Tennis

Coronavirus - New Zealand - Romania - Tennis

It’s collapsing all around us

June 10, 2021 by 0 Comments

The cathedral bells rang out in earnest this morning. What for? It’s the Feast of the Ascension in the Orthodox calendar. As I write, some kind of parade is about to begin on the steps of the cathedral. Someone is testing the microphone: “doi, zece, doi, zece”. Where I come from you go “one, two” and perhaps “three”, but Romanians say “two, ten” instead. No idea why. (Update: A brass band has started up.)

Last time I neglected to mention the role of religion in people’s attitudes to the pandemic and the vaccines. The impact is huge. A prime example here is No-Vax Djoković, a devout adherent to the Serbian Orthodox church, which is very similar to the Romanian version. Both Britain and New Zealand benefit from being increasingly secular countries. (Djoković had a battle on his hands last night against the impressive Matteo Berrettini, but survived a hiccup in the third-set tie-break to edge through in four. They started the match at 8pm local time; the spectators were forced to leave during the fourth set to avoid falling foul of the 11pm curfew. That was bizarre.)

I had a lesson this morning with a woman who caught Covid in early April along with her husband and small son. They’re still all suffering from memory loss, fatigue, and a succession of colds. Scary stuff.

In some sad news, the Bigăr waterfall, which I visited with my parents in 2017, collapsed on Monday evening. It was a popular tourist attraction, enhanced by being slap-bang on the 45th parallel north (the opposite of which might be familiar to certain readers of this blog). The weight of moss and the build-up of limestone caused it to give way.

21st June 2017

I see that Auckland has leapt to the top of the ranking of the world’s most livable cities, with Wellington in fourth place. I’m not quite sure who’s measuring this. Lack of virus obviously comes into it, but last time the I visited Auckland I was sorely disappointed. A soulless city, with house prices beyond livability for most.

On Tuesday I got my first haircut in eleven months. A good job done. My next chop might be ages away.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Poker - Tennis

Anti-vax: just don’t go there

June 10, 2021 by 0 Comments

At 2pm on Monday I felt awful. I Skyped the boy whose anti-vax mother had given up lessons with me, but no reply. I tried again. Still nothing. Oh god, she’s pulled him out of lessons with me too, without even telling me. What a shame. He’s a nice kid, his English never ceases to impress me, and we’ve now had 70-odd very productive lessons. Then at 2:10 he came on the line. His school lessons are all over the place as a result of the pandemic, so he was a bit late. What a relief. Yesterday I had a first – I’ve done plenty of interview practice, but I hadn’t had a student give a phone interview in English during a lesson. It was a short but tough interview, with unexpected questions, mostly about her experience with the English language. The interviewer didn’t do a great job, honestly. When my student asked her to repeat a question, she repeated it at the same speed. The icebreaker – “Tell me about yourself” – came almost at the end. I hope my student doesn’t lose confidence after that.

At tennis on Saturday I met a guy who was convinced that the vaccines were useless and didn’t believe that mass vaccination was our way out of this mess. Me, my wife, my two daughters, we ain’t gettin’ no stinkin’ jabs. (They happily involve their kids in this lunacy too.) Last night I had a lesson with a woman who is getting married later this summer. She’s had both doses. The government’s policy is to severely limit attendance at weddings and baptisms unless guests have been vaccinated. Sounds great to me. But she’s having to uninvite dozens of her relatives and so-called friends who would prefer to miss her wedding than get the jabs. So I don’t go mad, I’ll avoid the subject from now on, unless the other person brings it up. It just isn’t worth it. Plus I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. If someone’s anti, I’d rather not know.

