Romania

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

Heading into the home straight

August 31, 2018 by 0 Comments

It’s the last day of August, the final day before we hit those similar-sounding month names that signal the home stretch of the year. As yet, there’s little sign of autumn. Our expected high today is 31 degrees.

Yesterday morning I got a phone call during my lesson. The number was unknown and I couldn’t answer it. I rang him or her back straight after the lesson, but the number was busy. Later I’d need to see my landlady, or to be more accurate my landlord’s intermediary (my actual landlord is based in Israel), to pay my rent in euros and my expenses in lei. Having to trek across town at the end of each month to physically hand over cash in two different currencies doesn’t seem any less ridiculous now than it did nearly two years ago. I walked to Piața Badea Cârțan where I handed over 1390 lei in return for €300 at one of the many exchange offices, picked up some fruit and vegetables and a 2.25-litre bottle of Timișoreana, and then read the final chapters of Station Eleven. I called my landlady to ensure she’d be home, then hopped on the tram (Line 4) just around the corner from the market. It was the hottest part of the day by then, and it was steaming inside that old tram. The only respite I got was when it stopped and the doors opened.

For the first 17 months I met my landlady at her work, the power company which is situated almost next door to the Timișoreana beer factory and conveniently close to Piața Badea Cârțan, but she no longer works. She lives with her husband above a pizza restaurant, almost right outside the penultimate tram stop on the line. Her husband seems to be suffering very badly from depression, perhaps with additional complications, but severe depression is more than enough on its own. The last few times I met my landlady at her office, she broke down in tears. I called her again when I got off the tram, and I could hear a small child in the background. Her husband came downstairs to meet me. I asked him how he was, and immediately regretted it. “Sick,” he said. He took my money, said goodbye, and that was that. I went home on Line 7. When I arrived home I called that unknown number back. After several rings a young woman answered, and said she’d found another teacher in the intervening few hours, almost certainly a non-native speaker.

I had four lessons on Wednesday, two of them back-to-back with the brother and sister in Dumbrăvița, and then two with adults. The lessons with the kids went pretty well; the ones with the adults less so. My 6pm session was with a bloke who is just one day younger than me. His wife used to attend too, but I think she took a dislike to me during a lesson in which we discussed Romanian customer service. She got a job in Vienna soon after that, although she’s since moved back. As for him, he’s had a tough year. His father, who lived in Spain, died in June after a long illness. On Wednesday he was very tired. I wasn’t at my best either, getting myself all confused about the meaning of “repatriation” in a particular context. At 8pm I had a lesson with two beginner-level guys in their early thirties, and I probably made most of the lesson boring, hard and confusing, all at the same time. The final part, where we discussed the habits of British people (football, beer, tea, and so on) possibly just about saved me.

When my aunt and uncle were in Timișoara, I took them to the Museum of the Revolution. The woman at the desk was called Simona, and my aunt said that one of their rhododendrons had the same name. When she was back in New Zealand, my aunt emailed me a picture of the Simona flower, for me to pass on to its namesake at the museum. I don’t think my aunt realised how many Romanian women carry that name, including one of the most famous right now, Simona Halep. Unfortunately for Romanian tennis fans, she fell at the first hurdle at the US Open. It’s been a brutally hot first week in New York.

The Red Sox appear to be back in business; they lost six games out of eight but have now won their last three, including Wednesday night’s game in which they belted a colossal eleven runs in one inning.

Life :) - Romania

The Big Day and trip report — Part 5

June 9, 2018 by 0 Comments

This afternoon my parents called me from their train which was at a station whose name began with K, about half an hour from Budapest. Barely an hour later they called me again from their Budapest apartment. They flew from Gatwick to Vienna, where they spent two nights. After two further nights in Budapest they’ll make their way to Timișoara, again by train. I’m pleased that they’re going by train: it’s a hugely underrated means of transport in Europe (the UK excepted, perhaps). Next Wednesday we’ll be bussing to Belgrade and spending four days there. If I’m honest I’d have preferred a Romania road trip, but with Mum a city break is a far safer option. I don’t take beta-blockers anymore.

