Tennis

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Lucky to have him

April 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve now heard that my aunt won’t be having a proper funeral service. Instead they’ll have an informal celebration at her house in Earith in the coming weeks before the place is sold. Her ashes will be scattered in the river in Wales, where my uncle’s also were after he died in 2002.

With family members popping off around him, Dad feels like the last man standing. After what he’s been through health-wise, we’re lucky to have him. We nearly lost him in 2005 – he was only 55 – when his heart valve operation in the UK went awry. Then five years ago he got bowel cancer. He’s just had a check-up on his heart – he was supposed to have them annually but because his operation took place in the UK he slipped through the NZ net. A sleeve was placed over his aortic valve to stop it expanding, but a section was left sleeveless (why?) and that’s a potential problem. He said it’ll be OK for now but he’ll get it looked at every year until he’s 85 (they stop caring at that point) and maybe at some stage he’ll need an operation.

When I spoke to my parents yesterday they’d just been to Ashburton. They dropped in on Mum’s mother’s cousin (aged 106) in the home. Imagine that, three whole decades on top of what my aunt managed. Amazingly, she isn’t even the oldest resident of Ashburton. Her childhood friend, three months older, is also still alive. The two of them, still kicking around today, at odds of zillions to one. Mum had been to a performance of The Vicar of Dibley in Geraldine, which just happens to be the vicar’s name. Very well received, even if Alice was too fat. I suggested that Father Ted, which is bloody hilarious, would also go down well there.

Two big stories came out of America last week. One, the total solar eclipse. A student of mine mentioned the 2000 eclipse which was visible all over Europe and at its most extreme (perigee? apogee?) in Romania. I said that in fact it was in 1999, then he “corrected” me by saying that it must have been 2000 because they came out with a commemorative 2000-lei note. I then pointed out that not even crazy Romanians would have produced a 1999-lei note. The most striking aspect of that eclipse, which took place in August, was the plummeting temperature. The other headline was that OJ Simpson died. Like my aunt, he was 76 (trombones). His car chase in 1994 was one of the most-watched events in American TV history, then for the next year he was never out of the news until he was finally acquitted of double murder. I remember the school cricket team instituted an “OJ award” for getting away with murder.

This June-like weather – high 20s most days, 31 forecast tomorrow – will soon end. It’s been a heck of a run. Romanians are used to weather being predictable, and if it’s out of kilter with the time of year – even if that means bluer skies and beautiful sunshine – they don’t like it. As for me, I was brought up in the UK and spent 5½ years in Wellington, so I take what I can get. Yesterday I had only five hours of lessons, all in Dumbrăvița. First up was maths. Circle theorems – not my favourite topic. I learn them, then forget them. And I’m supposed to teach them. If I have time tomorrow I’ll spend an hour on them before I see Matei again in the evening. After that I saw Octavian’s sister who is coming on in leaps and bounds, then Octavian himself. My lessons with him always frustrate me; he’s doing an IGCSE which forces him to study literary devices, when improving his pronunciation and intonation (still nowhere near good enough) would be far more useful.

After teaching I played tennis with Florin. Whether it was a panic attack or a kind of derealisation I wasn’t too sure, but I felt shaky out there in our 90-minute session. In the first set I led 4-1, but felt unsteady in the next game in which I opened with a double fault and dropped my serve to love. Leading 5-3 on his serve, I had two set points at 15-40, then another two, but couldn’t break him down. He was zoned in. After a torturous rally in which I finished second best, I let out an Andy Murray-like screech, to my slight embarrassment. In the following game I was lucky; he had a point for 5-5 and I clipped the tape to keep myself in the game, then closed out the set on my sixth opportunity. I got that same wobbly sensation in the second set, especially on serve, but I won it 6-3. The whole time I was battling the heat and my inadequate-sized water bottle. Florin hardly broke sweat. In a little while I’m meeting him and some of his friends down by the river.