So why is Romania awash with these buggers? The UK’s initial response to the pandemic was lamentable, but the vaccine rollout and take-up have been impressive. Demand is continuing to outstrip supply. New Zealand is struggling to get hold of the vaccines, but I’m confident that over 85% of the population, perhaps over 90%, will get jabbed when they can. That should be enough for herd immunity. Western European countries made a slow start (mainly because the EU did such a crappy job at the beginning) but they’re getting their act together now. But in Romania we’re currently at about 25% and stalling. It comes down to education (or the anti-education that platforms like Facebook give you), wealth (poorer people travel less, so have less personal incentive to get vaccinated), and civil duty. In the UK, to refuse the vaccine is to opt out of being a decent citizen. In NZ it will be the same, I’m sure. But not so here. If anything, the social pressure in Romania goes the other way, especially outside the main cities. Get jabbed and you’re seen as someone who can’t think for yourself. Easily taken in by government propaganda. Naive. A sheep. Romania’s low turnouts in general elections – usually around 40% – again demonstrate a lack of civil duty.

When I’ve had a the chance (not very often) I’ve been keeping an eye on the French Open. There have been some wonderful women’s matches in the last couple of days. I managed to catch most of Barbora Krejcikova’s topsy-turvy win over 17-year-old Coco Gauff after my trip to the market, and now Iga Świątek has her hands full against Maria Sakkari. I expected her to steamroll to victory, but she trails 4-6, 0-2 and is taking a medical time-out.

At the local produce market this morning I bought strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and goat’s cheese.

Poker. Not much has happened since I last wrote. I had a weird badugi tournament last weekend in which I clung on for more than two hours without ever making better than a ten badugi. My bankroll is $714.

Family - New Zealand - Poker - Tennis

Some sad news from NZ

May 31, 2021 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I called my parents, and they told me that Graeme had taken a rapid turn for the worse and wouldn’t make it. Two hours later, he passed away. It’s all very sudden and very sad, even if he did extremely well to ever reach 80 after the lung problems he developed decades earlier that forced him out of work. I always felt a bit sorry for him. He helped bring up four daughters, who all turned out to be self-assured and successful, and one son who moved to Australia. He was always taking his daughters skiing or sailing, but despite all that, they treated him as a bit of an oddball and a joke in his old age. He was different from his wife who was has always been more active socially. She has always kept her cards close to her chest, and quite possibly he never stood a chance after his accident but she didn’t let on.

The funeral will take place in the next two or three days, but there’s confusion as to exactly when. South Canterbury is being blitzed by a weather bomb – relentless rain (approaching feet rather than inches) making Geraldine a virtual island.

Friday would have been both the 70th birthday of Dad’s cousin (who died in December) and the 99th birthday of Dad’s mother (who died ten years ago). Here’s a post I wrote about my grandmother’s 88th birthday, back on my old blog. That was the last time I ever saw her.

People getting old. Falling apart both physically and mentally. It’s such a dreadful thing to watch. Yesterday at the tennis court I watched it (the physical side of it, anyway). People’s bodies seemed to be falling to pieces. The guy with whom I played that unfinished energy-sapping match just before Christmas is having back trouble and is shadow of the man he was then. Viorica seemed even less mobile than usual. Then there’s Petrică with his kidney condition made worse by Covid. I kept thinking, heck, it must be my turn next.

Poker. In this morning’s PLO8, I almost fell short of the money but just before the bubble I escaped with a quarter of a three-way pot to survive. Straight after the bubble burst, I found myself almost chipless but ran my tiny stack up to something substantial thanks to some good starting hands, only for my opponent to hit a runner-runner wheel to eliminate me. Had I won that I would have been motoring, but it wasn’t to be. The pot-limit badugi was over in 20 minutes – I never won a hand. I made a monster, he made a bigger monster, and that was that. When that was over I was still in the single draw. (At one stage I was playing three tournaments, in three very different games, at the same time.) With eight remaining, I had a nice big stack and put it to good use on my short-handed table. I started the seven-man final table with 68,000 chips and the lead. With a following wind, or even just a gentle breeze at my back, I might have won the whole shebang and a load of bounties. Instead I faced a headwind. I did claim another handy bounty, but with four left I twice pushed with an equity edge but both times I lost out, and it was game over. Not a bad morning though – those bounties helped me make a $23 profit from the single draw – and after a slightly frustrating month in which I only turned a small profit, my bankroll is now $707. I feel I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough with Omaha hi-lo. A few deep runs and finally I might actually be getting it.

