Romania

Language teaching - Politics - Romania

The fight must go on

February 6, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I gave a Skype lesson on Friday night and then played my cousin at Words with Friends for the 27th time. It had just gone eleven, and I had two blanks on my rack, when I could no longer concentrate on the game. What a remarkable sight and sound it was to see 30,000 people stream past my apartment block, armed with air horns and whistles, at that time of night. I gave my cousin a running commentary. Earlier I’d gone down to Piața Operei to see it relatively empty, and I wondered where everyone had gone, but they’d set off on their march through the city. Last night I spent some time in the square on a fifth consecutive night of protests, this time with the intent of joining them on the march, but the demonstration which had drawn a great crowd fizzled out at around ten. What’s happened? Have the people given in? Very bad news, I thought. But when I got home I read that the new prime minister had announced on TV that the government would repeal the new law, and in the last couple of hours they have done just that at an emergency meeting. It seems they have yielded to what has been very intense public pressure. But corruption is insidious in Romania and the people must continue to fight.

The protests were fascinating for me in many ways. I had an interesting time trying to decipher some of the banners and to understand what the hell they were chanting. I got some insight into Romanian culture. I was surprised how motivated younger people were to attend the protests when so few of them voted in December’s elections. I was also encouraged by how peaceful the demonstrations were and how many parents brought their children along. Seeing four-year-olds shout “de-mi-sia, de-mi-sia” (“resignation”) amused me. And visually, the protests were very impressive.

You could say that the low voter turnout was what caused this mess. As far as I can tell, the older generations voted PSD as they’ve always done, while the younger ones didn’t vote at all, and so the PSD got a thumping great share of the vote which allowed them to do pretty much what they liked, such as pass laws that decriminalise corruption. But then I don’t know how free and fair elections are in Romania.

I spoke to my parents this morning. My dad had just got back from a sailing trip in the Marlborough Sounds with two blokes both called Graeme. He seemed to enjoy the road trip there and back more than the rather claustrophobic few days on the boat. (The main road has been blocked since the November earthquake; now you have to go via Murchison, a town that has done quite nicely from the diversion, making for a seven-hour journey each way.) Mum had spent a few days in Moeraki with my aunt. I recently had a chat with Dad while Mum was at golf. He still finds his existence in that household plagued by unnecessary stress.

One of my previous students texted me earlier today to say that she won’t be wanting any more lessons from me because we couldn’t understand each other well enough. I’d already written her off. It was more than the language barrier, although that didn’t help. For whatever reason we just didn’t click. My Skype student now wants ten hours of lessons a week from me, starting tomorrow. Maybe she’s lonely.

I did find a word, LovELIER, with my rack. That low-scoring bingo helped me to a 401-344 win and an 18-9 lead overall. I was lucky with the blanks and S’s, although the high-scoring tiles I drew towards the end were more of a burden than anything as I had to quickly offload them. Having one blank on your rack is a huge asset; it effectively gives you 26 different racks and a much better chance of making a bingo or other high-scoring play. You have time in a game to go through the alphabet and consider each of the possible letters in turn. Having both blanks is even better, not least because you know your opponent won’t have one. But there are so many combinations with two blanks – 351 if I’m not mistaken – that you certainly can’t consider them all, and finding a bingo can be surprisingly difficult even if there are many available.

I’m thinking of getting into Scrabble reasonably seriously, despite all the things I don’t like about the game (all the silly words you have to commit to memory, mostly). I recently played a game of WWF where I had HIDEOUT on my rack, but nowhere I could see to play it. After giving up and playing a shorter word I realised I could have played the seven-letter bingo by attaching the O to the end of HOB. In Scrabble parlance, you’d say that HOB takes an O as a back hook. That kind of thing interests me. Learning all those stupid bloody words doesn’t, but maybe that won’t be a deal-breaker. We’ll see.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

