Tennis

Loss of face

July 14, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning I heard that brilliant New Zealand actor Sam Neill (of Jurassic Park fame, and much more) had died at 78. Those damn Aussies always liked to claim him. I read that his birth name was Nigel but at the age of twelve he started calling himself Sam. A smart move. Sam is a great name. Nigel Neill … isn’t.

Everyone is popping off at about the age of Mum and Dad. Just yesterday I said to Dad that I’m lucky to still have both parents. Not just alive, but in pretty good health. At my age, that must put me in the minority. Just anecdotally, I have a few students of a similar age to me and I think all of them only have one living parent. When I called Dad, Mum was at church. I wasn’t trying to avoid her or anything; I’d just forgotten that it was that time of day and week. That did give us an opportunity to talk about Mum, though. We said that so much of Mum’s stress comes down to loss of face, which a lot of the time isn’t real anyway. It would make sense for Mum and Dad to spend three days or so at my brother’s place (including his birthday on the 27th) just before they go back to NZ. Not much more than that; their previous stay was seriously unfun for both of them. Plus it might end up being far too hot again. But Mum is likely to insist they spend a whole week down there, for fear of upsetting my brother. It’s a similar story with their old friends and whoever else. She feels she has to do this and avoid talking about that so that this or that person won’t think X or Y or Z about her. I mentioned to Dad how refreshing it was to attend those autism groups back in the day, when all that crap went straight out the window. (It certainly flies out the window with Mum too when she isn’t with anyone except Dad or me. So it was a huge relief that my parents’ stay in Romania went as successfully as it did. Mum and I have been getting on well.)

Yesterday I was exhausted. I had very little energy. I couldn’t even make myself watch all of the men’s Wimbledon final. The women’s final though unexpectedly burst into life when Linda Noskova led Karolina Muchova 6-2 5-2 and had five match points in the following three games. Games eight and nine of the second set were pure drama. The set slipped through Noskova’s fingers. How does she come back from this? But she did. Noskova served brilliantly on the big points early in the third set, and this time she didn’t relinquish her lead. I was pleased that Noskova, still early in her career, was able to win. A loss in those circumstances may have haunted her for years otherwise. (The butterfly effect was on full display in the women’s tournament. Noskova had been one point from exiting the tournament in the third round. Muchova also faced match point in her semi with Coco Gauff.) The final brought to mind the 2005 US Open semi-final between Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova. Clijsters had five match points in the second set, all in a single game, and ended up losing the set. But she won it in three and won her first grand slam two days later. That was an excellent tournament on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Dad asked me if I’d stayed up to watch England in the “soccer”, as he calls it. (The whole soccer-is-American, football-is-British thing is actually pretty new. It’s a bit like the notion that -ize is purely American. Pick up any UK-published book from the eighties or earlier and it’ll likely be full of -ize spellings. Even a lot of modern UK-English books are, especially those published by Oxford.) Anyway, I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it. Kick-off was midnight my time. England though are just two matches from winning the whole thing, so who knows? (I really am clueless about it this time. I haven’t watched a single ball be kicked. Or headed or shinned or anything else.)

I’ve got a couple more days before the Scrabble league starts up again. Learning the words continues to be a painstaking effort. I’ve made some recent progress with the fours, and tomorrow I’ll add a few more sevens and eights. A few people have now been expelled from the league for cheating, and someone wondered why anyone would bother to cheat. This isn’t poker; there’s no money at stake. Then somebody else said it’s all about ego. They’re probably right. As someone with very little ego, ego-based decisions – which can sink companies or even whole countries and more – often baffle me.

This evening a new student will be coming. I never know what I might get.

Cat - Music - Photos - Scrabble - Tennis

Left to my own devices

July 11, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’m now writing this on the new laptop. I still need to install a bunch of stuff and there are endless settings that I need to monkey around with to stop it from driving me mad, but I get the feeling it’ll be decent. Unlike my phone. It’ll now only charge at a snail’s pace and I can no longer transfer photos or videos from it to my laptop – the hole which the charger goes into seems to be buggered, even though it looks fine.

Yesterday I went to Sânmihaiu Român, my first long bike trip for ages. When I was there I got a coffee and called Mum and Dad who had been watching a lot of Wimbledon. They’ve been telling me about thrilling matches and deciding tie-breaks, but it’s passed me by. I also started The Cloud Atlas, a rather complex-looking novel that Dad gave me while he was here. I did actually watch bits of the men’s semi-finals after I got back. Even though Djokovic was well beaten by Jannik Sinner, it is pretty remarkable how he is still able to compete at such a high level at 39. The first match saw Alexander Zverev beat Arthur Fery, the Franco-British wildcard, also in straight sets. Fery collects £900,000 for getting so far.