It was a real pleasure to have my aunt and uncle (B and J) here, even for just two days. They’d been to China and South America in recent years, but Timișoara was something altogether different for them. They could see the city’s vast potential, but also the lack of resources holding it back. We visited the dilapidated but moving Museum of the Revolution (my fourth visit), and of course the Orthodox cathedral that’s almost literally a stone’s throw from me. I took them on a couple of mystery tram trips and we visited two of the largest markets. In late spring the markets here become quite spectacular, and my aunt and uncle were particularly impressed by the array of flowers on show. They’ve been in the flower business since they moved to South Canterbury in the mid-nineties, and it is serious business. My aunt is now the president of the NZ Rhododendron Society, and much of their travel (such as the time they recently spent in Holland) is rhodie-related.

We ate at Terasa Timișoreana both nights they were here. The second night I had the Romanian equivalent of a ploughman’s lunch, which would have been great if B and J hadn’t spent most of their time talking about (a) how Jacinda Ardern’s government is laying nine years of stability and prosperity to waste; (b) how they’ve worked very hard for everything they’ve achieved in their lives and so on and so forth; and (c) New Zealand should go back to first-past-the-post. I had the biggest problem with (c): I was convinced that FPTP was an undemocratic pile of crap at the age of twelve, and numerous elections in Britain and the US since then have done nothing to change my view. (No electoral system is perfect – that’s a fact that can be mathematically proven – but I’d say NZ’s current MMP system does a good job on the whole.)

Apart from the politics diversion which I could have done without, I got on well with B and J, as usual. They left on Thursday morning.

After a bit of a wild goose chase, today I finally got myself a fishing licence. It cost me 105 lei, including 10 lei for a passport-sized photo. Dad has packed a fishing rod in his suitcase so hopefully we’ll be able to spend a day on the Bega. Fishing isn’t something I was interested when I was younger, but in this fast-paced world it seems a relaxing way to spend a few hours, a long way from a screen.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

You must be looking forward to it

May 14, 2018 by 0 Comments

One day I’ll ride to Serbia. Yesterday I got a bit further along the track that leads there, going just beyond the village of Utvin and almost reaching the town of Sânmihaiu Român. I did about 23 km in all, with the ribbit of frogs and the call of cuckoos in the background. Those endorphins certainly kicked in afterwards. Heavy-ish exercise: now that’s something I need more of.

Last night I managed to see România Neîmblânzită (Untamed Romania) at the cinema. The screen downstairs seems to have closed down, so it’s now impossible to see a film in Timișoara without visiting a bloody shopping mall. The film was great though. How often do you see nature documentaries at the cinema? It was all in Romanian, obviously, and at a David Attenborough-esque pace that I could mostly handle. The film showcases Romania’s incredible biodiversity throughout the regions and the seasons, and also serves as a warning: shit, if we carry on like we’re doing, look what we’ll lose. I must visit the Danube Delta. Perhaps that’ll happen next year if I can persuade my friends from St Ives to join me.

My brother’s wedding is almost upon us. Twelve days away. You must be looking forward to it. Aarghh! Seriously, I’m so happy for my brother, and when I look back and think how he nearly married a complete arsehole a few years ago, I’m even happier. His fiancée, almost my sister-in-law now, is just lovely. But as for the wedding itself, it’s an event with lots of people, 85% of whom I’m not going to know. And because I’m, y’know, his brother, I won’t just be able to slink into oblivion. So me being me, of course I’m not looking forward to it. In a way, it’ll be a test for me. I’m more comfortable in my own skin now, and hope I’ll be able to relax a bit more as a result. My one duty on the day is to read a poem taken from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a book I started but never finished.

Yesterday I spoke to my cousin. She regaled me of their recent family trip to Tonga (which did sound fantastic) and the kids’ many extracurricular activities, including, of course, underwater hockey. Do they ever televise that, and if so, how? Somehow she seemed more than 11,000 miles away.

