Tennis

Family - Life :) - Tennis

Kids and pics

September 16, 2020 by 1 Comment

If any of you are wondering what my little profile picture is, it’s of a busker drumming his guitar on Wellington’s Cuba Street. I thought I wouldn’t mind being him, so I took six snaps of him, and spliced them together to make a shaky, slightly manic-looking GIF. It’s cool that WordPress lets me use it as my pic.

I had a look at my posts from a year ago, and although the world has changed so much in that time, so much was the same: wishing I had a bit more work, Brexit, Sfânta Cruce, hot weather, and a gripping men’s US Open final that I failed to see.

Dominic Thiem came from two sets down to beat Alexander Zverev 8-6 in the fifth-set tie-break. It doesn’t get tighter than that, or harder to take for the loser. Zverev was distraught at the end. It’s the first time the men’s final has gone to 7-6 in the fifth. I’m happy for Thiem that he won – he’s been close in grand slams before – and this might help him to win another slam, one that won’t be “asterisked” by the absence of players like Nadal. I didn’t see the match – it started late and I had a lesson early in the morning.

It was striking how many children were milling around in town today, either with their parents or without. Today is the second day of the school year, but most schools are doing some hybrid system of both online and in-person teaching. In some parts of the country, this is a real challenge, because not everywhere has the super-fast internet we do. (Those mostly rural places tend not to have much Covid either, so they have the green light for school to go back as normal, but there are exceptions.) Seeing all those kids, and the kids I work with, those incredible bundles of life full of so much hope and joy, makes me a bit sad that I’m unlikely to have any of my own.

Sfânta Cruce – or Sfânta Corona this year, perhaps – was as big as ever. Crowds outside the cathedral late night, and a long snaking queue today. Earlier this evening it was right back to the bus stop. Masks, mostly, but not much distancing.

Dad sent me a nice picture of Mum and me in Ireland. We went there as a family when I was ten. It was a very different country in 1990; the Celtic tiger hadn’t begun to roar. They still used pounds (for money) and miles per hour. It was beautiful but also bleak. We boarded the newly kitted out ferry, named Felicity, at Fishguard in Wales, and that took us to Rosslare. We spent two weeks, mostly in Cork and Kerry, where we camped. Mum saw a priest in Kerry to help with a family history request. (Her family came out to New Zealand from Kerry in 1874.) The weather was good for the first week, but it rained almost non-stop the second week. We came back a different way, from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead, on an older ship.

Some good state polls for Biden today. “Only” seven weeks to go.

Here are some pictures.

Books - Coronavirus - Family - Tennis

Can’t put it down, but want to

September 13, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’m near the end of the third book in Elena Ferrante’s four-part Neapolitan series. It’s dramatic and unputdownable, and very hard to read at the same time. The violence, the backstabbing, everybody’s lives being so intertwined, every moment of every day being no more than the next move in an impossible game. I would like to visit Naples sometime, but the life portrayed in the series of books is my idea of hell, and there’s only so much of that I can take. A lot of it is just me, I’m sure. I think I’m a nice person, and I’m able to get on with and connect with most other people. But I rarely have close relationships, I’ve never been part of an in-group (with a complementary out-group), never at school, never at work, never anywhere; I’m just me, navigating my way through life as unobtrusively as possible. That’s how upending my life and coming to Romania wasn’t that hard, psychologically, even if it was somewhat challenging on a practical level. Quite possibly I have low-level autism – I used to attend groups for autistic people in New Zealand, originally because I wanted to work with autistic people – and found the frankness, the crap-cutting, to be refreshing. But in these books you’ve got the exact opposite of autism, if such a thing exists, where every word or action is hyper-analysed, given a secondary, tertiary meaning. It’s a fascinating read, but just gimme someone quiet and unassuming, somebody likeable, just one among the dozens of characters. Fundamentally, the lack of likeable characters is a problem for me.