In the last few days I’ve been listening to Shakespears Sister, a British duo who were pretty big in the early nineties. I remember our English teacher despairing at the spelling of the name – no apostrophe or final e – though Shakespeare himself was very inconsistent in how he spelt his name. Spelling wasn’t standardised back then. Stay was their biggest hit – it was number one in the charts for ages – and I also liked Hello (Turn Your Radio On), a song that mentions the pound “looking weak”. That was a hot topic back in the day.

Bonnie Tyler has passed away at the age of 75. Her rasping voice was instantly recognisable. Plus, she was Welsh. I used to think of her It’s a Heartache whenever I boiled an egg for too long.

I finished third in the end in the Scrabble league. A young woman by the name of Elise who travels around North America and the world to play Scrabble pipped me for second. We both got promoted.

Family - Life :) - Scrabble - Tennis - Writing a book

I wish I could have known the story

February 3, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

Earlier today I went to the supermarket to get one or two bits and pieces. There was a very old lady, dressed in not much more than rags on a zero-degree day, and all of about four foot nine, looking at the sachets of hot paprika. “Not hot,” she said, “I want the not hot.” These sachets were on a special stand, away from the rest of the herbs and spices. I didn’t know where the mild paprika was, or even if they had any. There are supermarkets everywhere in Timișoara. That’s convenient, but it means that each of them has hardly any staff. I got frustrated. Can’t somebody help this woman? Eventually a young female member of staff located the lady’s non-spicy paprika. Then the old lady asked me where the small tins of tomato purée were. This time I could help her. Is there anything else I can help you with? She didn’t reply. I wanted to ask where she lived and whether she had children or grandchildren. There was a story there, spanning eight or nine decades.

Some good news – there has been a development with the books. The other lady (not Dorothy) with whom I went to Vienna in 2024 has put me in touch with a woman who runs a publishing house. She’s based some way south of here, close to the Danube. She seems to like both books, based on the samples I sent her. Today she asked me why the font size I used for the headings in the small book (the one that Dad illustrated) is so much larger than the body text. Well, it’s simply to make an impact, rather like a newspaper. After all, it’s not a textbook designed to be ploughed through from beginning to end. I’ll see what happens next, but the fact that she’s even asking about these sorts of details is encouraging.

More good news – my brother and I had practically given up on Mum and Dad coming over, but now they’re at least considering it. If they do make the trip, it won’t be for nearly as long as last time. A lot will depend on what happens with the flat in St Ives. Yesterday I had a chat with my brother. My nephew was running around constantly while my niece is very nearly walking. I don’t always get to see the kids, so that was great.

I watched the third and fourth sets of Carlos Alcaraz’s history-making win over Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final. I missed the early stages when Djokovic apparently played lights-out tennis (at the age of almost 39!) and Alcaraz was in second gear. The age gap became pretty apparent as the match progressed, but even then Djokovic found a second wind of sorts in the fourth set and came close to sending the match to a decider. Djokovic also served pretty damn well. Amazingly that was the Serb’s first loss in a final at Melbourne – he’s won it ten times. But for Alcaraz, whose lack of weaknesses borders on terrifying, the sky’s the limit. That was his seventh major title and he’s now completed the career grand slam before his 23rd birthday. The match reminded me a bit of the 2005 US Open final, in which Agassi at 35 faced, and ultimately lost to, Federer who at the time was all-conquering. That was a great tournament. I was flatting then. We had no Sky TV so I just listened to it on the radio in between studying for my professional exams. The American commentator referred to the net as the twine, I seem to remember. Saturday’s women’s final wasn’t too shabby either, but with a busy work day I had no chance of seeing it.

In the latest round of the Scrabble league I’ve so far won four and lost four; I’m up in five of the six remaining games, so you never know… They may tweak things a bit soon – when experts join the league, they enter in the bottom division, mostly thrashing the poor schmucks who aren’t at that level. That isn’t fun for anybody.

At the weekend I was reading an article about UK salaries and pension plans and the expense of living in London and I thought about how much I’ve checked out of what you might call normal life. The great thing about living Romania – well, one of them – is that being here makes checking out perfectly fine. If I went back to New Zealand I don’t think it would be anymore and I’d likely go back to thinking that something is drastically wrong with me.