Romania is simmering

February 3, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

These are interesting times to be living in Romania. A law has been passed in secret that could effectively legalise corruption, freeing hundreds of politicians and senior officials from jail. There have been massive demonstrations all over Romania, including here in Timișoara, the biggest protests the country has seen since the end of communism in 1989. Romania has huge problems with corruption and they’re holding the country back in a big way. I’m very glad to see people taking to the streets. I was caught up in the crowd of (at a guess) 20,000 last night. Whistles, horns, megaphones, banners, Romanian flags, the national anthem, and many rhyming slogans; as far as I could see it was all very peaceful. News reports of hooligans, both here and overseas, give a false picture: the hooligans are a tiny minority. The first protest here was quite small, perhaps 1000 people, but they have since grown. Last night they marched past my apartment block at about 10:30, more than four hours after the start of the demonstration. I expect a big crowd again tonight, being a Friday. Who knows, maybe they will bring down the government. As I said, interesting times.

I’ve been having computer problems again. My laptop has developed a habit of freezing every few minutes. This morning I defragged my hard drive and that has, surprisingly, improved things somewhat. I think we all need to defrag every now and again. Without a fully functioning computer I’m pretty much stuffed.

I had two lessons scheduled for Wednesday but both my students pulled out for very different reasons. (At least there were reasons. There usually aren’t.) So that was a bugger. But it looks like I have acquired a new student, my third active one and my sixth overall. Yesterday, at his request, we met in Cărturești, a fairly upmarket bookshop near Piața Unirii, where we chatted for 90 minutes over tea. He paid me for that, and when he asked whether I’d agree to a buy nine, get one free arrangement for lessons I just about bit his hand off. He plans to actually have ten lessons with me. He’s very motivated, and that’s probably why he already has a very good command of English. I’d put him at an 8 out of 10. My Skype student pulled out of Wednesday’s lesson because she has exams, but she said she’ll soon want ten hours of lessons a week. I think my hourly rate is extremely cheap for her.

I’m so glad I’ve made the move. I wish I’d done it, or done something, earlier. I was stuck in a cycle of jobs that were meaningless or anxiety-provoking or repulsive or some combination of the three. Repulsive isn’t overstating it either. A lot of people find team meetings and performance reviews and corporate bullshit a bit of a drag, but for me it wasn’t a drag, it was a highly toxic mixture. If I stuck around much longer it might have killed me. Here there have been frustrations. I’ve found some people to be intimidating and untrustworthy. I’ve made suboptimal decisions, spending more time and money on things than I’ve needed, as I’ve tried to find my feet. I haven’t got to know a lot of people yet, although the lessons have helped. I haven’t picked up as much of the language as I’d have liked. But I’m comfortable, I’m making things happen, and I feel a general sense of hope, of optimism. I think I’d like to do this teaching thing for the next few years (I’ve never felt that about any previous job). I think Romania is awesome. I think I’ll be here a while.

Maybe I should use tonight’s protest to my advantage and risk putting up a few posters in the hope that the cops will be otherwise occupied.

I must admit, I never saw Roger Federer winning another grand slam, not for one minute. But he played sublime tennis for three sets out of five against Nadal in a very good final that wound the clock back a decade or so. The match wasn’t in the same league as, say, the 2008 Wimbledon final, because both players were rarely at their best at the same time, but it was still well worth watching and those last few games were gripping. Both men’s semis and the final were thoroughly good matches, all going five sets, and I’m trying to recall other grand slams where the last three men’s matches all went the distance. Wimbledon 2001 certainly (which had the added bonus of the women’s semis and finals all going to three sets) but I’m struggling to think of any others. A more recent Australian Open, perhaps.

My cousin just snapped a four-game losing streak against me in Words with Friends, winning our latest game 424 to 328 thanks to 115 points for CRAZE and some pretty ropy racks for me. I swapped tiles twice. The first time I needed to do so earlier but I was playing in the middle of the protest and was distracted. That was my lowest score since our seventh game. I’m now leading 17-9.

Language teaching - Romania - Tennis

Delayed delivery

January 24, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I wrote this on Saturday morning but didn’t have any way of posting it. I’m now back in business internet-wise, and not before time: I’ve got a Skype lesson later this evening. Losing my internet access, and potentially my ability to work, put a damper on my weekend.