Language learning - Poker - Tennis

Romanian Commentary 14 — Dumneavoastră (and some poker)

May 18, 2021 by 0 Comments

Most languages have words that seem too long for what they represent. English, for instance, has understand and disappointment. Today, pedestrian came up in a lesson, and I’ve never liked that word – it’s too long, too cumbersome, and I suppose too pedestrian. French has maintenant, which is far too long for something that means “now”. By the time you’ve said or written the word, now has passed. Romanian also has its fair share. The numbers from 11 to 19 are all stupidly long – 17 is șaptesprezece – and most people shorten them in everyday speech. But the biggest culprit, literally, in almost any language, has to be dumneavoastră, which is the Romanian formal version of “you”, just like vous in French, only (unlike in French) it doesn’t also serve as the general plural “you”. It’s also used for the formal “your”. When I first tried learning the language, I was immediately intimidated by this 13-letter monstrosity, which literally means “your lordship”. Surely they don’t actually use this in conversation? But they sure do, in all its glory. Fortunately, Romanian is a “pro-drop” language, which means you can get away with just using the verb form without the subject, so you can often dispense with dumneavoastră. But you can’t always, and when it serves as the formal “your” (rather than “you”), you’re forced to use it. Yesterday I played tennis, partnering a bloke of a similar age to me. Hmmm, can I use the informal tu with you (I hardly know you), or should I play safe and use the formal version? In doubles, it’s fairly common to shout something to indicate that either you or your partner should take the next shot, but you can hardly say dumneavoastră, can you? That’s practically a whole sentence. By about the third syllable the ball will have whizzed by. So what can I say? Yesterday I decided on the English “go!”. I mean, go is universal, right? I’m pretty sure you pass go in even the Romanian version of Monopoly. My partner unfortunately interpreted my “go!” as eu, which means “me”, and our communication breakdown cost us the point.

Last night I realised how much work I still need to do if I’m ever really going to get good at Romanian. Someone from the police called me, and I was lost. In our five-minute conversation, or should I say monologue, he must have said over a thousand words. Just too damn fast, and of course it was on the phone and that makes it even harder. Plus it’s the sodding police – what have I done? It seemed that I hadn’t done anything, and one of his colleagues wanted me to translate something into English later this week. He gave me the phone number, I called this other policeman (I assume that’s what he is) and that was indeed the case.

It tipped it down yesterday morning. Good weather for poker. I got up early and FaceTimed my parents before the tournaments kicked off just after eight (while I was still eating my porridge). I made a decent start to the PLO8, then while that was going on I fired up a single draw in which I broke the best hand to bust out after 40 minutes. Never mind. I was now in the process of amassing a giant stack in the Omaha hi-lo, which was helped immensely by making quad threes to inflict a very unfortunate bad beat on my opponent. I easily made the seven-man final table, and from there anything could have happened. There was a Romanian who hurled insults at me in his native language for some bizarre reason (he could see I was playing from the same country) and I just blocked his chat, before knocking him out in fourth place. The final three were all pretty evenly stacked, but I had basically zero experience at the game short-handed. After a decent number of hands I was out in third place for a $22 profit after just over five hours. By that point I’d also made the final table of the knockout pot-limit badugi (two final tables simultaneously is a rarity for me) and came back well from being relatively short to make the final three. Then, crucially, I was dealt two pat nines that helped me chip up and eventually knock out a good player and grab his healthy bounty. I had a big chip lead as I got heads-up with an inexplicably passive opponent, and soon I’d won a bounty tournament for the first time, making $62. A lucky day. I made $81 overall, and my bankroll is now $705.

Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Springtime pics

April 26, 2021 by 0 Comments

Today is Anzac Day and my sister-in-law’s birthday.

I’d just gone out to withdraw 1990 lei from the cash machine, or bancomat as they call it here, and guess what. I saw my bike. It was chained to a nearby lamp-post, with a slightly more sturdy combination lock than the one I had. Then I bumped into Bogdan. He thinks that someone in our block, “the bloke with the beard on the sixth floor”, took it. He said he’d chat to the guy. I asked him not to involve the police. I never thought I’d see it again, and it’s so weird that someone from my block decided to pinch it. It didn’t get much use over the lockdown period, so perhaps he figured it was abandoned.

I didn’t think I’d ever get into poker again. It is engrossing, it does exercise my brain, but there’s so much I can’t do when I play poker. I can’t enjoy the sunshine. I can’t read a book. I can’t answer a FaceTime call when I’m playing a tournament. Heck, last week it was even stopping me from sleeping. Tournaments are the worst for having your hands tied. It was all fine over the winter months and the lockdown, but with the improving weather (and maybe even potential bike rides!) I don’t know how much of this I want to do. I got in three tournaments today. I won small prizes in two (single draw and badugi) while Omaha hi-lo once again eluded me. My bankroll is $652.

Lots of tennis this weekend. Yesterday we played three-and-a-bit sets of doubles. Today there were just three of us so we played two-against-one in rotation; singles in that format gives you a real workout. I really had to scramble. It was great stuff, and the weather was just perfect for it.

Spring and the loosening of restrictions have brought seemingly the whole city out to the parks. The many flowerbeds, mostly full of tulips in a multitude of colours, are a big attraction. Here are some pictures:

Gearing up for an anti-lockdown protest. From late March.
This rusty motorbike still has its old Ceaușescu-era number plate
Central Park
Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Bikeless, and the joys of tennis

April 12, 2021 by 0 Comments

I had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday, just after I wrote my last blog post. My bike was no more. It had been nicked. It was locked to the banister leading to the basement – not in my flat where the fumes from the glue on one of the tyres made me sick – but no matter, my cheap bike was gone. After that I walked many, many miles, to Decathlon (50 minutes’ walk from here), the police station (45 minutes; almost certainly a waste of time, but I got to practise my Romanian there) and the market at Mehala (45 minutes). Add all those times together, then double that. I didn’t find a suitable bike at either Decathlon or the market, which is where I picked up both that bike and my previous one. So I’m bikeless, which is a pain. I’m also pretty tired; I played a fair few sets of tennis over the weekend.

We’ve had a lovely weekend of spring weather, but after another fine day forecast for tomorrow, it’s predicted to turn to custard (as they say in Shangri-La) in a big way. I played tennis on both days, and today was really quite wonderful. In a flashback to pre-smartphone world, people on the sidelines were watching other people play, commenting, applauding. Bravo, Viorica. It was like being back at Belmont, circa oh-five. Somebody was following a handball game on his phone, but that’s OK. I played my first set for several months with Petrică. Last year he wanted to hit any and every ball; he was a pain to play with, honestly. Since then he’s had Covid, and he definitely isn’t the same man. In today’s set I took more than my share of shots. I served the first game, which we won after seven deuces. We then proceeded to lose the set 6-1, without ever getting to deuce again. I didn’t exactly set the world alight with my play either; I hit so many forehands out over the baseline. As it happened, that marathon first game wasn’t the longest I was involved in. In a mixed set, my partner served a game that went ten deuces, plus or minus one. The highlight of the early evening might have been Domnul Sfâra, who is probably 86 now. He just watched; it was great to see him again.

On Thursday morning I got some encouragement from my 13-year-old student. To illustrate a key difference between English and Romanian, I gave him an example of a Romanian sentence, adding “I hope I’ve got that right”. He said that of course it’s right, and I definitely shouldn’t be worrying about my Romanian. That was nice coming from him; I expect someone of that age to be more honest than somebody older.

