Tennis

Life :) - Romania - Tennis

Back on court (and it’s clay this time!)

December 5, 2016 by 0 Comments

I’ve just heard about John Key’s shock resignation. I didn’t see that coming. For a third-term prime minister he was (is?) extremely popular. Throughout his eight years as PM he has benefited enormously from a weak opposition and a succession of uninspiring opposition leaders. They’ve enabled him to get away with being, at times, fairly weak himself. The Auckland housing crisis, the hundreds of thousands of children in poverty and an aging population are all major issues that he and his government have failed to tackle head-on. He could have handled the Christchurch earthquakes better and the Pike River disaster much better. It frustrated me how many people were taken in by his “common man” persona when in reality he was anything but. Some people on the left of politics really can’t stand the man but I wouldn’t put myself in that category. He’s presided over a prosperous country, largely safe and free of corruption (more on that in a minute). Good on him for making the move. I wonder how his exit will shape the political landscape in 2017. The global political environment being as it is, it’s hard to imagine Winston Peters not making significant gains. And who will take over as PM? Perhaps Bill English, who I’ve always had time for. If it’s Judith Collins I’m definitely staying in Romania.

I had a reasonably active weekend. I managed to play 6½ sets of tennis, all involving the guy from the language school who I seem to have made a connection with. On Saturday I played on clay for the very first time. The Romanian word for clay is zgură, one of those amazing words they have that begin with ‘z’ followed immediately by a consonant. The courts were in an indoor centre in the east of the city. The surface took some getting used to, but I think I liked the clay. We started a game. He struggled a bit with his serve in practice so when he won the toss he put me into bat. I lost the first point and as I called out the score, zero cinșpe, I thought, wow, I’m calling out the score in Romanian, this is awesome. My serve had been fine in the warm-up but eluded me in actual play and I served two double faults to drop the first game. I broke back but in my next service game I double-faulted three times. Un coșmar, a nightmare, I said. (I knew coșmar because it’s a word they’ve pinched from French: cauchemar.) Despite being massively handicapped by my serve I clambered out of a 15-40 hole to win that game, and grew in confidence from there. My serve improved, my defensive game was solid, and I took out the first set 6-1. I then won the second by the same score. I was ready to go home but, unbeknown to me, we’d booked the courts for two hours. I was getting tired. I fell behind 3-0 in the third set (sensing my tiredness he played some judicious drop shots), I drew level at 3-3, and then the clock ran out on us.

Yesterday it was time for doubles, this time on a hard indoor court in some university complex. The court was cramped to say the least: only about seven feet separated the baseline and the wall, there was a similar distance between the sideline and the wall, and even the ceiling made a high lob an impossible shot. I played with the language school guy. From what I could tell, our opponents worked for Radio Timișoara, or at least one of them did. My partner was quite competitive. He would never shut up, and it was hard to know what he was saying, in Romanian or English, in such an echoic building. He loved high-fives and other tactile gestures, all the stuff that drives me mad. We played four sets in all, losing three to one, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-2. In the fourth set we appeared to have some momentum as we led 2-0 with a point for 3-0, but we just ran out of steam.

The score of the matches was, frankly, the least important part. The real purpose for me was meeting people and speaking some Romanian. All those hours I spent thirty-odd years ago hitting against a wall or playing in the (very cramped) back yard with my parents are still paying dividends now. After the doubles match three of us went for some beers in a nearby bar (outside, where it was about 4 degrees). Our remaining opponent had taken his car. I mentioned Romania’s zero-tolerance drink-drive policy. My partner said, yes, but he’s got connections in the police. I wanted to say corupția ucide or corruption kills, but thought better of it. I think if our opponent had drunk a lot rather than just two beers he still might have been in trouble with the law but who knows? Corruption is rife in Romania, no question, and when incompetent people are given positions of responsibility because of who they know, and when backhanders allow people to jump the medical queue ahead of more deserving people, then yes, it does kill. My only question is whether the situation in America, where they’ve elected a totally incompetent billionaire to be president, is any better.