Good news: I’ve got some more students, including a woman currently living in Austria who wants six hours of Skype lessons per week. Bad news: I no longer have an internet connection in my apartment, so those Skype lessons will be a bit tricky to arrange.

I gave my first Skype lesson on Friday, scheduled for two hours. We covered grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, and she wasn’t at all shy when it came to asking questions. It was intense, it was fun. Or at least it was until my computer crashed ten minutes before our scheduled end.

One of my students is some sort of IT guru and he managed to get my wi-fi connected on Wednesday night. It took him about 15 minutes of fiddling around with the DOS screen and who knows what else – it was all far beyond me. I offered to give him the lesson for free but he declined. Having wi-fi meant I was able to FaceTime my parents and my brother. But I think some settings changed when my computer crashed on Friday, and although I still had a connection for a few hours afterwards, now I can’t even connect with the cable. I don’t think having Windows 10 is helping. I’m only guessing though. I spent hours yesterday searching on my phone for some kind of solution and playing around with settings, not knowing what any of them really meant. And of course I turned various devices on and off again many, many times. Why can’t these concepts be explained in a way that mere mortals like me can understand?

I think the root of the problem is this laptop which was a cast-off from my parents and is too weak and flimsy to handle intensive processes like Skype. It takes several minutes just to start it up. If I’m serious about teaching, I can’t be making do with second-rate technology. My phone works fine and has been immensely helpful, but its screen is too small and its runs on a version of iOS that’s too old for many apps. The next time I’m back in the UK, I might spend some of the money I have over there. It’s not much use anywhere else.

Thankfully I can run Words with Friends on my phone, albeit the old version that doesn’t tell you handy stuff like how many of each tile is left in the bag. I’m now leading my cousin 12-7. In our latest game, she raced into a huge lead with FROZE which scored 115, the highest score in any of our games so far. She maintained a three-figure lead for most of the game as I drew badly, but at the end I found SiLLIEST, a 101-point bingo (it’s not often a word like that will play at such a late stage) to put a dent in her winning margin. In the end I lost 453-420, scoring 400 in a losing cause for the second time. In a recent game on a frustratingly closed board I held a large lead, but my cousin could have bingoed out for over 100 with OXIDISE, if only there was somewhere to play it.

I have the equivalent of Sky on my TV, and it’s remarkably cheap. Years ago I would have been glued to the Australian Open. I’ve watched a bit of it certainly, but tennis, or any sport really, isn’t as important to me as it once was. The tournament has certainly had its moments, mainly on the men’s side with Djokovic’s shock defeat to Denis Istomin, Kyrgios’s meltdown, and that extremely long fifth set involving Karlovic. (Advantage final sets are dying, with both the Olympics and Davis Cup now using tie-breaks in the final set. How much longer before scores of 8-6, 9-7 and beyond are sadly killed off for good?) The best part about watching the tennis for me is the Romanian commentary.

I think my time in Romania will be a marathon, not a sprint, and I don’t feel I’ve even crossed the start line yet.

Life :) - Romania

A cold snap

January 13, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve finally got internet access in my apartment, but it isn’t wireless and the cable has a habit of detaching itself. Better than nothing though. I assumed I’d get wi-fi installed but there are two things I’ve learnt about living in Romania: don’t assume anything and never trust anybody. Connecting to a wireless router in this apartment is beyond my un-techno-savvy brain for now because I haven’t got a modem; instead I’ve got a cable that comes through the wall, presumably one of dozens of cables that split off from some master modem somewhere.