Poker. I’ve been struggling to play much, but I got in four tournaments today. The first was Omaha hi-lo. I had a reasonable run but was out in 52nd, with the top 35 paying. Next was single draw (well, they overlapped). I was fortunate to chip up as I called my opponent’s shove with a nut draw and hit my monster to beat his strong hand. Then, very briefly, I had a big stack. I lost almost half of it when my 50th-best hand clashed with my opponent’s 49th, then soon after I made a terrible fold. Against the same aggressive opponent and with a bounty in play it was just awful. I thought I was dead and buried (and deservedly so) after that, but I got a reprieve when someone seemed to misread their hand. I made the final table where I was out in sixth. Pot-limit badugi next (again they overlapped), a less dramatic tournament but a similar result as I finished seventh. A bit disappointing not to hit one of the top prizes, but those little wins come in handy. After tennis I tried a tiny-buy-in satellite to tonight’s Omaha hi-lo SCOOP. I doubled up on only the second hand as I flopped quad kings, but it was all downhill from there. Having a maniac on my left most of the time didn’t help. My bankroll is $484.

Coronavirus - Poker - Politics - Tennis

Back in lockdown

March 8, 2021 by 0 Comments

I was about to do my weekly shop, but then I checked the rules and realised I couldn’t until after lunch. Timișoara entered lockdown last night at midnight, and supermarkets are reserved for over-65s between 10am and 1pm. Good decision all round. The sunny early-spring weather had brought crowds of people to the centre, especially in narrow streets like Strada Alba Iulia where you’re all hemmed in. Hospitals are just about bursting at the seams when the new variants are starting to proliferate, so this increase in activity is at exactly the wrong time. There’s been too much “can we get away with it?” and general pussyfooting around, so I’m glad they’ve put the hammer down. I wonder if that would have happened under Nicolae Robu, our old mayor.

Leadership matters more than people think. Would New Zealand have done so well had the 2017 election turned out differently (or should I say, as expected)? We’ll never know, but it’s just a hunch that National would have been all “we’ve got a goddamn rock star economy and we ain’t gonna shut it down”. Team of five million? Maybe. Be kind? I doubt it. NZ’s messaging has been inclusive, not divisive, and that’s gone a long way towards their resounding success up until now. To be clear, I still think National would have handled it miles better than the US or most of Europe.

The British people’s reaction to their disastrous response to Covid is increasingly maddening. The death toll is around 120,000, and tens of millions of Brits aren’t only OK with that, they like what they see. Now they’ve got their vaccines and all is forgiven, if they ever thought there was anything to forgive in the first place. It seems that if you supported Brexit and voted Tory in December 2019, you’ll support the government come what may. And now they’ve got their vaccines that the EU don’t have, so hahahaha in your face! Take that remainers, we’re winning! Who cares about all that death now.

I played tennis twice at the weekend, and it’ll be at least three weeks before I’m back on the court again. In both sessions – four hours – I played with Domnul Ionescu, a man in his late sixties with a smoker’s cough who spat on his hand every second point or so. On the other side was a woman of 30-odd and the bloke I had that singles match with just before Christmas. Petrică, one of the other regulars who must be in his early fifties, couldn’t make it. He’s suffered from a kidney problem for some time, he managed to pick up Covid, and now he needs dialysis.

Four poker tournaments yesterday. All frustrating in their various ways. I cashed in two of them but barely broke even. In the Omaha hi-lo I amassed a nice stack but couldn’t build it up into something imposing. I treaded water for a long time, then when we got down to three tables I min-raised my high-only hand in the cut-off. I was unlucky enough for both the blinds to wake up with A2 and good side cards. I correctly got all in pre-flop three ways because I had plenty of equity (one third, as it happened) but the board ran out horribly for me and I was out in 15th for a small cash. In the single draw I hung around but a big stack on my left kept going all in over my raises and I never felt I had enough to call. Being out of position is horrible in that game at the best of time. I had another good run in the pot-limit badugi, knocking three people out early, but the bounties dried up and at the final table my stack did too. I got a small payout for coming seventh out of 100. Then in the fixed badugi I started OK but couldn’t win the big pots when it mattered, and was out well before the money. My bankroll is $337.