I really need to find an apartment and a few more students.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania - Tennis

A great opportunity

November 21, 2016 by 0 Comments

In Romania, anything UK or English language-related is incomplete without a picture of Big Ben. My Romanian–English dictionary has one. My packet of Earl Grey tea has one. Any self-respecting English teaching advert clearly needs to incorporate one. So I found a picture of Big Ben, showing one o’clock as it happens, and added the slogan “Now’s the Time” at the top. Then I wrote some blurb in English that sort of implied that I’ve been teaching for ages. I said I was after intermediate and advanced students (not that I have anything against beginner students; it’s just that they’d probably be better off with a Romanian teacher until I can get my Romanian up to speed). I found a cheap photocopy shop, printed off forty copies with those tear-off strips of paper at the bottom, and started sellotaping them to bits of Timișoara. This morning I was in the middle of putting up an ad (the 25th? 30th?) when my phone rang. It was an older bloke. I asked him what his current level of English was. He said he didn’t speak any English at all. And he wants a lesson tomorrow at 11am. Oh shit! I really will have to wing it tomorrow, won’t I? Actually I’m not thinking ‘oh shit’ at all. I’m thinking this is a wonderful opportunity. A dream come true almost. But yes, teaching somebody English from scratch will be a challenge. It’ll help me improve my Romanian if nothing else. (I know, technically Big Ben is the large bell, not the tower or any of the four clocks.) One concern I do have is about security. Putting ads up everywhere screaming that I’m from the UK does make me a bit of a target. I’m not in Wellington. I’m not in St Ives. I’ll have to be careful.

When I got off the phone this morning I thought, how cool is this? This is fun, this is exciting, and if I could get a few more takers… Man, this is what I dream about. Being my own boss, helping people, roaming around town, getting my lunch from market stalls, and at weekends taking a train to Belgrade or Budapest or Békéscsaba or wherever takes my fancy. Freedom, dammit! Freedom from having to play a role, which is always so exhausting for me. I’m a long way from achieving that freedom, but I might yet manage it. There aren’t many native English speakers in Timișoara, and for the most part they aren’t as crazy as me: they had jobs to go to when they came here. So I might not have a whole lot of competition. One thing’s for sure: I love this city and have no intention of leaving any time soon. I still have some things to sort out with immigration to ensure I don’t have to.

I see that New Zealand has its own version of Donald Trump. He goes by the name of Brian Tamaki. Two years ago he was the subject of an argument I had with my flatmate, who said he was an upstanding citizen who does a lot of good in the community, or something to that effect. I said he should be in jail.

I’ve had one eye on the final of the tennis from London. Andy Murray has just beaten Novak Djokovic in two sets, a well-deserved victory in what was a shoot-out for the year-end number one spot. Yesterday Murray played a remarkable match against Milos Raonic, winning 11-9 in the third-set tie-break. He’s had a fantastic second half of the season, winning Wimbledon and Olympic gold. Murray always impresses me in his interviews with his appreciation for the game and his recall of matches. In a way that shouldn’t impress me – tennis is, like, his job – but some players are pretty hazy when it comes to the finer points. I was supposed to be playing tennis today, not just watching it, but that might have to wait.

A train crash in India has killed 120 people. I read that almost 15,000 people die in Indian train accidents each year.

Life :) - Tennis

Falling out

September 24, 2016 by 0 Comments

I’ve managed to fall out with Mum. This isn’t the first time this has happened, or the 21st, but none of the other occasions involved her rolling around on the floor screaming and saying she wanted to die. There’d be no point in suggesting that she visits the doctor, which is probably what she needs. Minutes after dragging herself up from the floor she was browsing curtains on the UK-based John Lewis website. I’m no expert on these things, but that would seem to suggest that she wants to live. This all happened five hours ago and she still won’t talk to me. The easiest thing would be for me to apologise, but I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. Mum flies off the handle and ratchets up the stakes at the slightest thing, causing a lot of unnecessary stress for everyone. Today I called her out on that,  not that she paid any attention to what I said of course. She was just deeply offended and that was that (as always; you can never have a reasoned argument with Mum). This is awful timing when I’m about to go away.