Books - Family - Life :) - Tennis

Windfall and new (and old) balls

July 15, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Recently Dad found out that his mother had an account in a bank (or was it a building society?) that no longer exists. So he could reclaim the money, which might have been a fiver for all he knew, I ordered my grandmother’s death certificate online, then Dad got photocopies and other bits and pieces. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a few hundred. Even a thousand. Late last week he got a cheque in the mail (cheque – it’s still 1995 in the UK apparently) for about £11,500. A pleasant surprise. Dad will give my two UK-based cousins, now orphans after their mother died last year, a quarter each. My brother wanted Dad to keep the whole thing secret and not give his cousins a penny. He’s not a fan of his cousins – “they’re not nice people and they’ve had enough handouts already” was how he put it – but Dad couldn’t do that.

I was on the phone to my parents for an hour today. Most of that was taken up with money stuff. Not just that surprise windfall, but preparing to sell their third and fourth properties and seeing lawyers and accountants. From my vantage point, it’s all so bizarre. As I’ve said before on this blog, it’s like watching the All Blacks play Romania, 75-0 up in the last minute, desperate for one last push over the line before the final hooter. (OK, it’s more like 75-7 now. They switched off momentarily at the back when they bought the mad house.)

I’m still trying to lose weight. Since I started my effort, I’ve dropped three kilos, which isn’t nothing, but I’ve still got a paunch I’d like to get rid of and a couple of pairs of jeans I’d like to get into. Losing weight isn’t easy. Although I try not to write too much about it here, I still go days or weeks on end of struggling to enjoy a whole lot. Except food. When I’m in one of those spells, resisting the temptation to totally pig out on some big cheesy sausagey pasta-y thing takes some doing.

Yesterday I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român for the exercise. I was just finishing a coffee there when my brother rang. I moved out of the bar, in which some old geezers were playing a particularly loud game of cards, and sat in a gazebo, out of the sun. We discussed the windfall – those bloody cousins – and our parents’ need to offload those properties toot-sweet.

Wimbledon. It’s over for another year. The men’s final was a damn good match, with Sinner the winner and I suppose the grinner. He was the better man on the day. Still, it could have got hairy for him when he faced 15-40 on his serve at 4-2 in the fourth set, especially after what he endured at Roland Garros last month. His serve was brilliant throughout. Alcaraz and Sinner keep producing great matches and right now they’re a league apart from the rest. (I should mention that Sinner got away with one against Grigov Dimitrov in the fourth round. Dimitrov of Bulgaria was two sets up when he was forced to retire with a crippling injury to his right pec.) As for the women, I said last time that Amanda Anisimova’s winning shot in her semi-final – against the world number one – was “sublime”. Well, it went from the sublime to the ridiculous in double-quick time on Saturday. Iga Świątek whitewashed her. It was just the second 6-0 6-0 Wimbledon final; the only other was in 1911. (There was one rather more recent whitewash in a grand slam final, when Steffi Graf beat Natasha Zvereva in the 1988 French Open. Steffi was untouchable that year – she won the calendar slam and Olympic gold.) You had to feel for Anisimova. She had 40-15 in an early service game, I think four chances to win it, then it all just unravelled against an opponent who wouldn’t let up for a second. Please, just win one game…

Mum watched a lot more Wimbledon than me. That’s great. It’s helped to relax her. It’s also given us something nice to talk about. Mum and I often used to watch matches together. (We played a lot together, too.) Steffi and Novotna in ’93. Steffi and Hingis in ’99 at the French Open. I’ve thought today about that first time we were lucky enough to go to Wimbledon, for the first time, in ’98. We were members of a small tennis club that was allocated ten pairs of tickets. We went into a draw and our names came out of the hat. (Because the club was so small, our odds were decent.) Our tickets were for No. 1 court on the first Saturday. We took the train there. Before taking our seats, we watched a pair of clay-courters thrash it out on an outside court. It was jaw-dropping stuff. TV gives you no real appreciation for how hard those guys are larruping the ball. The only match we saw in its entirety on No. 1 court was Petr Korda – champion at Melbourne earlier that year – against Jérôme Golmard of France. Korda won in four close sets. (Golmard, I just found out, died of motor neuron disease at only 43.) Midway through the next match the rain came, as it so often does. There were conga lines and people in ponchos, but that was that. No roof back then. That No. 1 court had only just been built and the atmosphere in the stadium was surprisingly sleepy. Mum actually did fall asleep in the fourth set of the men’s match. I also remember smoke drifting across the court from a fire in a nearby apartment.