Update: The Romanian authorities have come to their senses and approved the Astra Zeneca vaccine for over-55s. The notion that it was unsafe or ineffective for older people has been roundly disproven, but sadly too many people might already have been spooked by all that bollocks.

This morning Adi Bărar, who founded the highly successful Timișoara band Cargo, died after spending two weeks in hospital with coronavirus.

Family - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

The latest worry

December 14, 2020 by 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents on FaceTime this morning and I was just about to hang up when their landline phone rang. Mum took the call. This sounds medical. What’s going on? Apparently Dad had blood in his urine when they were down in Queenstown, and the phone call was about an appointment to get that checked out. This week he also has his scheduled 18-month post-cancer-operation check-up. Mum told me not to worry. What the hell? Of course I’m going to worry. And if they’d got that call a minute later I would never have known.

Yesterday my aunt called me. We chatted for half an hour – that’s probably some kind of record. She started off, as usual, saying she was bored and depressed. The depressed part I sympathise with; you have some say over the bored bit though. She said her antidepressant wasn’t doing the trick, so I gave her the name of mine, though it might not be suitable for her (if she could get a doctor to prescribe it anyway). We had a friendly chat, about hairstyles among other things. She was all there and half-way back but her world has become oh so small. I’m sure things would be very different if my uncle was still alive.

This afternoon I played tennis for the last time until the spring. Tennis has been of real benefit to me. Plenty of exercise and a fair bit of Romanian too. Today I finally figured out what a da din mână means. (Mână is Romanian for hand.) The phrase means to just rally, without playing a game. The first time I heard it was when one of the women wanted to go for a pee behind the bushes, and the rest of us rallied while she was busy. Does it mean to pee, I wondered. There are lots of Romanian expressions involving mână. One of the most common is sărut mâna, literally “kiss hand”, which is used when you say goodbye to a (usually older) woman. The t is silent.

Since the US election I’ve been following the news less. Most of the time it just isn’t worth it. Three incompetent prime ministers (in their own ways) have helped push Britain to the brink of a nonsensical tear-down-everything exit from the EU while the pandemic rages on. (Hopefully I’ll be safe here.) And Donald Trump is fast-tracking executions before he leaves office, while 3000 Americans are dying every day from Covid. He really is a piece of shit, isn’t he?

I remember the 2003 rugby World Cup final very well. I watched it at my grandmother’s place; it was a few days before getting on the plane to New Zealand where I would start my new life. How sweet it was to see England lift the cup. Against Australia. In Australia. In the 100th minute. (When I arrived in NZ, they were still dissecting the All Blacks’ semi-final exit.) But I was reading that Steve Thompson, who was in the cup-winning side, can’t remember winning it. He even forgets his wife’s name sometimes. Gee whiz. He’s barely older than me. He’s one of several ex-elite rugby players to suffer from dementia.

We’re racing towards Christmas. It’ll be my third in five years spent alone, and I’m fine with that. No stress. I’ll attempt to make some Romanian food. Sarmale. A ciorbă. Maybe even a cozonac if I get really ambitious. I’ve got some vișinată, which is lovely, and even some țuică if desperation sets in. (Google these things if you like.)

I had 33½ hours of lessons last week.