Football. I watched Blues’ home game with Cardiff on Wednesday night. They weren’t terrible but they were uninspiring and lacked creativity. When Cardiff scored midway through the second half, I was done watching it. There were no further goals, and Blues were plunged deeper into the mire. On to yesterday’s game at home to Coventry, a local rival still fighting for promotion and with an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United in the pipeline. To everyone’s surprise a hungry Blues gobbled up Coventry 3-0 in front of 27,000 fans – a huge result as they try to dodge the drop in one of the weirdest seasons ever. There were fireworks before the game – what relegation battle? If they do stay up, the future is very bright for the club; the new owners have near boundless ambition.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Music - Tennis

Panic, picking peaches and plums, and plexing your googol

March 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

It was playing tennis on a balmy early Saturday evening when I had another panic attack. Despite making far more unforced errors than normal I led Florin 5-3. In the next game I was about to serve, down 0-30, when it hit me again. It felt as though my lower body might give way. I soldiered on through that game in which I even had a set point, then to some relief I broke him to love in the following game for the set. Relief because that meant we could change ends. We restarted almost immediately and I staggered on through three games with great difficulty, feeling the need to support myself with the back fence after every point. Look, I’m really not feeling great, I admitted. “Are you dizzy?” Well that’s one way of putting it. He was sympathetic and with ten minutes of our session left we called it a day. I wonder what has brought this on all of a sudden. I can’t be the fear of getting behind the wheel; my first episode was before I bought the car. I’m glad to be going away for a few days – my trip might act as some kind of reset button.

This evening I had my 285th session with Alin and my last for a while. He told me he had to leave his job for personal reasons and would need to give up our twice-weekly meetings until he gets himself sorted. Normally when people say that I don’t expect to see them again, but we’ve built up quite a rapport in that time – a long journey through phrasal verbs, native-speaker podcasts, and a great deal of humour – so I’d put my chances at about even. Tonight we talked about cars and little else; he told me about his five-minute driving test in the mid-nineties. Yesterday I sent the mother of one of my students a message to say I could fit her son in before I go away. She replied to say that he’s too busy and by the way I’ve just cut my finger while slicing a carrot, with an accompanying picture of her bandaged digit. She’s into star signs and stuff so I then suggested that the full moon was responsible for her bad luck.

On Saturday morning before my long day of lessons (they continued after my truncated tennis session) I had a great chat with Mum, the best I can remember for a while. She had been picking Black Boy peaches from trees (pomi) outside the nearby preschool, wondering how all that ripe fruit was still there. I always wonder the same thing when I fill a whole rucksack with plums from the Mehala area of Timișoara. She gave me some tips on preserving fruit – I’ve been hanging on to my jars. Then we talked about our trip to the West Coast and the incredible weather we had, then the possibility of my coming back to New Zealand. My parents are putting me under no immediate pressure, and that’s just as well because while in theory NZ would be great, in practice I dunno man. For one, could I even afford it, and secondly I feel so alive in this place. Then Dad came on the line and we discussed cars. A recurring theme right now.

In my maths lesson with Matei we strayed (partly) off topic as we discussed the googol and its big daddy the googolplex. A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros, right, and a googolplex is 1 followed by a googol zeros. It took him a while, then bam!, mind blown. You can’t write it out because there aren’t enough atoms in the universe. Um, sorry what? That’s one thing I love about teaching maths. English is very cool, but you never quite achieve the bam! effect.

I loved this morning’s Romanian lesson. Most of it was spent discussing our teacher’s day-to-day experiences of living under communism. She told us about the summer of ’89, the Ceaușescus’ last summer. She was at university, sharing a tenth-floor room with three other girls. It was inhumanly hot and air conditioning was an unthinkable luxury back then. During an important exam period the only way she could sleep was by soaking bedsheets in water. There was a lift which sometimes left the girls stranded between floors. Escaping involved opening the door by disengaging a small wheel and then climbing up or down, at not inconsiderable risk, to the next floor. Occasionally the water supply would cease and they’d be forced to get water from a well (as I do now with my drinking water) and carry it in glass bottles (no plastic bottles back then) up those ten floors. Now she lives in a ground-floor flat. After those experiences I’d want to be close to the ground too. At the end of a lesson we played Taboo where I had to describe a word to Dorothy (or vice versa) while avoiding five forbidden words. On one occasion I had to guess “panic”. I play Taboo with my students; I created over 500 cards of my own, with just three banned words for each.

When I discussed my favourite vinyl albums of those I own (so far), I neglected to mention Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. A masterpiece, and how she made it as a teenager I’ll never know.

