazy place

October 8, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

As my work hours are getting longer again, my posts are getting shorter.

This morning I had a Skype chat with my aunt and uncle in Woodbury (the ones who visited me in Timișoara). She had a lot to say; he didn’t. She said they’ll be putting their property on the market. Time to pull the plug. Though with my uncle starting to lose his memory, I wonder how much a totally alien home might mess him up.

Today marks the eighth anniversary of my arrival in Romania. I’ve spent 18% of my life here. Yesterday I met Mark in town. We talked about a lot of teaching, mostly. But also his three children. And how much we both still like Timișoara. If only it wasn’t so hot in summer, this place would be just about perfect for me.

This was from Saturday. I still haven’t been invited to a Romanian wedding. The more I hear about them (400 guests? Lasting three days?) the more grateful I am.

A statue of Adi Bărar, guitarist for Timișoara band Cargo. It was put up just three weeks ago. Bărar died in 2021 after getting Covid.

Glory to God. Read the Bible every day. In Recaș yesterday.

This dog just wouldn’t budge, no matter what. I even took a video of cars swerving around it. At Bazoșu Nou yesterday.

Family - Life :) - Romania

Musafiri

September 28, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Musafiri means visitors. It’s a word imported into Romanian from Turkish, just like dușman (enemy), macara (a crane that you lift things with), mușama (oilcloth), and hundreds of others. And in a pretty rare event, I actually had some musafiri last weekend.

At 6:30 pm on Saturday, after a solid day of lessons, my university friend (let’s call him Jason) arrived in a campervan with his girlfriend (let’s call her Marianne) and her parents. They (or specifically her father) had driven all the way from Paris, stopping in Normandy, Germany, Austria and Hungary on the way. They came up to my flat. We chatted and eventually ate (I was getting hungry). I spoke mostly English, peppered with some French. Marianne speaks English at a native level, while her parents speak just enough to get by. Her parents’ intrepid travels made for some interesting conversation. They drove to Iran in 2019, got stuck in Turkey during the early stages of Covid, and even took the van to Russia after the war started in 2022. The mind boggles. I put Jason and Marianne up in my larger bedroom, I slept in the small one, and Marianne’s parents slept in the van in the car park.

Marianne, only 33, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. With all her treatment, she understandably gets tired easily, so we took things pretty slowly. We made a late start the next morning, taking the tram into the centre of town, arriving at the Orthodox cathedral while Sunday mass (which takes hours) was still in full swing. The four of them found this a quite incredible sight, as I did myself the first time. (As I lived practically right by the cathedral, I quickly got used to it.) Marianne wanted to check out all the souvenir shops. Her other big thing was cats. She’s a cat obsessive. Timișoara is awash with cats, so she was in heaven – my apartment block’s cat-heavy car park was a rich source of photo opportunities.

We went to Porto Arte, the bar and restaurant by the river. The weather was excellent and the bar was doing a good trade – the bell, which rang every time a new food order came in, was going incessantly. From there we walked through the three main squares. They were impressed by the architecture. Jason and Marianne said the city centre was much cleaner than Birmingham’s – I found this comment rather alarming. Birmingham, like so many other British cities, is in a right mess. We went to the Bastion which had a newish tourist office that was informative even for me – it showcased the attractions of Timiș as a whole, not just the city. We sat in a nearby bar, inside to get out of the heat. (Marianne seemed quite sensitive to it. It’s just as well she didn’t come a month earlier.) We took the tram home. Marianne lay on the bed while Jason and I chatted. We covered some interesting subjects, such as the standard of maths teaching.

At around 7:30 we made our way to the Timișoreana beer factory, just a few minutes’ walk from my place. Unlike the previous two times I’d been there, all the action was in the outside area. I suppose it had been winter the other times. It was somebody’s 50th birthday, so we were treated to a rather loud rendition of De Ziua Ta by the Romanian band 3 Sud Est. There was also, surprise surprise, a cat among the tables. We ate and drank. Marianne’s parents struck up conversation with anybody and everybody they could find. Then a card game came out. A trick-taking game like euchre, this game used a special pack with pirate and mermaid cards as well as numbered cards of various coloured suits. There were no teams; the five of us played individually. The game’s big thing was that rather than trying to win as many tricks as possible, you had to predict how many you would win after seeing your hand, then try and hit that exact number. What’s more, players bid simultaneously. The game progresses over ten deals (only one card per player in the first round, increasing by one with each round). I was nowhere near winning, but it was an interesting game nonetheless.

Jason and Marianne parted ways from her parents, who were up early the next morning for the next leg of their van trip. Jason and Marianne rose rather later, and luckily I had no lessons until 1pm. I took them to the train station and said goodbye. They were heading to Budapest, then on to Croatia where they would finally fly back to Birmingham. Throughout the afternoon and evening (I had five lessons, finishing at 9:30), Jason updated me on their delays. The train was almost two hours late leaving Timișoara, then they had another hold-up at the border. It was close to midnight when they got to Budapest.