Life :) - New Zealand - Tennis

Real estate, but it feels fake

December 7, 2020 by 0 Comments

I flew off the handle yesterday when Dad suggested I max myself out by buying a place in the UK. Spend that much?! I don’t want to go back there again. Real estate is a sore point for me, and it doesn’t help that my parents have four properties and might be buying a fifth. I’m perfectly fine with the idea of buying a home – I’d like to have my own place in Timișoara – but the property market itself leaves me stone cold. My own experiences don’t help here. When I bought my flat in Wellington, people asked me if I was excited. What sort of question is that? I’ve just spent a ton of money, most of which I don’t have, and to pay off all that debt I’m using the income from my job which I probably won’t have in a few months either. (As it turned out, I didn’t have it in a few weeks. My salary almost halved at that point. Then a few months later my apartment block was basically condemned. Plus I was suffering from depression. All very exciting, right? Like riding the crest of a high and beautiful bloody wave.) No, buying that place felt like an obligation and nothing more. Done, ticked the box, phew. I was happy to oblige because I thought it would be the best move for me financially, even if paying off the mortgage might soon become a challenge. Renting it out was a good move certainly – my rental income in the last four years has helped me take giant hunks out of my mortgage – and to escape with the sort of money that can buy me something is a better result that I dared to imagine, but it’s perhaps understandable that I’m hesitant about diving straight back in.

But it’s not just that. To give yourself the best chance of avoiding poverty in New Zealand (or Australia or the UK, for that matter), you need to get on the property ladder. That’s becoming a harder proposition all the time, mainly because both Labour and National governments have done nothing to change the insane tax legislation that makes property investment more attractive than other (productive!) forms. Immigration policy and lack of cheaper housing haven’t helped either. As time goes on, you’re forced to enter the market later (unless you have wealthy parents), mortgage yourself even further beyond your eyeballs, and the profits you make will shrink as you spend less time in the market. But you still have to do it. It’s reality, but a very shitty reality. It beats me why anyone would be excited about any of that.

When I went anywhere with my parents in New Zealand, they always took detours to look at houses. If we happened to be in a town centre, they’d be peering in through real estate agent windows. It drove me nuts. And they were pretty low on the scale compared to others. They didn’t attend open homes as a hobby, for instance. As for my aunt who would come round and gossip about what places in Geraldine had sold and for how much – seven sodding sixty for whatever place up on the Downs – I’d just about lose it. Yes, always up on the Downs.

What a tennis match I got involved in yesterday. Singles. I hadn’t done that for ages. My opponent was 58 and super-fit. Much fitter than me. He plays other sports like football and possibly handball and volleyball too. I started well, moving out to a 4-1 lead. He won the next two games but I then served for the set at 5-3 and had two set points at 40-15. They came and went, and it was soon 5-5. His unforced errors were a big help to me as I got my nose in front again, and then came the 12th game. A ridiculous game. Lobs that he was able to retrieve, somehow. A gut-buster of a rally on my third set point that I lost. I was gasping for air after that. He had five chances to force a tie-break. On my fourth set point we had another crazy rally, and eventually he hit wide. After escaping with the set I was buoyed and he had a slight let-down. I led 3-0 in the second set. But then he came roaring back. I was up 4-2, but he levelled at 4-4, after I’d had points to win both those games. I then led 5-4 and 0-30 on his serve, and had a match point. I couldn’t put him away. He held on and broke me easily in game 11. Then we ran out of time; we’d booked the court for 90 minutes. He was an extremely tricky customer. Controlled aggression throughout, and solid on both sides. I needed to take big risks to hit winners against him. I hit uncharacteristic unforced errors which dented my confidence, and meant I got bogged down. My biggest failing was an inability to take the ball earlier; I felt I was giving him too much time. But his fitness, at his age, was remarkable, and it made me think I need to do something. Buying a better bike would be a start.