Last week was quite full-on: I had 35 hours of lessons. On Wednesday I caught up with someone from the training company who lives in Bucharest but happened to be in Timișoara. We met at Starbucks in Iulius Mall – why you’d ever go there is beyond me – and she wasn’t in the mood for much of a chat.

The weather is still fantastic. Let’s hope it’s a while before it gets too fantastic (i.e. too hot).

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Romania

Drained (and our cold snap)

March 11, 2018 by 0 Comments

I need a break. A day off. Even a week off. For the first time I’m really feeling it in my body.

It’s time I stopped saying yes to everything and started blocking out days in my calendar. My last day off was 13th January, eight weekends ago. There’s a certain irony that this week I was missing the hours and days I spent last spring and autumn roaming the streets of this beautiful city, putting thousands of adverts in people’s letterboxes. The weather is far too nice now to be stuck inside all the time, or to venture outside only when I have a lesson to get to. It really hit me on Friday when someone rang me up asking for lessons. Of course I said yes, and my new student came over yesterday morning. We had a productive session, but it meant I no longer had a block of free time in my Saturday. In the afternoon I had back-to-back lessons in Dumbrăvița with the brother and sister who are both hard to teach for very different reasons. Their mother provided me with food – celeriac soup, chicken and rice, and even though it was delicious, I’d earlier grabbed a pleșcavița from one of the kiosks in Piața 700, so I felt quite bloated after that. I had another lesson in the evening – this time on Skype – and I muddled through despite my inadequate preparation.

I still love my job and wouldn’t go back to some god-awful insurance company for all the tea in China, but I’ve got to remember that I’m the boss here (that’s kind of the point!) and the extra money I make by saying yes all the time isn’t worth it. At the end of the week I have a healthy brick of lei in my hand, but in pound or dollar terms it might as well be Monopoly money, and at the moment I’m not even getting the chance to spend it.

Here are a few pictures of Timișoara during our late-winter blast of cold weather:

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Romania

Don’t talk about the weather

March 6, 2018 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s warming up a bit now.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

Another terrific Tuesday

February 14, 2018 by 0 Comments

On the weird off-chance that anybody from Romania actually read my last post, I didn’t mean to have a go at your country, which I absolutely love. It’s more that I really want Romania to succeed, and an upswing in tourism (return tourists, in particular) would go some way to making that happen. The present standard of service frustrates me because most Romanians I’ve met outside the customer-facing world have been extremely welcoming.

Talking of frustration, the family who live in Moșnița Nouă cancelled both their lessons yesterday afternoon, less than an hour before we were due to start, depriving me of 160 lei. Their daughter “wasn’t in the mood”. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood either. I’ll have a chat with them if and when I see them next to let them know what my ground rules are. If they don’t like them, they can find another native English speaker in Timișoara to teach them. Good luck with that.

Today I had an early start with my beginner-level student. The clock ticked well past our 7:30 start time, and then finally the doorbell went. Phew. Waiting for that bell to go is the most stressful part of my job. I speak a fair bit of Romanian in my lessons with him. This morning we talked about our ancestors and where they came from. He was amazed to learn that it was summer in New Zealand and that people ski there, but not now. My next lesson was at noon: my 21-year-old female student has come on a lot. She knows how to learn, and that makes all the difference.

Next was the lolly-stick company. Last Thursday I gave two of my students a test, as required by the training company I work for. They both only managed percentage scores in the forties, and today I had to hand back their papers. I tried to reassure them that their results really didn’t mean that much (they’re more a reflection on me than on them). I even suggested that as a team they got an awesome score, but I’m not sure how that went down. The third student took his test today and I’ve yet to mark that. From the company I trekked more than a mile, including that muddy, rubbish-strewn track; every time I squelch my way through there I can see it’s been updated with more household junk from people who don’t give a toss. I arrived at Matei’s place just after five. In his room he now has a tank with two freshwater turtles; watching them eat was strangely fascinating. Every week he has something new. Last time it was a Google assistant. As usual, we didn’t do an awful lot of intense English. We read two chapters of David Walliams’ Billionaire Boy. I have the book in English; he just happens to have the same book in Romanian. For the first chapter, I read a chunk (a half-page or so) out loud in English and he read the same chunk in Romanian, and we took turns until we reached the end of the chapter. For the second chapter we swapped roles. Matei suggested a modification to the rules of my Space Race game – some sort of bonus if you get all three of your spaceships in a row – and it’s certainly worth considering. At the start of my lesson with Matei I got a phone call from a prospective student and I’ve booked her in for Friday morning.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