Last night I tried staying up to watch the women’s US Open final between Naomi Osaka and Viktoria Azarenka, but even though it didn’t start that late – 11pm – I couldn’t keep my eyes open. It was a good match, the bits I saw anyway, and fortunes whipsawed wildly. Azarenka stormed out to 6-1 2-0, but Osaka then raced into a 1-6 6-3 4-1 lead. Then I woke up and things got exciting. Azarenka won a pair of long games to get back to 3-4 with her serve to come, but Osaka broke in the next game and served out for her second US Open title and third grand slam overall. Osaka was the first woman to win the final after dropping the first set since Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario way back in 1994. Osaka became something of a sensation for her masks. For each match, she wore a mask bearing the name of a black victim of police violence. Last night’s mask carried the name of Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old black boy who was shot dead by a policeman in Cleveland six years ago. Her quarter-final mask had George Floyd’s name on it. The men’s final between Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem takes place tonight, but I can’t realistically watch it. Incredibly, it will be the first time that a man born in the nineties wins a grand slam. It hasn’t been a normal tournament. No juniors, no qualifying, no mixed doubles (though, outside Wimbledon, that functions as an exhibition anyway), and the men’s and women’s doubles draws reduced from 64 pairs to 32. Importantly, nobody was allowed to play both singles and doubles.

I should be playing tennis tonight. Last Sunday was our first session for four weeks, as some of the regulars had been away on holiday. The bloke who lives on my floor had grown a beard in that time, and I remarked upon that. He told me that his elderly mother had died, and it was a Romanian tradition for men not to shave for forty days afterwards. Death rites are quite complex here – a big part of them is the pomană – sharing of food at specific intervals after someone dies, with the final “feast” occurring after seven years.

Last Monday I played Monopoly for the first time this century, with the Romanian version. The eleven-year-old boy wanted to play. We were both pretty hazy about the rules. He started to build houses and hotels willy-nilly before I figured that something was probably amiss. Everything was in Romanian, and once I did myself out of £300 (euros, dollars, I honestly don’t know), thinking I had to pay £150 instead of receive it. I took photos of the board and bits and pieces, and we’ll resume tomorrow. Getting paid (real money) to play Monopoly isn’t too bad.

My aunt has had a lot of stomach trouble, and has been almost unable to see anybody about it. Waiting hours on a phone line that you have to pay for, and spending more hours in a waiting room if you even get that far – that’s all normal now in Britain’s almost third-world health system. It was bad enough before Covid, but since March the gaping holes have been laid bare for all to see. In the last six months, people have died in their tens of thousands of cancer and other non-Covid-related conditions, and will continue to do so over the autumn and winter – Covid case numbers are now climbing fast. My aunt would be better off in Romania.

Mum and Dad got back from Moeraki on Friday night, their time. They had better weather than was forecast. I was quite envious when they told me about getting fish and chips in Temuka on the way back, from the fairly rough-and-ready shop just around the corner from where my grandparents used to live.

Coronavirus - Tennis

X-rated (and a flashback to ’95)

September 11, 2020 by 0 Comments

The anti-vax thing is starting to do my head in. Yesterday I met my landlady to give her two months’ rent, and she joined the growing list of people I’ve met who say they won’t take the Covid vaccine if and when it becomes available. Jeez. If it’s been through all the various phases of clinical trials and jumped all the hoops, I’ll want to be first in line, but if my small sample size is anything to go by, the uptake in Romania will be insufficient for herd immunity.

Another thing – why do some people write vaxx with a double X? I’ve also seen the spelling doxxing for practice of releasing incriminating information, rather than the single-X version I would use. English is full of exceptions, as I don’t hesitate to tell my students, but the “double X doesn’t exist” rule is just about iron-clad. I’ve never used a faxx machine or watched boxxing or got my food mixxer fixxed. And it makes sense that you would never double X, unlike other consonants. (A double consonant shows that the preceding vowel is short, as in hopping, as opposed to hoping. But long vowels before X almost don’t exist, so there’s no need to make the distinction. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are coax and hoax, where the -oa- spelling indicates the long vowel, or diphthong, to be more accurate.)