St Andrew’s Day (30th November), Romania’s national day (1st December) and Moș Nicolae (St Nicholas Day, yesterday) have gone by without a whimper. No market stalls outside. No slănină or mămăligă or mulled wine. None of those inescapable smells. It’s all very weird. Soon I’ll be having my third Christmas alone in five years, so that won’t feel weird at all.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Keep the customer satisfied

December 6, 2020 by 0 Comments

It’s been quite a tiring week, with late finishes and constant shifting of gears. On Thursday night I finished at 11:30 – my student needed to prepare for his rather important presentation the next day, and I was happy to help him with the English for three hours, even if my eyes were glazing over at all the unfathomable jargon. In another lesson my student attempted a translation of a football match report (one of the local teams had lost 5-0) from Romanian to English. That’s a harder task that you might imagine. The woman in Spain wanted me to read part of the lovely journal that my friend had written when she and her husband came here in 2017, particularly the bit about the level of customer service – approximately zero – that she’d got at the tourist information centre. A married couple and I discussed cheating in exams, which is (no surprise, perhaps) brazen and rampant here. It goes without saying, almost. Phones, headsets, the works. People are amazed to hear that I never cheated in exams. Seriously, I never did it. Way too risky, way too stressful, and anyway most of that fancy tech didn’t exist back then. The same guy who said that his mate transmitted answers to him via Bluetooth in a university exam (the mind boggles) also said that he received a watch as a birthday present one time, but had to get rid of it because he hated the giver so much. I can’t imagine detesting someone to that extent. (My brother’s ex-fiancée bought me a shirt for Christmas eight years ago. She was a nasty piece of work. But I still have the shirt now.) And then once again I’ve been bombarded by steaming hot grade-A bullshit about the virus and the vaccines. Take the damn vaccine, people.

I had three 90-minute lessons yesterday (Saturday), including one with a very smart 17-year-old who is taking his advanced Cambridge exam (CAE) next weekend. I can sense the neurons connecting in his brain faster than mine could ever do. Or ever did. He loves talking very excitedly about gaming, and I never know how to respond. There’s a game that he’s really into with an X in its name that has characters called Turians and Salarians. (“Now there are Turians with armour!” I’m supposed to get really excited at this news.) A Turian to me sounds like a ponging spiky fruit, while a Salarian makes me think of an overworked Japanese man in danger of karoshi. He says he finds the game educational because it teaches him about ancient civilisations, and I can believe that. I’m so out of the loop though. Computer games aren’t just something to pass the time on a wet afternoon. They’re serious business, worthy of serious expense on serious-looking keyboards and memory-foam chairs. (I’ve just checked. The game is called Mass Effect. There’s no X in the name after all.)

Things have hotted up. A week ago we barely got above freezing during the day, but yesterday we hit a spring-like 16. In between my three lessons I managed to squeeze in some tennis. After we finished the last set, the woman I partnered said I’d played “like a lion”. That’s the first time anyone has likened me to a lion, on or off the tennis court. It was a bit of recency bias, I think, because I played well at the end of our final set. We led 3-2 in that set (against two men), but lost the next two games, including on my serve, to fall behind. But then I played solidly and aggressively (is that lion-like?) in the final three games as we won 6-4. I struggled earlier in the session because the wind was howling – it was like being back in Wellington – and my game relies heavily on placement. It was a sunny afternoon, with a four-engined plane carving its path through the blue sky. After finishing our game I saw a large fat-bodied spider scuttling across the court, a species I hadn’t seen before. Last Sunday I played four sets of two-against-one (American doubles, I think they call it) with a man and a woman. In the first and last of those, I played as the one, and the stakes really do increase when you’re out there on your own. I did fine, winning both those sets, though the surface was slippery and my footwear wasn’t up to the job.

Parliamentary elections are taking place today in Romania. It already looks like there will be a low turnout, which will probably help the PSD, who are almost universally despised among the people I talk to. (After the PSD won the elections four years ago and pardoned dozens of corrupt politicians and other officials, people took to the streets. It was extraordinary to see. I wrote about it on this blog.)

I’ll have to decide what to do with this money that I thought I would never get. That almost certainly means buying property, but I don’t feel interested enough in the whole subject to make an informed decision.