It’s a good job I’m able to stay in Romania for five years (should I even trust or assume that, even though that’s what the piece of paper says?) because I might need that long to sort myself out. This apartment is comfortable, but I still have a long list of items I need, and it’s not that easy to find them. On Tuesday I tried to find a smoke alarm, somewhere, anywhere. Near the big mall there’s a large hardware store called Praktiker. I asked someone there if they had any smoke alarms. I didn’t fully understand his reply, which ended in a weird guttural sound. Hang on, are you speaking Romanian or Klingon? Could you repeat that? Yep, that’s definitely Klingon. They didn’t have any smoke alarms in stock, but they had no end of burglar alarms and movement sensors. You can see where their priorities lie.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing being stopped by the police when I put those notices up. I’ve had so many phone calls and oh so many complete time-wasters. I only have one regular student now, and I gave him a lesson on Wednesday night (at home, which was nice). He didn’t seem all that interested in the list of “false friends” I’d spent hours preparing (these are English words that look similar to Romanian ones but mean something different). In fact he didn’t want to talk much at all. I asked him what he did for Christmas but it was like getting blood out of a stone. But I can’t really complain: he showed up, and in Romania, and in this weather, that’s something.

It has been cold, even by Romanian standards. The weather has been the top story on the national news and at one point they interrupted the programme I was watching to allow the new prime minister to speak on the matter. (Yes, we have a new prime minister, and he comes from this part of the country.) Every morning this week it’s been minus 10 or colder when I’ve woken up, and it hasn’t got a whole lot warmer during the day. We had another fall of chunky snow yesterday. But my apartment stays warm, and given the choice between the freezing weather and attending pointless team meetings, I’ll take the minus 10 any day. I just have to be patient.

I’ve enjoyed playing Words with Friends with my cousin, for the chat as much as anything. I’m now leading 9-5. I definitely had the rub of the green in the last two games. In the penultimate game I scored well on just about every turn and posted easily my biggest total yet, winning 540-398. In the second half of that game, when I was really just trying to maximise my own score, I played two bingos for a combined 130-odd, but in doing so I opened up the board allowing my cousin to score 150 or so on her two subsequent turns without the aid of any bingos. I thought that was interesting; bingos aren’t as important in WWF as they are in Scrabble. In our last game I again drew well, grabbing I think eight of the eleven power tiles including both blanks, and putting down two bingos once more. If anything my cousin outplayed me as I won 430 to 385.

On Sunday I should get some more medication, but there’s no guarantee, and I’ve absolutely no idea how much it will cost me. Then later that day my tennis partner and his girlfriend will be coming over for dinner, hopefully, maybe.

Language teaching - Romania

Getting set up

January 6, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just been speaking to someone at a call centre – I still haven’t got my wi-fi connected. (I’m writing this from the café close by.) Dealing with call centres can be hard enough in my own language, but in Romanian … forget it. The woman on the other end rattled off some long number that was neither my phone number nor the number on my contract because it ended in a three. Shit, what am I supposed to say now? Um, er, yes? She then kept repeating something that sounded like the French word saisissez but with the Z in a different place. Normally I absolutely hate it when people offer to speak English, but when she did so it came as some sort of relief. At a guess she was 25 and started learning English 22 years ago. Speaking (or more to the point, listening to) Romanian on the phone is still a real problem for me, even though I’ve handled dozens of incoming and outgoing phone calls since I arrived in the country. When you can’t see their eyes or their lips or make gestures, you’re almost flying blind. When people ring up about lessons it isn’t quite so bad because at least I know what sort of questions they’re likely to ask and vaguely how to reply. People are still calling me, even though I’m (sadly) no longer putting posters up apart from in the university campus.

If it wasn’t for those posters I wouldn’t have found this apartment. And it’s awesome. I love it. In fact I’m more excited about this place than the one I bought in Wellington because that didn’t represent anything. This represents a dream. And the location, the view, is a dream. I’ve got the beautiful cathedral that graces thousands of postcards and fridge magnets staring me in the face, with the hustle and bustle of the southern end of the square in the foreground, and Parcul Central and a tram line in the background. This is most definitely Timișoara. (Consciously or otherwise, I have a habit of ending up in places where it’s pretty obvious where I am. I think I like that. Suburbia, where you could often be just about anywhere, doesn’t do it for me.)