One side benefit of our falling-out is that my bags are now fully packed. I thought I might not be welcome here anymore. I’d rather spend the next three nights in Christchurch than here in Geraldine, even with the added expense, because there’d be far more to do, but I expect I’ll be staying here after all.

I played tennis last Saturday for the last time in a long time, against the guy I was extremely lucky to beat last month. No such luck this time. He played a blinder. Everything he touched turned to gold. I played far better than last time too, but after losing four games out of five to concede the first set 6-4 I was out of ideas. My losing run extended to eight games from nine in the second set, and the glimmer of hope I got from winning the next two games was quickly snuffed out as I lost the set 6-2 and the match in an hour. It was a damn good hour of exercise though.

Timișoara has been named European Capital of Culture for 2021. It’s the same award that was bestowed on Sibiu in 2007, and hopefully it will have the same effect. Fantastic news for the first Romanian city I’ll get to visit (in just 13 days!).

Tennis

Back from the brink

August 22, 2016 by 0 Comments

I played a crazy match yesterday in the round-robin singles competition against an opponent with shot-making and firepower in abundance, although he can lack composure and can struggle against players who vary their games. He has a tendency to get very vocal on the court, to the point where it can put off opponents and even people on other courts. He led 40-0 on his serve in the opening game, but I reeled off five straight points to break him. That was about as good as it got for me in the early stages. Six of the first seven games went to deuce, but really I was being overpowered and starved of time. The double faults weren’t helping me. I lost the first set 6-2 and found myself in a deep pit at 1-4, 0-30 in the second set, half a dozen points from a thrashing. After my encouraging performance on Wednesday night I’d expected to have a close match, but here I was on the verge of an embarrassment. I was even losing games I felt I’d played well in. I felt out of ideas against a player full of confidence who could smell the finish line. I won four points in a row to close to 2-4 and broke him in the next game. At 3-4 I crucially held from 0-40. At 4-5 I led 40-0, got taken to deuce, but won the next two points to stay alive. Then at 5-6 I faced a match point. My second serve was so slow as to catch him by surprise: he ballooned his return well over the baseline. I clung on to force a tie-break. In truth I didn’t play a great tie-break but neither did he, and I won it 7-5 to level the match despite being outplayed for the best part of an hour. I won the first game of the final set but fell 3-1 behind as he seemed to get a second wind. In contrast I was flat and making too many unforced errors; I was almost wishing I’d lost that match point. But I clawed my way back once more to lead 5-4. In the final game he powered three first serves to my forehand on the ad side. The first two I could do nothing with, but on the third, the match point, I got an outstretched arm to the ball and he netted to end a protracted rally and give me a highly unexpected (and fortunate) win after two hours and five minutes.

I’ve come back from the brink before, but as for being on the verge of an absolute shellacking and coming back to win, no, that’s a first. Assuming a 50% probability of winning every point, I had only a 3% chance of winning the match at 1-4 and 0-30 in the second set. At match point down, and virtually out, my chances were actually twice as good as that. It’s hard to know how realistic that 50% assumption is though. At 2-6 1-4, and being badly outplayed, I doubt I was an even chance to win each point, but once I’d got to 4-4 the momentum had probably carried me to 50% or even a shade higher.

Life :) - My big plan - Tennis

Bouncing back

August 18, 2016 by 0 Comments

What a difference a week makes. Seven days ago I was in the middle of a meltdown, rolling around on the floor of my apartment, swearing down the phone at some poor bloke in India who was just doing his job, and completely failing in my attempt to just do mine.

Having this time off work has made an enormous positive difference to my mood. Trying to cross items off my to-do list while working full-time was just too much for me. I’d lost sight of what I was even crossing them off for. Now I’ve booked the moving truck, my flat is on TradeMe (it got 600 views in the first 24 hours), and life is manageable once more. I’m breathing properly. I’m walking at my normal pace. I’m sleeping much better. And the Citalopram won’t even have kicked in yet.