I’ve just started reading a book called Ella Minnow Pea. If that sounds like the middle of the alphabet, it is. It’s about a fictitious world in which letters of the alphabet are progressively outlawed. It reminds me that I need to write my series of posts about the alphabet that I’ve had planned for ages.

Still no news from the publisher about the fate of my book(s).

Books - Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Tennis

Perfect storm

July 12, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

We had severe storms here on both Monday and Tuesday. The alert system worked a treat, unlike eight years ago when nobody saw those 15 minutes of mayhem coming, and people lost their lives. I watched the roof opposite like a hawk – it was still gleaming having been replaced just last month – and the tiles held. Further east the storm was much more devastating – buildings and cars were destroyed and people were badly injured. I was grateful for the much cooler weather that the turmoil brought. The few days I’ve been able to sleep, to actually live. Isn’t that great? (OK, I’m suffering a bit from a cold, coughing up thick gunk.)

My brother called me yesterday while I was half-watching the semi-final between Alcaraz and Fritz. (Alcaraz won in four sets following a dramatic tie-break. He’ll play Sinner in the final, a repeat of that match at the French Open last month.) We’d spoken a couple of days before. Oh god, what’s happened? It was to do with our parents’ UK properties which they plan – desperately need, in fact – to offload. Because they don’t live in the UK, solicitors won’t touch them with a barge pole. Increased risk of fraud, apparently. I’m sure they can find someone who’ll deal with their situation, at the right price. It’s hardly rare, after all. My god, my parents’ lives have got pretty damn complicated all of a sudden, haven’t they? This property crap is going to dominate their lives for god knows how long and, as my brother said, it’ll take over a fair chunk of our lives too. They should also get rid of their mad house in Geraldine sooner rather than later. Mum seems hell-bent on selling the Moeraki place even though it’s the only place they have that isn’t either shit or causing shit. And Mum still isn’t well – she goes to the loo every fifth day or something – and is determined not to see the doctor. All their problems are surmountable if they could just be businesslike about things, but Mum stopped being businesslike about anything ages ago. It makes me question the purpose of accumulating all this vast wealth (by my standards, it’s certainly vast) if all it does is cause constant stress in your old age. When I last spoke to Dad, he said he’d lost sleep because of it, and that was before the latest business with the solicitors.

In other news, my London-based student of seven years told me his divorce that was on, then was off, is now back on. He was amazingly matter-of-fact about the whole thing. How will your boys cope? They just will. He said it’s a shame I guess after being married for six years. Six years? I said. But you started having lessons with me seven years ago and weren’t you married then? Hmm, let me see, oh yes, it’s nine years. Time flies I suppose. My wife has a good job, he said, so she’ll be fine. What does she do exactly? I asked. Don’t really know, he said.

I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde’s only novel) earlier this week. I kept flitting between liking it a lot and barely tolerating it, getting it and not getting it. The chapter with all the gemstones and spices slowed me down, as it was meant to, even though I enjoyed all the vivid vocabulary – words like bezoar. Then I rattled through the next few chapters. A wild ride. It must have been highly controversial in its day.

I felt pretty down after saying goodbye to Mum and Dad. Especially Mum. On Friday night I hardly slept. I’ve also had a cold. On the other hand I’ve had a good week of lessons considering it’s summer – I’m just about to have one on square roots. Work is always a pretty useful antidote.

The women’s Wimbledon final between Świątek and Anisimova takes place this evening. There was a great finish to Anisimova’s win over Sabalenka in the semi. That winner to end it, when it could easily have slipped from her grasp if she hadn’t nailed it, was sublime.

Family - Language learning - Tennis

Cuscri and tennis

June 10, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Words for family relations vary wildly between languages. Sometimes there are different words for older and younger brother or sister, or maternal and paternal grandparents, and so on. Some languages have a an impressively vast array of family words compared with, say, English.

Romanian, like Italian, doesn’t distinguish between grandson/granddaughter and nephew/niece. Nepot can mean either grandson or nephew; nepoată can be either a granddaughter or a niece. That’s something I always have to point out in my lessons on families, which happen quite regularly.

On the other hand, the words for in-laws are more varied in Romanian than in English – there’s no equivalent of just sticking -in-law on the end. Here are the Romanian words:

socru – father-in-law
soacră – mother-in-law
ginere – son-in-law
noră – daughter-in-law
cumnat – brother-in-law
cumnată – sister-in-law

As you can see, there are two pairs here, but son-in-law and daughter-in-law are completely different from each other. By the way, all six words are totally different from the “-in-law-less” versions; brother (for instance) is frate, which is nothing at all like the word for brother-in-law.