The US Open, crowd-free of course, has been quite eventful, despite the absence of some star names. Simona Halep didn’t play. Her compatriot Sorana Cîrstea did, though, and beat top-tenner Johanna Konta in a close three-setter before falling agonisingly to Karolina Muchova. Cîrstea led 5-3 in the final set, then 4-0 and 6-3 in the tie-break, with two of the three match points on her serve. They all vanished, and she went down in the end, 9-7.

The big news though has been Novak, or should I say No-Vax. (Djoković is an anti-vaxer, and he got the virus himself at a stupid tennis party.) Frustrated at losing serve late in the first set against Pablo Carreño Busta, he hit the ball away in disgust, it happened to strike a female line judge, and rules being as they are, he was disqualified. He was unlucky, basically. Some people have attacked him on social media (he’s become a bit of target, sadly), and the line judge has also received a lot of hurtful and idiotic comments.

The Djoković incident reminded me of 1995 Wimbledon, where Tim Henman (who was still relatively unknown then) did something similar in a doubles match, and he and his partner were defaulted. The funny thing about that match was that Jeff Tarango (who had a tendency to lose it) was on the other side of the net. In a singles match almost immediately afterwards, Tarango himself was so incensed with the umpire over a line call that he stormed off the court, ending his tournament, and then Tarango’s wife slapped the umpire!

That 1995 tournament had a few moments, and they’re pretty fresh in my memory still. Greg Rusedski, who had just switched from Canada to Britain, had a good tournament, eventually losing to Pete Sampras in round four. Chanda Rubin played one of her customary marathon matches on an outside court. Boris Becker was up two sets in double-quick time against Cédric Pioline in their quarter-final, but the Frenchman squeaked out two tie-breaks and (if memory serves) went a break up in the fifth, only to be edged out in the end, 9-7, in the match of the tournament, on the men’s side at least. The women’s final between Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario had an extraordinary finish. At 5-5 in the third, they produced one of the all-time great individual games, Graf eventually breaking after 13 or 14 deuces. (Google tells me 13. That’s 32 points. Monumental at that stage of the match.) Then Steffi served out to love for yet another title. The men’s final in contrast was a bit of a disappointment. Becker nicked the first set on a tie-break, but after that Sampras dominated and won comfortably in four sets.

That’ll do from me. No let up from this extended summer we’re having. It’s crazy to think what it might be like in just two months, and how that might affect the Covid situation.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Tennis

Don’t you get it? Stay the **** at home this summer!

August 2, 2020 by 0 Comments

We’ve had some pretty warm weather this week, though we were spared the intolerably high temperatures seen near the banks of the Danube, and of course I now have few face-to-face lessons. This morning I had another lesson with the chap in Austria, who said that Romania’s coronavirus figures are probably deliberately overstated. Don’t know about you, but if was going to fabricate the numbers I’d make them go down, not up, and anyway I’m finding all these conspiracy theories tiresome, not to mention dangerous. Apart from that, our lesson went well as always. A highlight of the teaching week was another game of Maths Millionaire with Octavian. When we ran out of time, he’d got to £32,000 but had run out of lifelines.

I’ve been in contact with the Romanian teacher about the book. She hasn’t had much time of late. I did a 900-word translation from her from Romanian to English as a form of payment, but she has a much tougher task on her hands in translating what I’ve done. I’d have liked to have written the book in Romanian myself, but I’m just not up to it. When it comes to anything half-way technical, I’m clueless. I shouldn’t be too downhearted though – my Romanian is getting better in general. My speech is more fluent, my listening is better, and I’m at least aware of some of the traps even if I still fall into them now and again. The tennis is helping.

Five of us were at tennis tonight, including Domnul Sfîra, the 85-year-old bloke. I played the whole time with the only woman. She always serves the first game of every set, and that only serves to put her team at an even bigger disadvantage. In the first set Domnul Sfîra was on the other side of the net, and we eked out a 7-5 win. One long set was enough for him, and he left the stage for my partner’s husband, and we lost the remaining action 6-3, 6-4, 3-1, not that any of that mattered. In fact playing with either the woman or Domnul Sfîra is good for me because I get more exercise that way. I was thinking tonight, while taking in all the trees in the vicinity of the court, that if you enjoy simple pleasures, this Romania thing isn’t bad at all.