Some people at work are clearly energised by being around all those other people. For me it’s all massively de-energising. Making a cup of tea or going to the loo inevitably involves bumping into people, almost literally, and I never know what if anything I’m supposed to say to them. The desk move, which resulted in me seeing those damn people much more often, de-energised me even further. And thanks to the restructure we now have meetings, which are peopley by their very nature, at four levels. Even when I worked at a large insurance company we got by with just three.

There have been plenty of stress factors in 2016 besides work of course. Taking on a flatmate wasn’t my cleverest move. He robbed me of my space, almost a week of sleep, and time to plan my trip and learn the language. Any thoughts of the future were put on hold for those four months; I was operating in pure survival mode. After he moved out we had the Brexit vote which cost me a good deal of money due to the sharp drop in the value of the pound, made me view my country of birth as a harsher, less welcoming place, and put my plans to live in Romania in some doubt. My form on the tennis court has slumped beyond belief, turning an enjoyable afternoon into a chore. It might seem a piffling thing but even having to ditch my car didn’t help me. The old Camry was a bit of a banger but at least it was mine. Having that sense of ownership is really important. Even though I own my apartment, I don’t feel I do.

I got called up to play tennis in a social (but actually reasonably serious) competition last night. As I’ve said before, if you really want to know my mental state at any particular time, put me on a tennis court. In recent months I’ve been flat-footed, dragging myself around the court, forcing myself to play the next point because I haven’t wanted to even be there. Not last night. I made few unforced errors, my concentration was massively improved and I was happy to get involved in long, tactical exchanges which I wouldn’t have had the patience for just a week ago. We won one match and lost one; I’m sure last week we’d have fallen to two heavy defeats. Best of all, I enjoyed it.

I met some friends (a couple) on Monday who I hadn’t seen since late last year. It was 4:30, so I’d normally have been at work. They were out playing Pokémon Go. I invited them in for a cup of tea and they told me how Pokémon had revolutionised their lives, especially hers: she’d had a meltdown that made mine seem like a mere blip on the charts, and has often struggled to venture beyond the four walls of her flat. The Pokémon Go craze has now spread to Romania. In English I hear people say they caught two Pokémon (not Pokémons) but in Romanian the noun is masculine and it has a plural: doi pokemoni. Most imported nouns tend to have the neuter gender, so who decided that pokemon should be masculine and have a plural in -i? It’s all a mystery.

Life :) - My big plan - Tennis

Back on the happy pills (I hope)

August 15, 2016 by 0 Comments

Last week it all became unmanageable for me. On Wednesday night I was already struggling but picked myself up off the floor to call Barclays in the UK to get a debit card for an account I have over there. I got a female voice-recognition robot. I said “bank card” or something. Ms Robot said “all right then, credit card fraud” and that was obviously serious enough to warrant a real person. Mr Real Person, who from the way he spoke might as well have been a robot anyway, told me that one of my accounts had been cancelled due to inactivity and I’d need to go through a long and complicated process to retrieve the money. I’d have to send this pink form off to some address in Leicester, which he couldn’t pronounce. For whatever reason that sent me off the deep end. It took me a long time to calm down and I didn’t sleep well. This whole year has been a terrible one for sleep.

I nearly stayed at home on Thursday but figured I should keep things as normal as possible. I lasted about an hour at work. My carpool mate drove me home in my car. I was lucky enough to get an appointment with the doctor that afternoon, and I’m back on Citalopram again. That’s the SSRI I took for 7½ years (minus a short gap in the middle) after suffering panic attacks in 2001. The doctor also told me to take the next six days off work.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning had been coming for a while. It was an awful episode and I’m still recovering from it.

The highlight of Friday was dumping several thousand pages of actuarial notes in the recycling bin. I kept just one file for some sort of posterity. I also took some stuff to the tip. Yesterday I saw two friends, one in Petone and one here. They were both very supportive of me. Last night my friend from the tennis club came over. We played table tennis (though not actually a game; he would have thrashed me) and then tried to play squash. We’d hardly got going when I took a tumble and saw stars. I felt quite wobbly and disoriented, as if it wasn’t just the fall but everything else. We got dinner from the Basin Noodle House just before it closed, and chatted for a couple of hours. At 10:05 I looked at my watch and I realised I hadn’t checked the time for 90 minutes. Sometimes I go a whole night without managing that. He talked about his family in Singapore. His father, now a retired lawyer in his early eighties, sounds like a complete bastard.