Driving - Other sports - Tennis

Four wheels good, and a rare chat with Dad

March 20, 2024 by 0 Comments

My neighbour has just given me a chunk of sheep’s cheese. I’ve got very used to sheep’s cheese, with its rich farmy flavour, in my years of living here. I’ve also just had a message from a student who mixed up Tuesday and Thursday. Hmm, are you sure you mean Thursday? I’d better check. I even get people who hedge their bets with the delightful Thuesday. So far two students have actually shown up on the wrong day as a result of this misunderstanding, which isn’t that bad considering how widespread the confusion is.

I called my parents on Sunday night. Five minutes later she was off to Mayfield to play golf, meaning I got the chance (which I get two or three times a year on average) to talk to just Dad. As always on these rare occasions, he talked about Mum’s manufactured stress that profoundly impacts both of their lives without her even being aware of it. When I was over there I didn’t want to be in the same room as her a third of the time. She’d be fine one minute, then the next I’d hear that deep sigh, and that was the only cue I needed. A storm was brewing and I’d have to strap myself in for a bumpy ride. Dad told me about her wish to sell the place in Moeraki – it’s more than doubled in value since they bought it nine years ago. We agreed that selling it would be crazy because she invariably feels calmer when they go there, but then she has close to zero awareness of mental health, including her own. We talked about how sad it is that Mum – one of life’s great winners – can never be content. We discussed other topics like the unstoppable and terrifying freight train that is AI, and what sort of future their grandson will have. When I talk to him I realise how lucky I am to have him; above all he’s a great friend. I’m lucky to have Mum too of course, but I can’t help but be upset at how big a dent she puts in her and Dad’s enjoyment of their later years.

In more Dad news, he should soon get the confirmed results of his heart check-up. In 2005 he had a replacement aortic valve fitted in the UK – the procedure damn near killed him – and was supposed to have regular check-ups in New Zealand but somehow slipped through a bureaucratic net all this time. The initial check looked fine, but it’ll be good to get the final confirmation.

The car. So far I like it. Yes, it was terrifying last Wednesday when I picked it up and had to negotiate a busy city when my brain hadn’t dealt with anything like that for years, but I’ve taken it out for a couple more short trips and slowly but surely I’m getting used to driving again. It’s a 1.6 – right at the top end of what I wanted engine-wise, though smaller than any of the four cars I had in New Zealand. When I tell my female students that I’ve bought a car, the first thing they want to know is what colour it is. I must say I like the blue – anything to get away from the insipid greyness I see everywhere. The registration process is quite a rigmarole here and I went to the mall this morning to kick all that off. Romanians pronounce Peugeot as /peˈʒo/, as if it were written with an é instead of eu.

Tennis is back, much pricier than before. I had two hour-long sessions with Florin over the weekend. The first time we just rallied – I’m a fan of that – but the second time we played a game. I came from 3-1, 30-0 down to win the first set 6-3, then I struggled in the remainder – I missed a shocking number of returns and had trouble with my ball toss – but got to 4-4 when our time ran out. After Saturday’s first session we went to the bar by the river where we met some others for some drinks and mici. That was nice to begin with, but soon I was starving and desperate to get home and eat something more substantial than bloody mici. At least that meant I missed Blues’ football match – despite playing much better this time at home to Watford, they lost 1-0 for the third straight match. It’s a miracle they’re still outside the relegation zone, albeit only barely on goal difference. Today I’ve heard that Tony Mowbray isn’t in a good way at all, poor chap, and they’re bringing in Gary Rowett (he’s managed Blues before) to maybe shore things up for the final eight games.

Recently some students have told me that I’m funny. Comedy funny, not strange funny, though I’m sure I’m that too. I’m taking that as a complement. Last night I had a lesson with the 16-year-old who wants to become a pilot. His head is very firmly screwed on, and he’d rather not spend (waste?) four years at university, as his dad would like him to do, before starting his pilot training.

Under nine days till I fly to the UK. I still haven’t properly thought about it.

Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Music - Other sports - Tennis

Panic stations

March 12, 2024 by 0 Comments

I didn’t sleep well last night and got up at 7:30, half an hour after I meant to. After breakfast I reviewed some Romanian words – there’s a few I can never bloody remember – before our lesson that started at nine. It was an enjoyable lesson – probably the highlight of the day. Then I called Mum and Dad. During the pandemic (it’s now four years since everything went mad) we became closer, but now our lives and experiences have drifted apart again. I have to feign interest in their building project, while the novelty of their son teaching English in Romania has long since worn off. During our chat, they said they might come to Europe in 2025. Might. Jeez.