That goddamn virus. Four-figure daily case numbers are the norm in Romania now, and deaths are increasing. Timiș is verging on hotspot territory. People (or should I say people with money) are still travelling overseas, as if it’s an entitlement. The Romanian teacher is about to head off to Greece, and when I questioned that idea, she thought I was some kind of corona-Nazi. Right now, we all need to stop travelling. No Greece, and no Black Sea either. Just for this one year. We’re in this mess in the first place because of rampant, selfish, unnecessary travel. I still think there should be much more freaking out in Romania full stop, although it was pleasing to see about 80% of people wearing masks at the market this morning, even though it was outdoors. I bought some goat’s cheese, tomatoes, peppers, onions, aubergines, sweetcorn, cucumbers, nectarines and some watermelon. The fruit and vegetables are quite wonderful at this time of year. I’ll probably pick some more plums in Mehala tomorrow morning. It’s a shame we don’t have figs, which were heavenly when I visited Montenegro and Bosnia.

My signed sale agreement on the flat in Wellington, which I sent in early June, never reached its destination. I can’t be arsed with getting it all notarised again and sent via an exorbitant courier, with no guarantee it will ever get there. Nothing is getting to NZ from Romania, or vice-versa, as far as I can see. If my lawyer insists on having the original documents, I won’t bother.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Tennis

Can’t you see where this is heading?

July 12, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’ve had a sinking feeling this week, or perhaps a sense of déjà vu. Coronavirus cases are now climbing fast in Romania (see my graphs above!), and way too many people have their heads in the sand Trump-style and think it will magically go away. Perhaps the best indication that we’re likely to be in deep doodoo pretty soon is that many European countries have recently blacklisted Romania. My student in eastern Austria, a few kilometres from the border, is now unable to cross it and see his 90-year-old mother who lives in Arad. He and I had planned to meet up too.

We now have both the highest rate of new cases and the highest number of active cases since the pandemic began, but you’d never have guessed it by wandering around town tonight. The one real saving grace is that bars and restaurants are still only open outside, although last night I could hear the music from the club, and clubbing is about as dangerous as it gets right now. It’s got to be riskier even than flying. Another positive, maybe, is that we aren’t experiencing the searing heat – high 30s – that we sometimes get, that just about forces you inside where the virus spreads more easily. Remaining positive, Romania doesn’t have that ridiculously childish “you’re destroying our freedoms” attitude towards masks which is present in the US and sadly also the UK. And temperature checks are commonplace – we got tested before playing tennis tonight, even though that’s pretty safe.

In seems that states and countries all over Europe and America are trying to out-stupid each other. In Florida, where they’re in the shit frankly, they’ve just opened Disney World. I mean, c’mon. And in the UK where the government response has often been lamentable, the Tories still hold a significant lead in the polls. After all this, they’re still backing Boris. Even though his Covid hubris nearly killed him. (I wouldn’t be surprised if he suffers long-term complications.) You can now really back Boris by drinking in a pub, and on selected weekdays they’ll even give you up to £10 off a restaurant meal. Hmm, how about we spend our tenner on a Cytokine Storm? I wonder what that is. Sheer madness. The English and Scottish responses to the crisis have been increasingly divergent, and I imagine this (combined with a hard Brexit) will make it even more likely that the Scots decide to go it alone.

On Thursday I had my first lesson with a ten-year-old girl who lives in a large house not far from Calea Aradului. It was lovely and quiet there; you could hear all the birds in the garden. She seemed a nice girl, although I felt that her English lessons at school were probably a waste of time. I spoke a fair bit of Romanian. I wonder how many more face-to-face lessons I’ll have with her.