Today I played bad tennis but won an award for my nine successive straight-set singles wins that now feel like ancient history. I’ve now got an engraved trophy, which is nice − I don’t get trophies every day, but I’ll only be able to keep it for a month. After that I popped over to my cousin’s place, and I’ve always enjoyed that.

After a really shitty week, I’ve managed to get exercise, sunshine and contact with people who I actually enjoy being in contact with. I could hardly have hoped for a better weekend and I’m now much calmer. I’ve now got a whole week to tackle my to-do list.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

What’s the frequency?

July 27, 2016 by 0 Comments

It wasn’t a bad day at work. That’s because almost nothing happened. Last week’s desk move is still having an effect on me. Until last Wednesday hardly anybody walked past my desk, because you sort of couldn’t, but now people walk either in front of or behind me at a rate of 55 an hour. Yes, I did a traffic count today from 10 to 10:30 and from 2 to 2:30. This isn’t the first time I’ve counted things at work. I once had a boss who dropped 59 F-bombs in a single day and a colleague who had a DAFA (daily audible fart average) of just over three. I even used to count loo rolls or beer bottles when I overlooked a Pak ‘n’ Save loading bay. All this counting, and the fact that people walking past me at work bothers me enough to measure their frequency, might be a sign that I’m ever so slightly autistic.

On that note, I saw Life, Animated last night at the Paramount. It told the story of Owen, a now 25-year-old autistic man who as a child could only communicate by channelling Disney films, every one of which he’d memorised line-by-line, and who as an adult is going out into the big bad non-Disney world. It was a fantastic film that at times moved me to tears. He hero-worshipped his older brother who at one point tried to talk about sex to him. How do I do that, his big brother wondered. Through Disney porn?! This comment was met with much laughter in the cinema. Although the story was heartwarming I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of other Owens out there who don’t have a Pulitzer Prize-winning father, who might not even come from a loving family, and who certainly won’t get a fraction of the help he did. We were privileged to have the director, Roger Ross Williams, present for a Q&A session.

On Monday I gave another English lesson. My lesson plans rapidly went out the window, not that I minded. Quite the opposite in fact, as I helped my student and his wife buy a car seat for their small daughter on TradeMe. I did get him to talk about the start of his Monday (he said he woke up at 9:30 − lucky him) and because so many verbs with irregular past tenses cropped up I talked a bit about those as well as the regular -ed verbs.

Today is my brother’s 35th birthday. Only 15 months separate us. He and his girlfriend recently bought a house in Poole on the south coast of England. I got to see bits of the inside of their house on FaceTime. They’ve got a cat called Major Tom. (Great name. They’d better not mess with him.) I saw all the “new home” cards on their bench. It would have been nice to have had such cards when I moved into this place. It would be nice to have a cat too, but the body corp rules prohibit them. For that matter it could be nice to have a girlfriend.

I filled in for a social tennis team tonight and got obliterated in both doubles matches, even though my three service games were free of double faults.

Tennis

Where’s my mojo?

July 22, 2016 by 0 Comments

Last night I played a singles match against the number one player in last season’s team. We played at the Lower Hutt club on an almost calm evening. Last year I would have fancied my chances of winning or at least coming close, but my form has dipped considerably since then and I really didn’t know what to expect. In the early stages last night I still didn’t. After losing the first two games I lost just one point in the next three combined as I took the lead. But the errors started to flow from my racket and my drive and determination just weren’t there. I was motivated to retrieve and place the ball, but I just wasn’t emotionally attached, unlike my opponent who I could tell was pumped. The score, which wasn’t a motivating factor for me, slowly but surely got away on me. A second-serve ace flew past me on set point as I lost the first set 6-3. I clung on to my serve in the opening game of the second set but lost a very long game immediately afterwards on the way to falling 4-1 behind. Despite all the long cat-and-mouse exchanges I’d lost eight games out of nine. I was often driven out wide on my backhand side. My opponent double-faulted twice in the sixth game of the set to throw me a lifeline, and I grabbed it, crawling all the way back to 5-all. I’d got my mojo back. At least I thought I had, but that mojo turned out to be a mirage. I dropped serve in a close eleventh game and played a tight final game to end up second best in a tick under 90 minutes.