“Customer service” doesn’t translate into Romanian

February 12, 2018 by 0 Comments

I’ve got no real news, probably because work tends to get in the way of news. My most memorable lesson last week was one in which I complained about how Romanian banks (locally-owned or not) charge for everything: incoming payments, cash withdrawals, or even having just an account in the first place. Their commissions often run into several percent of the value of whatever payment you’re making or receiving, and many people must surely avoid the banking system entirely as a result (as I manage to do most of the time, because I usually get paid in cash). I expected my students to say, yes it’s bloody ridiculous, banks are just parasites that make far too much money, but instead they thought all the fees were completely justified. There’s a wider point here: by and large customer service in Romania is shit. Romanians are extremely used to it being shit, to the point where they don’t expect anything else but shit, so there’s very little incentive for anybody to provide service that’s non-shit. Except of course, when dealing with tourists. In her scrapbook, my friend described the “ice maiden” she encountered at the tourist office here in Timișoara; she might have been the same lady I dealt with on my arrival, who managed to be very aggressive and defensive at the same time when all I wanted to know was how the tram tickets worked. People’s customer service experiences in a new country have a huge bearing on how they view that country; Romanians don’t seem to have figured that out at all yet. (

I’ve got five lessons scheduled for each of the next three days.

 

Language teaching - Romania

A brief (but welcome) change of scenery

January 10, 2018 by 0 Comments

On Sunday morning I still didn’t feel wonderful. After the lesson I joined my students for a drink at Porto Arte, a bar by the Bega, five minutes’ walk from here. After sitting there for nearly two hours, I was prepared to go home. But then they asked me if I wanted to go to Herneacova, a place I’d heard of but knew nothing about and wouldn’t have been able to locate on a map. I said yes but my head was in a spin: I hadn’t mentally paced myself for spending who knows how many extra hours with people. Just how far away is this place? I was also dehydrated. If I hadn’t managed to get a bottle of water at Recaș, I’d have been really struggling. Herneacova is a fairly poor but typically picturesque Romanian village, while two kilometres outside the village is an arena which holds international equestrian events, and a domain (in New Zealand terminology) which is popular with families. The highlight, apart from the few horses, was probably watching somebody’s radio-controlled car being chased by a small dog. It was a beautiful day—it felt like spring—and when I did get home I was very glad that I’d accepted their invitation and got out of the city.

I guessed there were a million Johns or variations thereof who were celebrating their saint’s day on Sunday, but the number was actually two million, or one in ten Romanians. That day really marked the end of the festive season; yesterday, after being a fixture in the square for 5½ weeks, the Christmas market sheds were dismantled.

I now realise that teaching kids can be both rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. My first lessons with those two new kids yesterday were definitely both in the latter category. I ran out of material both times, for completely different reasons, and because I wasn’t at home I didn’t have any emergency supplies. The 13-year-old girl (90 minutes with her) was even better than I’d anticipated, so we she got through everything (a lesson on London, where she’d like to go) in double-quick time without her really being challenged. The 10-year-old boy was mostly unenthusiastic and didn’t really want to speak English, but I actually think he’ll be easier to teach in the long run, because I already have material I can use with him. With her, I’ve got to come up with stuff that’s at an upper-intermediate level and is age-appropriate and doesn’t bore her: although she seems motivated to learn, that’s no easy task.