As well as playing tennis, I watched some today too. I saw a the last two sets of a video of the 1991 Wimbledon final where Steffi Graf squeaked past Gabriela Sabatini. It was a shame Sabatini didn’t win after serving for the match twice in the third set, but one extraordinary point where Graf scrambled incredibly well to avoid going down match point seemed to turn the tide. Graf was fitter than I gave her credit for. I didn’t see the match live – I was manning a game at a summer fair at school, where people rolled 10p pieces (the big versions, just before they were downsized) down chutes, to try and win money by landing on marked circles.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Tennis

Back on the court

July 6, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’m back on the court, and it feels good. I’ve played tennis twice this weekend at the courts in Parcul Rozelor – seven sets of doubles with older people including the couple who live on my floor. Socially it’s incredibly stress-free. One of the blokes is 85 (!) and still hits a pretty mean ball. He can’t move much, but heck, I can’t imagine being anywhere near a tennis court in 45 years’ time. Will there even be tennis courts then? There were six of us this evening – at one stage I sat out with a guy who has worked for the railways for 33 years, and he told me about practically every railway line in the region, past and present, in great detail. He even told me about the declivitate of the lines. I figured out what that meant when he said things like “2.1 per 1000”: he was talking about the gradient. He surprised me by saying that what is now a handful of courts of varying quality was once a big tennis stadium with a running track around it. Back in 1981, Romania played host to Argentina in the Davis Cup right were we were playing tonight and yesterday.

With new tennis partners come a new set of “house rules”. So far I’ve picked up three. First, don’t change ends. Ever. Second, you don’t have to receive serve on the same side throughout a set (though you can’t swap during a game!). In fact, changing sides seems to be compulsory and I’m supposed to magically know when to do it. Third, and this is the weirdest, double faults don’t count in your first service game of the playing session. That’s nice, but it has the potential to become embarrassing if you really can’t get the damn thing over the net and into the box. In my first service game yesterday I strung together five straight faults on a single point.

I’m hitting the ball better than I expected to, and the benefits, fitness-wise, socially, and with the language, should be significant. This could be quite a boon for me, as it was in New Zealand at times.

We’re going to be stuck with Covid for the foreseeable future. We’re averaging about 400 cases a day in Romania, just like during the first peak in April. Although we’re now testing a bit more, the trend is clearly upwards. The situation in Timiș isn’t clear: in the last three days we’ve had zero cases, then seven, then zero again. I figure if I’m going to get a haircut I should do so soon before it becomes too dangerous again.

On a worldwide scale there’s little to be optimistic about. The crisis has been politicised to a ridiculous extent in the US, the UK and elsewhere. “Masks are taking away my freedoms!” How bloody stupid can you get? People are getting extremely angry about things they shouldn’t be angry about, and are almost silent on things that really matter. I feel that everybody is complaining about the guttering on their house while it’s on fire. (I don’t put the Black Lives Matter movement in America in that category, by the way. Racism in the police and in many other walks of life is a massive problem there. It’s literally killing people.)

I saw Octavian on Thursday after a two-week hiatus; he’d been on an intensive Zoom-based advanced maths course. Seven hours of maths a day. And he wanted more maths with me. I gave him a maths-only version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He impressed me by knowing instantly that the square root of 18 was three times the square root of 2 (he’s nearly 13; I don’t think I knew that then), but he was flummoxed when I asked him which of 11, 12, 13 and 14 was the most likely total with three dice. I would have known at his age that 11 (along with 10) was the most likely. All in all, I think he’s marginally better than I was at the same age.

Another week will soon be kicking off. Only two lessons scheduled for tomorrow.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

No more time wasters please

February 4, 2020 by 0 Comments

My brother called me during the fifth set of yesterday’s men’s final at the Australian Open. I didn’t answer. I thought before the match that Dominic Thiem had a real shot, and arguably he should have won. Djokovic had been there so many times though, and he wisely chose not to press when he went two breaks down in the third set, deciding instead to save his energy for sets four and five. Djokovic’s serve is now more of a weapon than it used to be, and he’s certainly beefed up his second serve. Throughout his career he’s continually made tweaks to his game. This notion that he’s boring and robotic and does the same thing over and over is, frankly, bollocks. He’s a genuinely nice bloke and super intelligent to boot. I don’t get people’s dislike of him. The only dark spot for him in the final was at 4-4 in the second set. Having just broken back, he was twice pulled up for taking too long between points. He dropped his serve again in that ninth game, and having lost the set, he ranted at the umpire on the way to losing six straight games. Sorry Novak, the clock had hit zero both times. You don’t have a leg to stand on. As for Thiem, he’s knocking on the door now. Hopefully he can barge through it soon.