After the chat with my parents I felt on edge. Can I face another online lesson with that damn woman? Following a surprisingly normal chat, she read screeds of corporate shite from Harvard Business Review. Doubling down on robust penetration capability to achieve superior resilience in a crowded landscape. The more I stare at that sentence the more lewd it gets. She read at 100 miles an hour – her typical Romanian monotone (and the subject matter) made it seem even faster. Slow the eff down. Please. Then it was the 17-year-old girl. We talked about music festivals. I’ve never been to one; she’s already been to three. Have I missed out? Yes, she said. I’m not convinced.

Then it was off to the twins. A quick turnaround. They wanted to talk about their diarrhoea travel experiences and Adolf Hitler. Then a third of the way through our 90-minute session it happened. A panic attack, just like I had regularly in 2001. Or at least that’s what I think it was. A sudden jolt, my heart seemingly skipping a beat, and I felt as if my lower body was giving way from under me. The twins wondered what was happening. Shaken, I recovered and made it through to the end, then did some breathing exercises on my bike trip back. My final lesson of the day was with the extremely pleasant guy in his late forties. He read from Michelle Obama’s autobiography – a fascinating window into her early life, with no end of words and expressions to challenge even an accomplished English speaker such as my student. At one point she mentioned the Muppets. I asked him if they got the Muppets here in Romania. Yes, he said, but only right here because being close to the border meant they could access Serbian TV. He was lucky to live in Muppetland, he said.

Last week I felt terribly demotivated. Heck, I’ve got to do something. Two things. Sort out a car for myself and write that damn book. I had 32 hours of lessons despite a number of cancellations. I doubt I’ll ever get the money from Marco, the bugger. Two and a half hours, then I don’t hear from him. The smoking in bed and his unwavering religious devotion rang alarm bells, though this is Romania, a country of many false alarms. On Saturday I had the most incredible lesson with the girl who has just turned seven. Two hours. How will I cope? Or more to the point, how will she cope? She managed phenomenally well. Several worksheets and colouring exercises on clothes, then a bingo game (she knows her numbers up to 60 upside down and backwards), then I read her a few tactile books before we played a 20-minute game of Kiwi-style Last Card which incredibly we didn’t even finish. She sat there the whole time in rapt attention.

Yesterday I met Mark at Scârț, the place where they have the museum of communism. It was packed there because there was a vinyl sale that I wasn’t even aware of. Then I found both Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory and David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, both of which I’d been looking at online just an hour earlier. At 220 lei between them, they weren’t cheap, but I snapped them up. As Mark said, you’ve got to have a hobby. I’ve now got 18 records, most of them older than me. The texture of the sleeves, the artwork, the smells, it’s all pure happiness and that’s before I even start playing them. Mark and I had a good chat as always, though 14 lei for a lukewarm coffee was a rip-off. I love that area of town so I then hung around in the park on Romulus and Remus Streets with all the blossom out and hardly anyone else around. My next trick was carrying the records home on my bike (I was unprepared, obviously) without falling off it again. Then in the evening I met Dorothy in Piața Unirii. She’d just got back from a trip to the UK where she slept in six different beds and then got bumped off her flight home but got put up in Luton and received $400 in compensation.

Football. Following any kind of sport can be a heck of a time sink. After work on Saturday I watched Birmingham’s game at Millwall, direct rivals in the battle to avoid relegation. It wasn’t easy on the eye. Blues were shocking in the first half but improved somewhat in the second. The game was petering out to a goalless draw, but then Millwall scored from a corner in the 90th minute – a real sucker punch – and that was that. With ten games to go Blues are teetering, there’s no doubt about it. Since their manager was forced to take a back seat, they’ve taken just one point in four games and sit a single point above the drop zone. The good news is that five of Blues’ next seven matches are at home, including tomorrow night’s catch-up game with Middlesbrough. Straight after that run, they travel to Rotherham who were long ago cut adrift at the bottom of the table. If they can garner four wins in those eight matches, they’ll very likely stay up. Even three with the odd draw would give them a good chance. Less than that though and they’re in deep doo-doo.