I didn’t play that badly really, notwithstanding some ill-timed double faults and unforced errors. Lack of intensity, until it was almost too late, was my real downfall.

Life :) - Tennis

Tennis and high taste

July 12, 2016 by 0 Comments

Writing about a tennis match, as I’ve done dozens of times here and on my previous blog, has always been a useful exercise. I think that’s because tennis is such a mental game; when I read back my accounts of old tennis matches I get a pretty good idea of where my head was at at the time.

My head was not in a good place yesterday morning, but at least the sun was shining and I wouldn’t be out there for very long anyway. When we played in the club champs in April under a shorter format he thrashed me 9-1, rattling off eight games in a row. Before yesterday’s match he said he a bit of an upset stomach but even if he’d had a mild case of Zika I wouldn’t have fancied my chances. We practised our serves and a few more of mine went in than they have of late. He called W as I spun my Wilson to determine choice of serve. That surprised me: his name begins with M. It came up M and, encouraged to some extent by my practice serves, I opened proceedings. I immediately double-faulted, but I won my serve to 30, broke him and held again to move ahead 3-0. I defended well and was error-free in those three games. Gosh, I hope I’ll have enough pink Robinsons to see me through. I might be here a while after all. But my opponent picked up the pace, I mistimed a few shots, and it all started to crumble. By the time I next looked like winning a game, the set had almost gone. I fell behind 3-6, 0-2. Eight games in a row. It’s happened again! He then eased off the gas ever so slightly and to my relief I won a game. Two in fact. At 4-2 down the end was surely near, but he began to struggle physically and I sensed I had a semblance of a chance if I dug deep. I then surprised myself with the number of winners I hit on both wings. I served for the set at 5-4 and was broken to love, but I got a second opportunity at 6-5 and played a solid game to close out the set. One set all, and something wasn’t right down the other end. Will he carry on? Ask if I’ll play a super tie-break? He did neither of those things. Instead he shook my hand. It didn’t exactly feel like a win for me but I was happy to find some rhythm, some energy, and to cut down on the double faults. I’m playing again tomorrow night in this winter competition that I’d been hoping would just go away. Meanwhile I was happy to see Andy Murray win his second Wimbledon. For the first time in eleven grand slam finals he caught a break and avoided Federer and Djokovic. Serena on the other hand looks set to become the greatest of all time on the women’s side.

I spent a lot of time with my cousin’s family at the weekend. My aunt and uncle had come up from Timaru, and flew back down this morning with my cousin’s two youngest boys. On Saturday my cousin treated us all to dinner at Logan Brown, a place I’ve walked past literally hundreds of times and never thought I’d go in. Fain daining (that’s how you pronounce it, right?) is a completely foreign concept to me. But the kids helped make the atmosphere relaxing. I had gnocchi and gurnard and an apple tart and it was all amazing with drizzles and garnishes and Portobello mushrooms and the way they somehow cooked the cauliflower. It was so good I could have easily eaten it all again. Come to think of it there might even have been room in my tummy for a third go-around. I suppose being filled up isn’t what you go to Logan Brown for. Yesterday afternoon my aunt and uncle came over to my place for the first time. It was great to have a chat and to drag out the map of Romania and talk about some of the places I might go to with people who genuinely seemed to care. We then had dinner at my cousin’s place. How wonderful it was to spend time with people I feel comfortable with, and to share jokes and ideas and hopes and frustrations. That’s something I don’t experience nearly enough.