My students, or their parents, are often in a different financial league from your average Ion or Ioana. It’s extremely noticeable in my lessons with the kids in Dumbrăvița, just as it was in Auckland all those years ago when I did a spot of maths tuition, often in suburbs like Remuera. Last night my student wouldn’t shut up about both her and her husband’s German cars. I had a much more interesting discussion of cars with a student last week: the Yugo, the Trabant (with its two-stroke engine), and the various incarnations of the Dacia, such as this hopelessly unreliable one (the Lăstun, which means “housemartin”) with a 500 cc engine, which was built in a factory right here in Timișoara. It’s sporting a Ceaușescu-era Timiș County number plate.

My Romanian is still in need of some massive improvement. More on that next time.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

Inevitable

January 6, 2018 by 0 Comments

It was going to happen eventually, wasn’t it? The last few days I’ve been feeling a bit down. Not depressed as such, but just this general bleeugh feeling. I’m sure I’d be fine now if I’d managed to get away for a day or two and spend several hours reading a book on a train, but my illness put paid to that. Last year Timișoara was all new and fun and mad and exciting; it hasn’t stopped being all kinds of awesome, but it’s still a biggish city that I need to get away from every once in a while to break up the routine. I was thinking that if I’d gone to the UK and endured what would surely have been an absolutely awful Christmas and New Year, I’d probably be fine now too. This morning there was a tell-tale sign that things weren’t right: I had no recollection of having made myself a cup of tea two minutes earlier. That’s how life used to be week in, week out, doing things like grocery shopping and, um, trying to hold down a job, with a similar memory span to a fairly retentive goldfish. The good news is that I’ll soon have a lot more lessons again, and so far there has been a very strong positive correlation between how much work I have and how I feel.

The couple who bought me that hamper won’t be having any lessons until 2nd February. That’s a bugger. But I do now have some new students. A brother and sister (he’s 10, she’s 13) will have their first lessons with me on Monday. They live in Dumbrăvița, five doors down from the ten-year-old boy I started with in October. I’ve also got a new bloke starting on Thursday. Yesterday I had a call from a woman who I really struggled to understand. She talked so quickly and at such a high pitch that she reminded me of when I was a kid and I’d mess around with Dad’s record player, putting one of his 33s or 45s on 78. She seemed to think I knew what she was saying, but I could hardly understand a bloody thing. Cât costă? How much is it? Phew, a question I understand. On that note, I’ve had no choice but to put my prices up. In my first few months here it felt like an inflation-free zone, but in the last six to nine months everything has gone up. The leu has weakened somewhat against the euro, and oil prices have shot up. Just around the corner is a kiosk where they sell shawormas (I’ve seen about five different spellings for shaworma, which is a bit like a kebab). For the last few months I’ve been waiting for them to increase their price of a large shaworma from 11 lei, and finally on Wednesday I saw they’d put them up to 12.

Today is Epiphany, or as they call it here, Boboteaza, which to me is a funny word. Right now there’s a snaking queue of at least 100 people around the cathedral, waiting to get their hands on water that is supposedly even holier than bog-standard holy water. Tomorrow is St John the Baptist’s day, which probably a million Romanians called Ion or Ioan or Ionuț or Ioana will celebrate. People here often celebrate both their birthday and their saint’s day, if they have one. Slightly confusingly, the expression “La Mulți Ani” is used on someone’s birthday, their saint’s day, and for New Year. Just like last year, although this time I was in the middle of a lesson, the local priest and his accomplice dropped in and blessed me and this flat. I gave him 8 lei, up from 6 last year.

My watch strap is broken, and because it’s a Swatch I can’t replace it anywhere in Timișoara. Believe me, I’ve tried. Even the shop that sells Swatches couldn’t do it. When I leave the house without a watch I feel just about naked. I know my phone shows the time in quite large digits, but it doesn’t compare. Yesterday I tried to find a cheap watch to use as a stand-in until I get the Swatch strap replaced, with no luck.

The weather is incredible for this time of year. Our expected high today is 13. And I feel a bit better now.