My apartment is 50 square metres; both the lounge and the bedroom are a good size. I neither feel hemmed in nor am I rattling around. And it’s peaceful up here; I feel a long way from the busyness down below. My second night here was New Year’s Eve – tens of thousands packed into the square for the fireworks display, many of whom cracked open bottles of bubbly as the clock struck midnight. All the festivities and illuminations have made this spot even cooler than it would otherwise be. The night before last the priest called in to anoint me and wish me a happy New Year. And to collect money. I gave him 6 lei. Should I have given 60? Probably not 600, but really I had no idea.

My only real worry here is what would happen if we had a fire. Alarms? Sprinklers? Extinguishers? Escapes? Romania, I know you’re beautiful and everything, and I like the way you haven’t gone overboard with the whole safety culture thing, but jeez, basic fire protection in high-occupancy buildings like this is common sense. You lost 64 people in a nightclub fire not that long ago. It’s time you got your shit together. Plus some of the wiring around here is as dodgy as anything, so we’re more likely to have a fire in the first place.

Last night I gave my first lesson at home – that was a milestone of sorts. I haven’t got a table set up yet, so we just sat on the sofa. He wanted to go over a song so I played him Our House by Madness and we went through some of the lyrics. He said he liked the song because the lyrics actually have a point to them unlike so much of today’s stuff. Continuing the early eighties theme, we went over an article about the Brixton riots in London.

I’m still playing Words with Friends with my cousin. As the name suggests, it’s a good way to catch up. I’m currently leading 4-3, though I was hammered 455-299 in our last game. There are eleven “power” tiles in WWF (five S’s, two blanks, the J, Q, X and Z). I only drew two of them, the X and an S, and that’s really why I lost so heavily. There were a couple of interesting moments that might have changed the game, however. On just my second turn I had a load of vowels that didn’t want to go anywhere, so I decided to exchange five tiles. My cousin said I shouldn’t exchange in almost any circumstances, and I actually disagree quite strongly with that. Then, in the middle of the game when I was down but by no means out I played RAVED, and my cousin followed that up with HIVES vertically in a very dangerous spot, with the H directly below a triple word score. Wow, both the C’s are still out. She must have one and be gambling that I don’t (and she’d be right; the only way I’d have a C is if I drew one last turn, because otherwise I’d have played CRAVED). So I played the only move I could see that blocked CHIVES and a potential monster score. She didn’t have the C after all, but still went and played RAJ on the opposite side of the board for nearly 60 to give her a three-figure lead, and that was just about game over for me.

Both BRR and BRRR are allowed in Scrabble. I’m not so sure about Words with Friends. But tomorrow we’re in for a top temperature of minus 8. That’s getting into proper brass monkeys, BRRR-with-three-R’s territory.

That was almost a thousand words. Sorry about that.

Life :) - Romania

Pleading ignorance

December 30, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last night I got stopped by the local police, having just put up an ad for teaching. They told me that putting up posters isn’t allowed and can incur a fine. I pleaded ignorance (to be honest I was ignorant – I see so many signs for firewood and apartments and computer repairs and lost cats that I thought they might well be perfectly legal). The cops weren’t aggressive in any way and certainly didn’t fine me, but it’s a real bugger for me because the ads are effective and nothing else seems to be, and because I derived a certain amount of pleasure from making them and putting them up. They made me feel I was part of this city. Oh well. University campuses are still fair game I guess.

There are a lot of cops in this place, and that’s why I won’t risk putting up any more ads. The police often occupy themselves with stopping cyclists in the middle of town, because pedestrianised means pedestrianised, and that means no bikes. Bloody crazy if you ask me. One of my students thought so too, and said the policy was brought in by the current mayor whom he called “a stupid man”.

Today I got the keys to my new apartment. It’s fantastic, it really is. I’ve got a close-up view of the Orthodox cathedral with Romanian flags fluttering everywhere and people milling around. So much life. And inside there are more mod cons than I realised. I’ll miss this hotel a little bit though. I met two other long-term guests (inmates?) from overseas, both extremely friendly, open-minded people, as you might imagine someone who decides to live in Romania to be. The first was a French guy who has gone now. After chatting to him for a few minutes in French I quickly realised that my French is still miles better than my Romanian. The other guy, Tomás, is from Chile. Just a really nice bloke.