Having visitors seemed to make me feel better. It made me tidy this place up, for one thing, and added a more general sense of purpose to life for that short period. Since then it’s been a tiring few days. Right now we’re nudging 30 degrees – very warm for late September.

Some big news: Mum and Dad have booked their flights to Europe. They’re flying to Munich and then to Timișoara; they’ll arrive on (I think) 8th May. They’ll maybe spend two weeks with me before heading to the UK.

The US election is just 39 days away. The polls (for what they’re worth) are close. Some people have already voted; early voting started last week. The stakes are extremely high.

Family - Language teaching - Politics - Romania

The big bam!

September 16, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I said last time that seasons in Romania change with a sudden bam!, and what a bam! this has been. Its real name is Cyclone Boris (yes, these things have names now) which has dumped months of rain on us in a few days. In the county of Galați in the east, flooding has claimed six lives. I wonder how many Romanians died from the heat waves that immediately preceded all of this. Climate change is real. On a personal note, I haven’t minded the deluge. I feel I’m built to handle it, in a way I’m simply not with the extreme heat. Yesterday I met Mark in town. I got there early. Piața Victoriei was almost deserted, lockdown-like, so I could take in the architecture without worrying about bumping into people. We ate at Berăria 700. Obviously we didn’t sit outside as we normally would. Inside means you’re in part of the old fortress, which has a real cosy feel about it.

Work is getting back to normal, though it’s a different normal. So many kids now. They all want (or their parents want, let’s face it) lessons just after the school day finishes and it’s impossible to accommodate everybody.

Last week I heard some dreadful news. A 17-year-old student of mine (we started when he was just 11) has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His mother messaged me with the news. His English is excellent; he’s come on in giant leaps in the six years I’ve spent with him. He wanted to be a pilot. We often discussed planes, routes, accidents and incidents. Sometimes I’d talk about planes that I flew on as a kid, such as the three-engined DC-10. This diagnosis has surely scuppered his plans. For someone so young (and he had an old head on young shoulders) it’s so sad.

I saw snippets of last week’s presidential debate. Kamala Harris performed very well. She knew what buttons to press. The “rally size” button was particularly effective. She made Trump seem even more egotistical and unhinged than usual. Trump went on about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating cats and dogs. That was the clip played around the world. What didn’t get so much airtime was his admiration of Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary. I doubt many in the US would even have known who Orbán was. But it certainly got some attention here in Romania. The prospect of Trump getting back in again is scary as hell. Harris needs to get herself out there more. More rallies, more interviews. She’s shown she can perform. Just seven weeks to go now. (I’ve just seen that apparently there was another attempt on Trump’s life while he was playing golf, though it didn’t get nearly as far as in July.)

Yesterday I saw my nephew on a WhatsApp video call with my brother. It was his second birthday. There were balloons and streamers and all sorts. Mum and Dad are now serious about a trip to Europe, probably next May. So that’s good.

Family - Life :) - Romania - Tennis

On the right track (maybe)

August 28, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

A bit more positivity from New Zealand this morning. I got to see my nephew who is a very bright little boy indeed. He loves playing with toy cars, especially old British ones like Morgans, apparently. Then Dad said, “We’d better get onto booking our trip as soon as they’re gone,” meaning a trip to Europe. If they’re serious about ever seeing their younger son and grandson again, they don’t have a lot of choice. Dad’s been ill for too long for it to be a virus, so he’s been put on antibiotics. Mum, who I’m sure is greatly enjoying spending time with her grandson despite the stress, seemed to like my pictures of Slovenia.

After our Skype chat, and before my four lessons, I met Dorothy in town. We talked about how Romania is, slowly but surely, heading in the right direction. Every week I see a building being renovated or a bike rack conveniently added or an intersection modified to make it that little bit safer. Romania’s economy has grown substantially in the time I’ve been here. People are earning more in real terms. Unlike some of its neighbours, Romania has become considerably more stable. It’s still very imperfect – those imperfections really came to the fore during Covid – and I worry that Romania’s urge to modernise will compromise its natural and man-made beauty, but there are reasons to be optimistic.

I’m off to Vienna in under 36 hours. I’ll have three passengers, one of whom I’ve never met in my life. I have no idea how this will all pan out. I’ll reveal all in my next post.

Update: One thing that hasn’t noticeably improved since 2016 is Romania’s level of customer service. This morning I waited 45 minutes to withdraw some euros from my bank account. The woman at the desk (when I finally got there) must have had some pretty rigorous training. Never look at the customer or change your facial expression in any way. If the customer asks a question, remain silent. If he or she repeats the question, respond in an exasperated tone but whatever you do, never fully answer it. Consult your phone five times per minute and your smart watch ten times per minute.