Another oddity, from a native English speaker’s perspective, is that Romanian has a specific word for your son-in-law’s (or daughter-in-law’s) parents. That word is cuscri. I mention this because my parents just got a message from their cuscri inviting them to go on a Mediterranean cruise with them next year. Mum and Dad said it was the last thing they wanted to do, even assuming they come out this way again in 2026. They really wouldn’t want to go on that sort of cruise. I wouldn’t want to go on that kind of cruise. I wouldn’t want them to go on that kind of cruise. They’d hate it. When Covid hit, I hoped the cruise ship industry would be killed off for good – it does considerable harm to the environment and to people who live in places where they dock – but alas it’s come back with a vengeance. The ships are bigger than ever. If it was up to me, I’d simply ban cruise ships with more than 500 passengers, along with ambient music and ranges of paint with more than ten shades.

I thought I wouldn’t see much of yesterday’s tennis final because of my lesson. But not to worry – there was loads of it left once my lesson had finished. When I turned it back on, Alcaraz was about to break Sinner for the third set to trail just 2-1, but really the match (which lasted 5½ hours) was just getting started. The fourth set was where things got really mental. Alcaraz stood on the precipice, serving at 3-5, 0-40. He was almost gone. And Sinner certainly had his chance on at least one of the match points. Having missed his opportunity, he then dropped his serve easily and it was 5-5. After Alcaraz had Houdinied his way out of that huge hole, he dominated Sinner physically. He won the set on a tie-break and then grabbed an early break in the fifth. He started drop-shotting to good effect. Still there was another twist – Alcaraz was broken when serving for the match and Sinner came close to breaking again and avoiding the deciding tie-break. Sadly for him he failed to do that, and a few minutes later he was 7-0 down in the first-to-ten shoot-out which turned into a procession. The extremely popular Alcaraz won it 10-2.

The match had pretty much everything. Shotmaking, athleticism, determination on both sides, and sheer drama including an incredible comeback. It also made it pretty clear who the current big two in the game are; their rivalry at the very top of tennis could last another decade or more. In terms of all-time great matches, it’s got to be right up there. Maybe not quite at the level of Borg v McEnroe in 1980 or Nadal v Federer in 2008 because (1) the rivalry between the two players was less established than between those two pairs and (2) that final tie-break was a bit of a damp squib after a match of such brilliance. (Why did they have to tinker with the fifth-set rule?) I’d put it on a par with Djokovic v Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open, and that’s some pretty esteemed company.

Jannik Sinner was oh so gracious in defeat. I mean look, you were up two sets, three match points, you let them slip, you serve for the match, you get broken, suddenly all looks lost, then to top it off you come back right at the end in spectacular fashion but still fall short. How he handled the loss bodes well for the rest of his career. It’s interesting how many big comebacks in finals there have been at Roland-Garros compared to the other three grand slams. It could just be random chance, but playing on clay makes fatigue a greater factor. You can’t just rely on your serve on clay, so if you start to flag physically just a little, your opponent can really capitalise, even from two sets down. Plus, because serve is less dominant, any particular lead you may have within a set (a single break, say) is less safe.

There was some fallout from the women’s final following Aryna Sabalenka’s interview. Though it wasn’t as bad as some made out, she should have been more complimentary towards Coco Gauff who actually played pretty damn well.

After our Romanian lesson this morning, I met up with Dorothy for coffee in Piața Victoriei. I gave her half a pizza I made yesterday. It’s been cooler today, with a high of “just” 24. There has been a pleasant breeze all day. Dorothy said that she wishes it were windier in Timișoara. I feel the same.

Things have kicked off in Los Angeles. Who knows where this will lead. Possibly to civil war.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Bro no-go

June 8, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning I played squash with Mark in Dumbrăvița. We just rallied rather than playing a game and it was good fun. Though we worked up a sweat we were in the indoor cool, which is a real bonus at the moment.

On Friday I had a chat to Mum about my trip to the UK. Mum’s idea was that she’d book a hotel in London for two nights and I’d catch a train from Luton Airport to meet her and Dad. On one of the nights we’d see a show. Great idea, I thought. The theatre is something they rarely do and I practically never do. Then we’d all go down to my brother’s in Poole for three days, taking us up to the 29th – Dad’s 75th birthday is on the 28th – before heading up to St Ives where I’d stay until 3rd July when I fly back from Stansted. Very well sussed out by Mum I thought, and I was keen to tell her that. But then Mum called me last night to say that my brother has to go to Portsmouth for work during that time, making it pretty much pointless to go down to Poole. So it looks like I’ll miss him and his family. I’ll probably book another trip to the UK in August after Mum and Dad have gone.