I won my third game of Words with Friends by 60 or 70 points and now lead my cousin 2-1. On my very first turn I had AIOQSU? (the question mark meaning a blank). My cousin had played an S on her first turn, and somehow I found SeQUOIAS for 109. Even with a lead of that size I didn’t feel entirely safe. I then started a game with a stranger purely by accident. That game was an eye-opener. I made four words of at least six letters. He didn’t make any. He kept the board really, really tight, and beat me easily, 463 to 351.

Life :) - Romania

A crazy year

December 28, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

My student, perhaps my only student right now, wants to go over both a text and a song in tomorrow night’s lesson. I’m going to play him Our House by Madness which came out in 1982 and I think is great for an intermediate English student, and print out an article on the Brixton Riots which took place the year before (if I can find a place to print anything out over the Christmas period). He might well already know Our House. Last week on the way to the lesson he had a Spice Girls album on in the car. When I asked him how his week had been, he used the good English expression “don’t ask”.

It has been a pretty messed-up year all round, and there are still four days of it left. We’ve lost so many cultural icons: David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael (on Christmas Day) and dozens more. Victoria Wood springs to mind as the kind of unassuming comedian the world needs more of, and she’s gone too. It feels that culture itself is on the way out. Musicians, actors, comedians, writers, they’re now all lumped in with journalists and academics as being out of touch with “real, decent, ordinary people” as Nigel Farage shamefully put it. Brexit and Trump were both, to an extent, triumphs of anti-culture. And let’s not overanalyse Trump’s victory. He’s a bigot, a narcissist and a bully, and many of the 63 million-odd people who voted for him did so because of that, not in spite of it. For me that’s scary stuff. But let’s not normalise the result either. As a kid I lived in the constituency held by the prime minister John Major. It received a fair bit of national attention at the election and attracted many candidates, perhaps ten, as a result. One of those was from the Monster Raving Loony party. It fascinated me just how many votes the Loonies got. John Major was a shoo-in to win his seat so some people thought, what the hell, and enough of them put their X next to the Loony candidate to propel him to the middle of the pack, ahead of some serious candidates. But in America they’ve gone eleven steps further by electing Mr Loony! Just wow.

Somebody called me in response to my Trump ad, even though he could speak good English and didn’t want or need any lessons. I think he was a little put out by my ad, which was meant as a joke more than anything. He admired Trump because “he has a winning attitude”. What a terrible reason to support him, or anyone. But he’s far from alone. People seem to want aggressive, uncompromising, authoritarian figures. I can’t see this ending well.

It’s been an interesting year for me personally as well. For four months I was stressed out to the max by my flatmate. Then I had to organise my big move, and that got pretty stressful too, to the point where I restarted my antidepressants at the doctor’s request. On 7th October I arrived here in Timișoara and I remember lying on my bed that first night and thinking how incredible that felt. I’ve done it! I’m in Romania! Since then I’ve travelled a bit, have managed to do some teaching (not nearly enough, but enough to know I love it), and most importantly, have found a place where I can live and work. I’ll get the keys to my new abode the day after tomorrow.

This might work out for me, it might not, but guess what, I’ve completely changed my life. Just typing that sentence makes me proud.

I played a second game of Words with Friends with my cousin, this time winning 458 to 381. I got the high-value letters and on one turn played DOZIER on a triple word with the Z on a triple letter. That’s the killer combination that is impossible in Scrabble, and it yielded 108 points of which one letter scored 90. My cousin replied immediately with TERMITES which gave her a 35-point bonus (it’s 50 in Scrabble), although she could have placed the same word elsewhere for a bigger score. She ended up with more points than in the first game when she beat me by over 80. Yep, we got some big scores in this game. In the long term, if we keep playing, we’ll be evenly matched I reckon.