Dorothy and I even talked briefly about football last night. Mostly we discussed the evocative names of the clubs. Um, OK, not Birmingham City, but rather those named after a girl or a weekday or the Far East or three successive letters of the alphabet. We didn’t talk about the names of the grounds, but those can be quite lovely too. I used to love Burnden Park and Upton Park and Roker Park and the Baseball Ground, none of which exist today. I remember a game from the 1995-96 season in which West Bromwich Albion drew 4-4 with Watford having been way out in front. West Brom’s ground was, and still is, called the Hawthorns. As Watford equalised, a reporter said “it’s four-four at the Hawthorns!” and I remember thinking how poetic that sounded.

In tennis news, Simona Halep’s doping ban has been greatly reduced and she’ll be back on the court later this month. Great news. It’ll be interesting to see how well she does after such a long time away. And this morning on TV they showed the most extraordinary rally between 37-year-old Gaël Monfils and eighth-ranked Hubert Hurkacz. Monfils won the point, and eventually the match. As for my tennis, our season is about to resume but the cost has risen from 40 lei an hour to 70 – why such a huge increase I don’t know – so my court time is bound to come down. That’s a real shame.

Tomorrow morning I’ll have a look at a blue Peugeot 307. I’ve got to get this sorted, as scary as driving again might be.

That was a very long one, I’m sorry.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Kill the lot

January 30, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s been a long day. Five lessons, including one with a 35-year-old woman who works for a big investment bank. The purpose of my lessons with her remains a mystery; whenever I point out anything language-related, she pays zero attention. Today’s other sessions were rather less pointless. Before all that, I had the weekly Romanian lesson, and before that I went to the supermarket. Nobody on the checkouts at all. Self-service only. Everybody had a problem, including the one woman tasked with dealing with customers’ problems, though she’d clearly become institutionalised and thought that the shitty checkouts were fine and the customers were the problem. Shit is becoming the new OK everywhere. That all slowed me down and I was in a mad dash to get back for Romanian, carrying a backpack and a large carrier bag over the handlebars.

In our recent Romanian classes, the teacher has been asking us what we would do in various hypothetical situations, as a way of teaching the conditional. Last week she asked me what three things I’d change about the world, top of my list was killing social media. “Facebook, Instagram, the lot?” She was surprised how far I wanted to go. And Whatsapp. The bloody lot. (I nearly included YouTube.) Case in point, I WhatsApped Mark on Saturday morning to ask if he wanted to meet up the day after. Maybe, I’ll get back to you. Not a problem. The evening came and went and I was off to bed. Nothing from Mark. Right, in that case I’ll go for a walk in the morning and then watch the Australian Open men’s final. I get up in the morning and at about nine I look at my phone. There’s a message about meeting up in the morning. Sent at 12:20 am. Crap. Just why? Sorry mate, you’re a really nice guy and someone I enjoy spending time with, but I’ve made my plans now. Not Mark’s fault; it’s just the new normal.

Last night I saw Oppenheimer at the cinema. After missing the chance to see it in Geraldine, I thought it would pass me by for good, but Dorothy saw that Cinema Timiș were having an Oscars night, so I joined her. This was the cinema that I used to live above; I saw a film there in its dying days seven years ago. It was sad to see it go. Recently it underwent a revamp, and together with its sister Cinema Victoria, there are now places to see a film without setting foot in a mall. Fantastic, and bucking the trend of everything turning to custard. Timiș seats 500-odd; we sat in row T, one from the back. (I noticed there was no Q – a deeply foreign letter to Romanians.) Oppenheimer is a three-hour epic, but it didn’t seem that long. The stakes were so heart-stoppingly high, and all interwoven with a tale of an extraordinary man. I must have changed what I thought of him about eleven times during the course of the film. Cillian Murphy (apparently he’s famous or something) played the part of Oppenheimer so well. I’m glad I saw it, and all for just 20 lei (NZ$7 or £3.50). Such good value. Dorothy (nearly 70) filled me in at the end on what the cryptic “fellow traveller” meant; I had no idea that it meant a sympathiser and enabler of communism.