I saw most of the men’s final, but only a single game of the women’s in between my lessons. Another first-time grand slam winner in Sofia Kenin. She lifted the trophy by winning a whole bunch of tight matches including the semi-final and final. Muguruza’s big, high-risk game paid dividends at key moments in her close semi-final with Halep, but in the final it seemed to have the opposite effect.

It was a pretty good tournament all round. And heck, it looked for a moment that it might not happen at all. The tournament started amid orange haze. But we were treated to some fine matches, my favourite being Nadal’s drama-packed four-set win over Kyrgios.

When the tennis was over, I called my brother (who has zero interest in tennis) back. He was fine. He told me about their new hens. They aren’t laying yet because all their energy is being consumed in growing feathers. We talked about our aunt who, for some reason, seems to have blocked Dad’s phone. Dad can’t imagine what he’s done “wrong”.

My brother celebrated Brexit Day on Friday night. Yes, it’s become reality. He’s wildly optimistic about Britain’s post-Brexit future. (This attitude makes as much sense as the other extreme. Right now we simply don’t know, and it’ll be many years before we do.) My immediate priority is being able to stay in Romania beyond the transition period which expires at the end of the year.

My first Syrian student (I’ve since acquired another) didn’t last long. Last week he twice cancelled lessons on the day, and third time (yesterday) he didn’t show up at all. He told me he’d overslept. For his 6pm lesson. I said if we wants to continue he’ll need to pay me for the lesson. He said no thanks. I’m glad to get shot of him.

Tennis

The business end in Melbourne

January 30, 2020 by 0 Comments

Cancellations are up this week. That’s a pain, but for whatever reason I’ve felt pretty lethargic these last few days, so in some ways the lighter workload has been welcome.

Last night I woke up during Simona Halep’s match – again – and I saw her make a quick dash to the finish line against Anett Kontaveit. She’s playing at a very high level, more aggressively than she used to, and what’s more she’s enjoying it. When she reached world number one without a grand slam to her name, she hardly revelled in that situation. But after capturing Roland Garros in 2018, followed by a surprise second slam last year, the pressure seems to have been lifted. It’s a pleasure now to see her in action. (She’ll probably get pummelled by Garbiñe Muguruza in tomorrow morning’s semi now.)

Roger Federer fended off seven match points to beat Tennys Sandgren yesterday. What a name. And what a shame, in my opinion, that Tennys wasn’t the winner. He played a great match to beat Fabio Fognini in the previous round and dominated for lengthy periods against the Swiss. As for Federer, he’s been incredible for the game over two decades, but his fawning fans who treat him as if he’s lighter than air do get to me. Last night I had something of an argument with a student who was clearly a Federer fan. He said Federer was vastly more talented than either Nadal or Djokovic (they both have to “resort” to hard work), and that “fact” diminished both Nadal and Djokovic in his eyes. He also said that Federer plays tennis as it should be played, unlike the other two. Seriously man, Djokovic has won 16 grand slams! Who are you to say that he shouldn’t play his way? And I simply don’t buy the argument that he’s robotic and one-dimensional. (There are players who I would describe in that way, but they haven’t won many grand slams.) I hope Djokovic silences the crowd tomorrow.

I didn’t see any of Dominic Thiem’s extremely tight mini-upset of Nadal in the last quarter-final. That Thiem was able to – eventually – close out the match should give him a healthy boost. He plays Alexander Zverev in the second semi-final.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Travel time taking its toll

January 28, 2020 by 0 Comments

Last week I had 33 hours of teaching – that’s on the high side, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is exceptional is all the time I spent walking or biking or bussing or tramming to lessons, and I guess that’s why I feel exhausted, a bit like during those few months in Wellington in 2016 when I had that flatmate who drove me into the ground.