Romania

Ziua de împachetare

December 27, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

My Christmas (or non-Christmas as it almost was for me) was a white one. I drank most of a bottle of sweet white wine and spoke to my cousin and her family on Skype. Today my tennis partner invited me for dinner, cooked my his girlfriend Simona (I thought they were married, but no). Simona’s mother was also there. After playing my first-ever game of Words with Friends, and a tough game it was too, I struggled to find a bottle of something I could take to dinner that was neither too cheap nor too expensive. After all that faffing around I missed the tram by seconds, had to wait ages for the next one (it’s a public holiday), and turned up late.

The meal was fantastic. We had beef soup for starters, lamb with redcurrant sauce and vegetables for our main course, and cakes afterwards. We got chatting, well kind of (speaking Romanian hasn’t magically got easier – those verbs, dammit). I said that I cooked most nights, and they said that it’s extremely unusual for any man to cook in Romania. Gender roles are still, should I say, fairly well defined here. Every day I pass ten or more “position vacant” notices in the windows of cafés and restaurants, every one of them either explicitly asking for a woman, or using the feminine form of the job title which amounts to the same thing. I had all those “no foreigners” adverts to contend with when looking for an apartment. In a few days we’ll be celebrating the new year. That might be 2017 where you are, but here we’ll be ringing in 1974.

Words with Friends. Yes I played against my cousin who beat me, walloped me almost, 365 to 282. The day after George Michael died, I put down WHAM. That was just about my only memorable turn. I had terrible letters, sometimes seven vowels, and unfortunately we were playing in neither Maori nor Romanian. I never had any of the high-scoring letters, or letters that worked together. M and W are both fine, but you don’t really want them at the same time with no other consonants. Ditto B and H. The differences between Words with Friends (WWF) and Scrabble look almost trivial at first, but they’re actually pretty significant. The biggest deviation is the placement of the triple word squares. In Scrabble half of them are in the corners whereas in WWF all eight of them are get-at-able and it’s possible (unlike in Scrabble) to hit a triple word score and a triple letter score with the same word. This placement incentivises defensive play, because nobody wants set their opponent up with a monster score, and I can’t say I like that. There are other important differences too that I won’t go into now. But if you get crap and your opponent doesn’t and he or she is half-way decent, you’ll lose, just like in Scrabble.

What a crazy year 1973, um, 2016, has been. I’ll write about that next time.

Romania

Crăciun fericit tuturor!

December 25, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a bitterly cold Christmas Eve. This morning I went back to the open-air clothes market in the southern part of town that I first visited last weekend. I spent far too much on an old jacket even though it was half what they initially quoted me. They saw me coming. After handing over 50 lei I said “congratulations”. The temperature was stuck at minus four (I could hardly even do up the zip, it was that cold), I’d had enough of stallholders who wouldn’t leave me alone, and I just wanted to get out of there. I went back to the bar that served dangerously cheap liquor, only so I could use the loo. There are two loos, a men’s and a women’s, but as far as I can see no women venture inside that establishment except the one who works behind the bar. Someone, a bloke obviously, was being sick in the ladies as I used the gents. Meanwhile someone dressed up as a multicoloured goat jumped and danced from one apartment block to the next, accompanied by singers (shouters?) with trumpets and drums and whistles and bells. Click here for video! There’s some celebratory “thing” in the middle of town this evening, not too far from where I’ll soon be living, but it is so cold.

I got my registration certificate allowing me to stay in Romania for five years. Wow, as long as that! How exciting! To obtain the certificate I had to prove that I had sufficient funds to support myself. How much is that, I asked. I was told, in English, twenty pounds.

Tomorrow I’ll Skype my cousin in Wellington and we’ll have a glass of wine together. It’s always wine o’clock somewhere.

In another six months, if I survive that long, I’ll be complaining about how hot it is.