Before this morning’s squash session I watched a YouTube video by the wonderfully deadpan Patrick Boyle on American consumerism. He started by saying that in the last 40 years the average American has gone from buying 12 items of clothing a year to 68, an unimaginable number for me. But in the same time the average American’s expenditure on clothes in real terms has halved. People have this idea that being able to buy new jeans for ten bucks a pair is a good thing, when really if they’re that cheap something must have gone wrong. Consumer spending in the US is crazy though. I read that Americans buy 40% of all the world’s toys despite only being 4% of the world’s population. I find it sad that many Romanians see America as the holy grail – what they should aspire to.

I managed to see most of yesterday’s women’s final at Roland-Garros. Coco Gauff was mentally stronger than her opponent Aryna Sabalenka, and that was a big part of why she won a close match. Sabalenka dominated the early running and did eventually win a marathon first set in 77 minutes, but her unforced errors – a whopping 70 of them – caught up with her in the end. The men’s final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz is later today. I don’t know how much of it I’ll see because I have an online lesson scheduled.

Grand slam tennis isn’t immune from the saminess that permeates modern life. When I watched the French Open on TV in the nineties, I felt it was being played in a faraway land even though it was only a few hundred miles away. People were still smoking their Gauloises in the stands; it just looked and sounded wild compared to the lawns of Wimbledon. Now Court Philippe-Chatrier looks tame in comparison; it could be anywhere. There are also signs of dumbing down. The scoreboards now flash up “Ace” or “Balle de set”, when I’d have thought sophisticated Parisians wouldn’t need to be informed like that. That sort of thing is fine in New York, accompanied by the waft of hot dogs, but it’s out of place in Paris.

I noticed on the official Roland-Garros website something called “excitement rate”, a percentage which goes up and down during a match. Near the conclusion of yesterday’s final it reached 97% with a burning flame alongside the figure. I mentioned this to Dad who thought it was silly because it depends on who’s watching: the average Serbian will get more excited during a Djokovic match than the average Spaniard, for instance. But it clearly isn’t measuring that: it’s a measure of how crucial the upcoming point (or maybe few points) are based on the current situation in the match. At 8-8 in a deciding tie-break there’s way more riding on the next point than at 6-3, 6-2, 4-2, 40-15, and hence far more “excitement”. I still think it’s silly though for a whole raft of reasons. One, “rate” is the wrong word: it should be “index” or “level”. Two, “Get excited now!” doesn’t add anything. Three, I never saw it drop below 60-70% when it should be able to drop to practically zero; the “marketers” are never going to say their “product” is boring. Four, it’s really just a crappy way of promoting a data company, in this case InfoSys – I’ve seen these pointless promotional stats and indices in tennis for ages.

I had a funny online lesson yesterday with a boy who was keen to show me his farming simulator. He plays Roblox and Fortnite and Minecraft, but the farming simulator (which is in English) is his go-to game. He’s not the first boy I’ve taught who – refreshingly – wants to be a farmer when he grows up rather than a footballer or an online influencer. His grades in English are shocking, but this game is at least boosting his vocab in a specific area – combine harvester, enclosure, crops, slurry. It has given me ideas for future lessons.

Cat - Dreams - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

A little rascal

June 7, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Today I had a free morning, giving me the chance to cycle to Sânmihaiu Român before it got too hot. But really it was already too hot. I was sweating like a pig and jumped into a cold shower when I got back. The sweet smell of tei – or lime – has now taken hold. Not helping matters was another bout of sinus pain – though not as bad as the one before, it sapped me of energy as always.

Yesterday I didn’t start till ten – unusually – but it was a busy day. It started with a two-hour lesson with a lady in her late forties in which I partly took on the role of a shrink, then I had four more one-hour sessions with kids aged 10 to 13. One of them meant trekking across the city on my bike. In between I took Kitty to the vet to get her latest jab, then got my car back after getting the air con fixed. They put freon in it and also replace a switch that had been playing up. That was an absolute necessity and it only set me back 700 lei (£120 or NZ$260). I’ve also had the battery replaced on my laptop. It’s been a good week for that kind of thing. I’m still waiting for someone to pick up my colour printer which has packed in well within its guarantee. With only a black-and-white printer, my options with kids are limited.