I gave a good English lesson tonight. We talked about this morning’s final of Euro 2016 and words for countries and nationalities. When I talked about plurals of words ending in ‘y‘ I’m sure I lost him, but his wife was in the room, she knew what a vowel was, and she clearly understood why we write countries and nationalities but boys, days and trolleys. We discussed flight times and routes to Myanmar and the UK, and we went through some airport-related vocabulary.

My parents will be back from their trip in about two weeks. They’ve had bad colds, the weather hasn’t cooperated, and it’s all taken quite a bit out of them. It’s easy to forget that they’re 66 and 67.

I’m flying up to Auckland on Wednesday evening.

Life :) - My big plan - Tennis

I have to do this

June 6, 2016 by 0 Comments

On Friday I went to the theatre at Bats, a Wellington institution that, to my shame, I hadn’t been to before. I never normally have anyone to go to the theatre with, and unlike the cinema, I wouldn’t go by myself. I saw Love and Information with the bloke from the tennis club and his brother who had come over from Singapore. The play was weird. It flitted between dozens of seemingly unrelated scenes with no discernible plot. I think the play was about the sheer quantity of information, some of it deadly serious, some of it less so, that gets thrown at us almost constantly in the digital age we live in. We can’t possibly take it all in. Each piece of information, each tweet, each Facebook message (I guess, I don’t do Facebook) has an implied “you’re supposed to care about this” tacked on to the end. But we can’t care about it all. The trick in the digital age is deciding, out of every ten pieces of information chucked at you, which seven or eight to ignore. The star of the show for me was an old guy who in some scenes had dementia, and at one point hilariously described online sex as “virtual and great”. In one scene somebody rattled off umpteen words for “table” in various languages and I was disappointed not to hear the Romanian word masă.

Yesterday I went on a walk around Island Bay with a Meetup group. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had great views including of the South Island. Wow, what a difference. A few weeks ago a walk like that would have been a serious struggle. Even walking up the stairs was an effort. It’s great to have my physical energy back. I noticed the difference again today on the tennis court. My play was still very scratchy and I still had problems on serve, but at least I could move to the ball. One of the women who ran the English teaching course in February was there.

Someone recently put me in contact with a Romanian woman, and I got to speak with her yesterday. She seemed very nice but wasn’t really able to help me, mainly because she’s been out of Romania for such a long time. I think she thought I was nuts. She certainly managed to sow a few seeds of doubt in my mind. Should I even be doing this? She said it would be daunting for me because I don’t know anyone over there. But I think of the alternative – team meetings, strategic goals, service level agreements, performance reviews, desk moves, restructures, playing the pretending-to-care game where the avoidance of bad outcomes is the best possible outcome – and daunting doesn’t begin to cover it. And if I only ever went to places where I knew people I’d hardly go anywhere. (The possibility of long-term isolation is something that concerns me, I’ll admit that.)

Last Thursday we had our latest body corp meeting about seismic strengthening. We didn’t make all that much headway. There are so many decisions to make – what percentage of new building standard to strengthen to, when to have the work done, whether to employ a project manager or facilitator, and how to apportion the costs. The fact that these decisions depend on each other to an extent makes it especially hard. On the matter of dividing up the costs, I was amazed at the number of people who wished this to be done equally between the apartments. “We’re about fairness and equity here.” So am I, but an equal allocation is surely unfair, inequitable, and plain wrong. Some of the upper-level apartments have almost twice the unit entitlement of my apartment and the others on the lower floors, which means they’re almost twice the size and are worth nearly twice as much. Nobody would seriously suggest that someone who owned two apartments should pay the same as someone who owned one, would they? Would you like to pay the same income tax as your boss? This reminds me of the Poll Tax in the UK in 1990. It led to riots and the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.

I haven’t seen any of the French Open because I haven’t found a stream that works. Muguruza’s win over Serena last night didn’t surprise me that much. People forget that Serena is in her mid-thirties, and Muguruza has looked the goods for a while. I predicted the Spaniard to win the title in an email to a friend when they were playing the third round, but unfortunately I forgot to place my $20,000 bet. There’s a lot riding on the men’s final. Djokovic is surely the favourite to complete his career grand slam but I certainly wouldn’t write Murray off.