Romania - Tennis

This really is my new home

December 22, 2016 plutomanby 1 Comment

I’ve finally found a place to live. What a relief. It’s on the corner of Piața Victoriei, right next to the city hall and with a close-up view of the Orthodox Cathedral, probably Timișoara’s most recognisable landmark. It’s a dream location, perfect for teaching and, well, everything. The apartment is on the third floor of a massive eight-storey block; it measures 50 square metres. I’ve been given a six-month contract (which is perfect at this stage) starting on 1st January. Finding a student who happened to work for a real estate agency was an enormous stroke of luck for me, and she only contacted me for lessons because one of her friends had posted a picture of my Donald Trump ad on Facebook. Yesterday I visited the agency to sign the contract and pay one month’s rent as a deposit, plus a commission of 60% of the monthly rent plus 20% VAT. I had to hand over seemingly acres of lei – the equivalent of 516 euros or about NZ$800. The landlord was there, well not the landlord actually because he’s in Israel but his go-between, and she seemed very approachable. Every month I’ll need to physically give her the rent in euros. W-wha-huh? Poftim? You won’t accept Romanian currency? This is like being in the UK and insisting on rent payments in US dollars. Are there any cash machines in Timișoara that spit out euros? The agent said that there are indeed one or two, but I’ll probably need to change lei at a bank or any of the possibly dodgy kiosks you see on just about every street corner. And yes, I will lose money every time I do this. She talked as if it was the most natural thing ever, just like Americans talk about their electoral system, or Brits talk about carpeting their bathrooms. I think it’s bloody stupid.

This morning, having at last found an apartment after a frustrating two or three weeks, I went to the immigration office expecting no end of complications. The office was staffed by a man, probably in his late forties, who could hardly speak a word of English. (Isn’t that wonderful? When you order a kebab, you’re bombarded with bloody English, because getting the spicy sauce instead of the sweet sauce would be a calamity.) The young woman in front of me was from Turkey which is outside the EU; she could speak English but not Romanian, and she was struggling to communicate with the man in the window. An English speaker was eventually located. Both he and the bloke in the window were being rather dickish to this young lady, and I wondered what sort of person sets him or herself the daily goal of being as much of an arsehole as possible, because there seem to be a lot of that sort of person all over the world. Then it came to my turn. I was told to get copies of my various documents made, which I did. I went back to the office with the photocopies, the window man took my photo, he said gata (“ready”), and I should be able to collect my registration certificate at 9am tomorrow. Great! I got treated very differently from the Turkish lady simply because I’m an EU citizen. What a difference Brexit will make.

My New Zealand credit card statements now get sent to my parents. Mum phoned me last night to inform me of a surprise whopping $580 charge. It had escaped my notice. I usually don’t notice until I pay the bill, automatically in full at the end of each month, and anyway I’ve hardly used my card since I moved to Romania. The bill was for the renewed hosting of this website and another one I have. It renewed automatically at a vastly increased price from the original (the bastards). I should be able to recover most of that money by cancelling the service but I don’t want Plutoman to be exterminated in the process.

I played tennis (singles) on Sunday on the same hard indoor court that I played on two weeks earlier. I won easily, 6-2 6-0 6-1. I hit a purple patch in the middle of the match where I made very few unforced errors. But for winning a very long game (seven deuces?) at 1-1 in the first set, things might have turned out differently. The court doubles as a basketball court and the hoops are in the way of where you’d normally serve in singles. You had no choice but to take a wider stance.

On Saturday I went to a flea market which was off a main street, many of the signs for which used the old, pre-nineties spelling. It was lined with pre-nineties apartment blocks. The temperature was minus something at midday. I got a coffee from a bar, because it could see it had a toilet. Most people in the bar were drinking something stronger. For only NZ$20 I could have had my stomach pumped. The market was full of second-hand clothes, including ski jackets of every crazy colour combination imaginable that I really, really wanted as a kid because I thought they were so cool. The market and that whole area of town was a time warp.

I love it here in Timișoara. I’ll love it more when it warms up again. I love the rawness of it all. I love that it’s given me the opportunity to be myself and completely change my life. I love that not everybody loves it, or even knows about it. I love that I’ll be able to travel. I love that I can play tennis on clay (maybe I’ll master the slide one day). And I love that I’ll be here until the middle of next year at least.