It was interesting talking to Mum and Dad after their trip down to Poole. They really took to their granddaughter. Their grandson on the other hand is proving to be a real live wire. Super intelligent (my brother wonders how he could possibly be so good with numbers and the alphabet) but pretty conniving with it. My brother could be a pain in the neck at that age – I can remember – but there was never any malice in him. So watch this space, I suppose. My brother has been extremely good with his son when a lot of fathers would lose their rag. They were relieved to get back to St Ives and not have to do very much for really the first time since they left New Zealand. (I’d wanted their time in Romania to be a relaxing one, but it didn’t quite pan out that way.)

When my parents were with me, Dad sometimes said “I don’t know how you do it” in relation to my work. He thought it was surprising that I have a job that has a large social element when socialising has never been easy for me. To be honest, the sheer amount of talking I have to do can be exhausting. Sometimes I’m not even talking in my own language. But the social aspect isn’t too bad – it’s hardly going to some packed trendy bar where socialising is the primary goal, I rarely have to interact with more than one or two people at a time (I’ve always been terrible in large groups), and I’m safe in the knowledge that after 60 or 90 or 120 minutes it’ll be all over. And I’m actually helping someone in the process, which is something most humans derive satisfaction from. The social side of an open-plan office is far, far harder for me, even if it involves less actual talking. So much fakeness and playing the game. And don’t get me started on Christmas parties.

It looks like Elena, the lady who lives above me, will feed Kitty during my nine-day stay in the UK. Dorothy just happens to be acquiring a kitten in the next week or two, so that wasn’t an option. I was worried that I’d be forced to find a shelter for her. As for my planned road trip to Poland, I may well end up taking Kitty with me. That thought made me think of the song Me and You and a Dog Named Boo by Lobo. It was a number-one hit in New Zealand in 1971 and they’d sometimes play it on classic hits stations. It makes life in those days seem pretty simple.

Off-the-pitch football news. Birmingham City’s already ambitious plans are going gangbusters now. They plan to build a 62,000-seater stadium in the middle of a sports quarter with transport links to the city. Potentially this could be huge. Blues are already a big club in terms of support – it’s a big city after all – but on the pitch they’ve been very much in the shadow of Aston Villa. This massive investment could turn the tables. They’ve got one trump card up their sleeves that Villa lack – having Birmingham in their name. A successful Blues team could really put the city on the map, giving it a real shot in the arm, as well as revitalising a pretty impoverished part of it. I just they hope they don’t totally down the Manchester City route; I stumbled upon one of their home matches on TV recently and I switch it off – I couldn’t handle the sheer scale of all the advertising.

Continuing the football theme, I had a dream on Tuesday night about a Championship (second-tier) club that lacked decent support or even a decent song. As a joke a supporter composed a song: “Keep the cat flying along” (whatever the hell that was supposed to mean; I think it was a mishmash of other football songs) that ended up becoming not only the club song but a major hit.

I’m currently watching the Roland-Garros semi-final between Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic, though it’s uncomfortably hot in the kitchen where the TV is. Sinner took the first set 6-4 and Djokovic leads 3-2 (on serve) in the second. There was an extraordinary point early in the second set in which both players scrambled to reach near-impossible balls. The winner will play Carlos Alcaraz in the final.

On Sunday I’m playing squash with Mark, and maybe his wife too.

Family - Politics - Romania - Tennis

Dan the man (what a relief)

May 19, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Frankly I’m shocked. Romanians used their collective brainpower to not elect George Simion, a thug, a bully, an ex-football hooligan, an isolationist (which you can’t sensibly be in Romania), a Trump fan and a Russian sympathiser. Instead they gave a five-year presidential term to Nicușor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, who is pro-Europe and pro-brain. Dan got 53.6%. At the beginning the result was in doubt. At 9pm a pair of exit polls showed Dan in the 54-55% range, but the diaspora (who made up about 14% of the overall vote and for some bizarre reason favoured Simion) weren’t included in those estimates. The polls only had to be off by three points or so and Simion could have won. Both Dan and Simion claimed victory initially, but Dan and his supporters were clearly in a chirpier mood while Simion was dripping with aggression – there was a man in a red MAGA hat alongside him which told you all you needed to know. (Simion had called his opponent “autistic” and had refused to debate with him.) The results came through impressively quickly and by 10:30 there was no realistic path to victory for Simion. With the diaspora factored in, the exit polls were pretty much bang on. (By the way, of the 301 New Zealand-based Romanians who voted, only 37 cast their votes for Simion.)