Life :) - Romania - Scrabble

Condemned

December 11, 2017 by 0 Comments

Towards the end of last week, our body corporate sent out the latest estimate for strengthening our apartment building. The figures were eye-watering: $10 million to strengthen to 100% of new building standard; $8 million for 67%. And that’s just the bit that I live in. The other section, which abuts our building but is separate for seismic purposes, has recently been reassessed as even less earthquake-safe than ours, close to red-sticker territory. So strengthening is no longer a serious option. At the weekend the body corp had a brainstorming session to figure out what to do next, and I’ll expect we’ll probably sit it out now until 2028, when the complex is due to be demolished if it isn’t up to scratch by then. The amazing thing to me is how accepting everybody has been of their fate. (During the eighties, when the English-speaking countries changed from societies into dog-eat-dog economies, everyone became more submissive; there has been some backlash in recent years but it’s been weak and misdirected.) To avoid a repeat of the CTV building collapse, which this policy will fail to do anyway, they’re financially crippling thousands of people. If you’re reading this blog, you might think it’s perfectly fair for apartment owners to foot the bill – however much – to make their homes safe, and if they haven’t got the money, tough. They made a bad investment, right, just like the person who bought shares in a company that goes belly-up, or the guy who went to Las Vegas and put his life savings on red. But that’s eighties thinking again: your home is no longer primarily a place to live but is instead a financial instrument to be bought and sold like any other. As affected Wellington apartment owners, we should be getting together as a group and lobbying the government to end this insanity. This is the capital city after all, and there’s a new (more compassionate?) government in charge now.

It’s hard not to feel somewhat bitter about all of this. My cousin, for instance, makes bucketloads of money by helping make parasitic American drug companies truckloads of money. She works exceptionally hard, is driven beyond what I or most people will ever be, and is extremely well qualified. All of that deserves to be rewarded, and I get on very well with her, but the fact remains that her work is of questionable benefit to actual human beings. And her million-dollar house isn’t affected by the earthquake policy at all, because it’s a house, not an apartment. Just imagine the furore if people’s $2 million mansions in Eastbourne (many of which would be matchsticks in the event of a magnitude-8 quake) suddenly came under the scope of the policy and were effectively condemned overnight!

The apartment business might have had a silver lining though. Perhaps it gave me the impetus to say “sod this”, where I might have otherwise muddled along in a string of jobs, inevitably in disorienting (for me) team environments where the only good outcome would have been to avoid bad ones. If I’d carried on in that vein, then in the words of Bob Marley, one day the bottom would have dropped out, probably with disastrous consequences. Instead I’ve completely changed my life and to write that still feels bloody amazing.

I had 21½ hours of teaching last week. I was chuffed with that after all the cancellations I had in the early part of the week. Unfortunately this week it’s déjà vu: two cancellations already and it’s still Monday morning.

Last week King Michael, Romania’s last monarch, died at the grand age of 96. He became king before his sixth birthday, but was forced to abdicate in 1947 with the advent of communism. Today Romania is a very divided country – we had anti-government protests here last night – but the death of the king seems to have united the country temporarily and might help the current government to survive.

I’ve started getting frustrated with Words With Friends. I live in an awkward time zone for all the Americans who populate the app, so many of my games progress very slowly or sometimes fizzle out completely. Also I recently had to download Words With Friends 2, a more gimmicky version of the app that veers into Candy Crush territory, and I hate it. I’ll still play my cousin from time to time because I like to keep in touch with her, but apart from that it’s a waste of time. So instead I’ve started playing real Scrabble, with a clock, on the Internet Scrabble Club (isc.ro), a site that was set up by a Romanian in the nineties and visually has never been updated since then. But the server is actually very robust, and it attracts some of the best players in the world. It’s altogether a more high-octane experience than Words With Friends. I’ve so far played seven games, winning five. My very first move of my very first game was BUM, which turned out to be possibly my best move of the whole game, a 70-point loss for me. My other loss (by just 18 points, 396 to 414) was a fantastic high-scoring game. I had quite a dramatic game yesterday where I struggled with the tight 14-minute clock, and incurred a ten-point penalty for running over time, but was able to play out for a 36-point win before forfeiting the game altogether (which is what happens if you go over time by a minute).

The cancellations mean my only lessons today are this evening, from 6 till 7:30 and from 8 till 9:30. Unless they get cancelled too.