Dad sent me a link to some truly wonderful photos of Naples, a city he lived in for a time as a boy, while his father was stationed there. I would like to visit one day. The photographer did well to gain access to the interior of so many homes, and their residents. I get to see the insides of people’s homes here in Timișoara, and at times it can be a fascinating experience. Today I had my second lesson with the ten-year-old boy. I could see into the next room, where a row of two-foot-long (at least) Romanian-style sausages were hanging over the back of a chair. The boy said his grandmother, who also lives there, had made them. On the way out, I saw one of the apartments on the floor below had various religious iconography pinned to the door, with some sort of obscure coded message written in chalk. This was an old apartment block. The expensive new blocks aren’t fascinating in the slightest: inside those clinically white places, you’re met with English signs saying LOVE and HOME and GOOD VIBES ONLY and other equally ghastly decor-shit. SHOOT ME NOW.

Today’s match between Nadal and Kyrgios was a treat. Good job for the spectators, who had paid an eye-popping amount to witness it. That third set, which Nadal won in more than 70 minutes, was the most gripping I’ve seen for a while. I couldn’t quite see the end – as Nadal attempted (and failed) to serve out the match, I had to set off in the rain for my lesson. I warmed to Kyrgios a bit during this match. He will have gained more fans than he’s lost during this tournament, I feel, and for the first time I thought that maybe, just maybe, he has it in him to convert his extraordinary talent into a major title or five.

I was awake just before 4am, so I turned on the TV to see Simona Halep break Elise Mertens in a captivating game to lead 6-4 5-4, and then serve out to love. I then went back to bed.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

Supporting the underdog

January 25, 2020 by 0 Comments

Latest news from Dad. His never-ending headaches have finally ended. They won’t dog him for the rest of his life as he’d feared, and it seems the culprit was his tooth after all. Being headache-free (apart from the odd ones he always gets) has given him a new lease on life. That’s the good news. The less fantastic news is that he’s found blood in his urine and will be having tests, and who knows what they will turn up.

Old age. I often forget that Dad is five months short of seventy. Today I bumped into the elderly couple who live on the sixth floor. She had just been to the dentist. She showed me her teeth – she’s one of the several million Romanians who have none of the ones that sprouted naturally. This time they told me their ages – she’s 79, he’s 88. He told me that in the fifties and sixties, people used to stroll up and down what is now Piața Victoriei: it sounded like an Italian-style passeggiata. Now he said it’s full of gypsies and people who don’t care. The lift was out of order, so they had no choice but to painstakingly climb the stairs.

It’s been a tiring but productive week of lessons. On Tuesday I had my five-kilometre walk from the end of the tram line to Urseni to meet the 12-year-old girl. It was quite a trek, even if he road had been sealed since Google went there, apart from the last little bit. After the lesson her father took me into town (he was driving that way anyway), and in future her mother will pick me up from the last tram stop. I enjoyed the lesson – it made a refreshing change to teach a girl, after having a string of boys who play computer games endlessly and dream of being YouTubers when they grow up.

After my lessons today with the Cîrciumaru family, I was glued to live score updates from the first-to-ten fifth-set tie-break between Roger Federer and John Millman. Federer won six straight points from 8-4 down; Millman will surely be devastated. I wasn’t too happy either – I’m kind of over Fed now, and would have liked the gritty Aussie to have pulled off the upset on home turf (he did shock Federer in the US Open in 2018). I did a rough calculation in my head of the chances of a Federer comeback from 4-8 (which is a deep hole for anybody, even Federer), assuming both players are of an equal standard. The “answer” depends on how big advantage you think the server has on each point, but it’s somewhere in the region of 1 in 18. Obviously, if you drop the “equal standard” assumption and instead assume Federer has some kind of edge (probably a psychological one due to his vast experience), his chances go up, but I wouldn’t go any higher than one in a dozen.

I’ve watched bits and pieces from Melbourne. My favourite match so far has been the one between Tommy Paul and Grigor Dimitrov. Paul was up two sets but Dimitrov came storming back and served for the match in the fifth, only for Paul to break back and play an absolute blinder in yet another deciding tie-break. There have been so many.

And Serena is out, beaten by Wang Qiang 7-5 in the third set, while Coco Gauff had another massive result in beating last year’s champion Naomi Osaka in two sets.