It was interesting watching the coverage with Mum and Dad. I was able to translate the speeches and commentary. The election is hugely consequential for Romania and for Europe, even if it’s had limited press around the world. It really looked like Romania would be the latest domino to fall. After all, Simion won the first round by a huge margin; Dan only just made it into the final round. Yesterday I was encouraged by high turnout in obvious Dan-friendly areas like Cluj and lower numbers where Simion would be strongest – turnout figures were reported throughout the day – but didn’t dare to believe. I’d been there before with Brexit, Trump and heaven knows what else. But it was clear that there was a heavy mobilisation of people in the second round against Simion. Two million more people turned out compared to the first round – turnout was almost 65% which in Romania is very high. Dan will now set about forming a government made up of pro-European parties.

In some ways I get the appeal of someone like Simion. Capitalism and globalisation are no longer working. Societies are breaking down. The invasion of tech is becoming more sinister and taking away people’s jobs. The environment is deteriorating as I type. Something needs to change. But certainly not in the simplistic, belligerent way Simion wanted. For the moment we’ve dodged a bullet. I should be able to live and work in Romania in peace, to see more of the country, to at least try and improve my command of the language. I still have a future here, and that’s a blessed relief.

Mum and Dad have gone for a walk into town. That’s a blessed relief too after Mum’s endless cleaning and tidying and rearranging. Earlier this morning Dad helped me move a disintegrating chaise longue into the car; I then took it to the tip. That was a good job done.

Yesterday I took Mum and Dad to Scârț where we met Dorothy. After our coffee we looked at all the weird and wonderful Ceaușescu-era artifacts downstairs. I was on edge all day yesterday; mostly I was dreading the results of the election. When we got back I had a two-hour maths lesson. After that we watched the men’s tennis final from Rome (on clay courts next to the Tiber River) between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. I hadn’t thought of watching tennis for some time, but Mum still follows it. Sinner had two set points in a long opening set, but Alcaraz won it on a tie-break before racing through the second 6-1. Dad was surprised they didn’t play best of five sets. They once did play five sets in these big finals; Rome had two absolute classics in 2005 and 2006.

Cat - Family - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Mum is better, plus pictures of Novi Sad and Kitty

February 13, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

When I went for a walk around the block today, two of the houses had traditional music coming from them. The second of the songs was beautiful and I tried to Shazam it but (just as expected) I didn’t get a reading.

The best thing I did today was say no to the head of maths at British school. My mental health is always fragile and such a massive change might well tip me over the edge. It wouldn’t be worth it at all. The fact that I know people who work there would only make it worse.

I spoke to Mum last night. She was miles better. Not perfect – she hasn’t been properly well since my brother and his family visited six months ago – but good enough to play golf tomorrow. She still needs to get her upset stomach thoroughly investigated, but as this is Mum I’m talking about, I doubt she will. Dad was out; it made a nice change to speak to Mum by herself. Dad gets his lump taken out on Friday; let’s hope the biopsy gives him the all clear. It sounds similar to the lump Mum had a year ago.

I could only watch the second half of Blues’ FA Cup match with Newcastle. What a half I missed. Blues scored in the first minute, Newcastle equalised midway through the half (controversially – did it cross the line?) and went ahead a few minutes later, then Tomoki Iwata’s spectacular strike made it 2-2 just before half-time. The half I saw was far more stop-start from all the fouls and injuries. Newcastle’s spell of pressure eventually told, and they wound up 3-2 winners. No shame in that from a Blues perspective. Last night they battered Cambridge (one of my local teams I suppose; I was born there after all) 4-0 and they now sit firmly atop the league table. Blues have also made the last four of the EFL Trophy, a competition for teams in the third and fourth tiers. A lot of supporters treat that as a joke, but if you make the final you get a day out at Wembley. Blues will achieve that if they beat Bradford next week. They would then face either Peterborough (another local team of mine) or Wrexham (with all the Hollywood connections) in the final in April.

Simona Halep. After losing her first-round match at the Transylvania Open, she hung up her racket for good at the age of 33. I very much enjoyed following a top Romanian player when I knew I’d be coming to Romania and after I arrived. The disappointments, the victories from the jaws of defeat (and vice-versa), the near misses, and the triumphs. She played four grand slam finals after I arrived here. To see her finally get over the line against Sloane Stephens was quite special. Then there was the Serena final at Wimbledon, which Simona won 6-2 6-2 in 56 minutes. She was practically flawless that day. Her doping ban was a massive shame and though it was (basically) overturned, she’d tumbled way down the rankings having hardly played. But while it lasted, having a Romanian (and a throughly good person, from what I could tell) doing so well in my favourite sport while living in Romania was pretty damn cool.

A few pictures from my trip to Novi Sad (and a couple of Kitty):