The US Open is under way. I read that Birmingham-born Dan Evans came through the longest match in tournament history in the first round, beating 23rd-seeded Karen Khachanov in 5 hours and 35 minutes. Incredibly he was 4-0 down in the fifth set, but then won six games on the spin. He’s now a 34-year-old veteran; I saw him in Auckland when he was still a teenager. At only five foot nine, he’s struck me as a cross between Lleyton Hewitt and a typical British lad who never stops being a lad. A few years back he got a one-year ban for taking cocaine.

I’m now packing for Vienna.

Films - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

A land of confusion and a bunch of pics

April 22, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Yesterday was my birthday, after which I felt more clueless than ever. It started off normally, with Matei – his maths exams imminent – tapping away furiously on his Casio to solve the diabolical enigma of ten divided by four. It carried on in pretty standard fashion too as I had 3½ hours of English with the brother-and-sister partnership. Then I cycled to Parcul Rozelor where I sat for a while before playing tennis with Florin. I didn’t play well, with the exception of my defence which kept me in it. Once again I had the wobbles, especially on serve. I won the first set 6-3, a score that flattered me. In the ninth game I led 0-40 and eventually won it on my third attempt following the longest rally of the day – a point I was well out of at one stage. I was 3-2 up in the second set when time ran out.

Then it was off to the riverside bar with Florin who talked to me (or at me) for the duration of the walk. A drink or two and a bite to eat, then home. That’s what I’d gathered would happen and what I’d mentally budgeted for. There were rather more friends and friends-of-friends than usual, and we sat inside rather than outside, but that was no cause for alarm. Someone – I can’t remember who – gave me a bottle of wine for my birthday, the second I’d received that day. Then small bottles of homemade țuică (plum brandy) and cognac and vișinată (cherry liqueur) started appearing, and out came shot glasses. Always good to try this stuff. Apart from the shots I had a single beer, and sarmale and mămăligă to eat. With my batteries just about dead and half the people already gone (some had started while we were playing tennis), I decided to head home. Right, can I pay? After some confusion over who and how to pay, a figure of 300 was mentioned. Sorry, what?! That happened to be exactly what I’d earned from my lessons that day. I ended up paying just 70 lei. Then Florin spent several minutes explaining there had been some cultural misunderstanding, as he put it, and when I said that all I’d expected was a beer and some basic food, he said “that isn’t how it works in Romania”. Well last weekend it was, so what do I know?

Baffled, I cycled home. I watched some snooker – last year’s champion Luca Brecel lost 10-9 to David Gilbert after being 9-6 up and twice having the table at his mercy. I didn’t sleep much with all that “business” going around in my head. Plus I had a hangover, my first in several years. I’d planned to go on a road trip today, and eventually did in the afternoon. I visited Charlottenburg, a village settled by Germans (as the name would suggest) in the 18th century. The dwellings are all in a circle, making the place more striking from the air than the ground. From there it was a short hop to Buzad where Dorothy has her house. I can see why – it’s extremely beautiful. That patch is hillier than most of the surrounding area, making it more picturesque. Sadly it has seen a huge drop-off in population like so much of rural Romania; cats, dogs and domestic birds must outnumber humans there in 2024. Driving on those potholed roads was rather taxing given the fug that I was in, though negotiating the city and its sneaky one-way system was far worse.

I was in contact with Florin’s wife today. I said I’d pop over and give her some money to make up for the “misunderstanding”. She then said it had nothing to do with money, so I don’t even understand what it is I don’t understand. Times like these make me think I must be autistic. She was lovely though, and put the blame for whatever it was squarely on Domnul Sfâra, the 89-year-old man (!) whom I used to play tennis with. “It was all his idea, and he didn’t explain anything.” I didn’t feel comfortable blaming him – if by some miracle I make it to more than twice my current age, I very much doubt I’ll even have ideas, let alone be able to articulate them.

Our Romanian teacher sent us a long film showcasing “legends” that arose during the so-called Epoca de Aur, or golden age, meaning the final years of communism. (It was anything but golden.) It was a good watch. I was particularly amused by the story of Ceaușescu’s picture in a major newspaper in which he appeared alongside the (taller) French president. The photo of Ceaușescu was edited at the last minute, putting a hat on his head to give him some extra inches and make him look more statesmanlike. Unfortunately the editor forgot about the hat in his hand.

A word on my brother’s graduation. Hats off (!) to the announcer who read out a hundred or more multi-barrelled African names with hardly a stumble, before alighting on my brother’s group. He must have practised. It reminded me of a radio ad from 2000 where someone had to say the names of the Samoan rugby team. Have a break, have a Kit-Kat. Fifteen Samoan names would have been a breeze compared to what this guy had to contend with.

Birmingham drew 0-0 at basement-dwelling Rotherham yesterday in a match that was interrupted for half an hour by a medical emergency in the stands. Because Sheffield Wednesday won during my road trip today, Blues are now in a precarious position, back in the bottom three with only two games left to play.