On Saturday I helped my sister-in-law’s friend with some maths, then after sending my scanned pages of working I gave them a call. They showed me my nephew who was half in the bath, then called me back post-bath. Two months now till I see them all – something to look forward to. My brother was unimpressed with our parents. He reckons they might never come to Europe again. I pointed out that Dad did visit his sister; my brother said that’s about where the bar is – you have to be dying for them to bother. Lately I’ve heard a lot about politicians “reading the room” – or not. It’s a phrase that’s in vogue. Mum and Dad have misread the room here in spectacular fashion.

The Australian Open. On Friday morning I switched on the TV, not even realising that Djokovic’s semi with Jannik Sinner was taking place, and saw the score: 6-1, 6-2 for Sinner. I did a double-take. I sat through set three which Djokovic eked out on a tie-break after saving a match point, and thought, you’ll bloody go on and win it now, you bugger. At that point I had to leave for a lesson. I was surprised and relieved to see that Sinner won in four sets. Yesterday was the final between Sinner and marathon man Medvedev. The Russian, playing flagless, was impeccable at the start and led 6-3, 5-1. Sinner was flat; maybe it was simply nerves in his first grand slam final. But the tide turned. More than a whole day on court in the tournament caught up with Medvedev. He did go two sets up but rather hobbled over the line in the second, and from there the far fresher man took over.

I also watched two full matches in the FA Cup fourth round. The first was hard to believe. Ipswich huffed and puffed but couldn’t blow Maidstone’s house down. Maidstone United, in the sixth tier of English football, only had two attempts on goal in the match, both of which went in. (One of them would have been chalked off for a foul had video replay been available.) Ipswich had 38 shots, a number that hardly seems possible, but thanks to heroics by Maidstone’s keeper and huge dollops of bad luck, scored just the once. Maidstone are the first team at that level to get this far in the Cup in my lifetime; the last was Blyth Spartans in 1978. Then I watched Leicester play Birmingham. The visitors dominated the first half but didn’t score; Leicester then ran out 3-0 winners. Blues’ defending for the third goal was terrible but by that stage it hardly mattered.

Not so many lessons tomorrow, so back to the book.

Language teaching - Other sports - Tennis

The kings of clay (or not)

January 21, 2024 by 0 Comments

She’s back. Elena, the lady who lives above me, after a long stay in Canada. The walls and floors of this Ceaușescu-era apartment block are so thick that no sound permeates them. Except her voice. I’ll pop up and see her later today.

Last night I played tennis with one of my students – Lucian, who’s almost certainly gay. He’s had 146 lessons with me so far. We played on an indoor clay court. It wasn’t cheap, but for a one-off I can handle it. (He’s got one of those proper job thingies, and plays there all the time. He even gets coaching.) I come from a land of virtual claylessness, so the dusty orange stuff feels quite exotic to me. Like me, he’s left-handed; that always adds an extra dynamic. (Presumably he also writes with his left hand. I don’t. In that respect (only), I’m just like Rafael Nadal.) We knocked up, then started a game. I won the first game, then led 0-40 on his serve thanks to some double faults, but he came back in that game and was soon all over me. Yeah, he’s too good, isn’t he? He could accelerate through the ball like I could only dream of, and sometimes he imparted sidespin – his coach had probably taught him the technique – that left me floundering. He led 3-1 and had a point for 4-1. But I somehow found a way back. Early on I struggled with my range, often hitting long. When I located my radar I was suddenly in business. I led 5-3, then dropped serve, but from 30-0 down in the tenth game I won the next four points for the set. The second set was bizarre: I won it 6-0, but it was a close 6-0 if such a thing exists. The majority of games went to multiple deuces. In truth I fed off his mistakes, of which there were many. We started another set – I won the first two games, then he reeled off the next three before the clock ran out on us. After the game he said that he focuses on producing “nice shots” and found my shots unusual and hard to read. Though I’m not a very competitive person, I’m not big on aesthetics; I select strokes that give me the best chance of winning points and games. We spoke mostly in Romanian; that’s always a bonus for me.

On Friday I had a new student. I got him through word-of-mouth, which is my most common method these days. His mother had contacted me; he was a 16-year-old named Peter who goes to the British school. Hmmm. In Romania you’re called Petru or Petrică, not Peter, so what’s the story here? At 7pm a message flashed up on my screen, asking me to let Zhong Mao (or something similar) into the meeting. Peter and his mother had come over from Nanjing, a city of nine million, a few months ago. I’m still not sure of the full story of how they ended up in Timișoara. He’s a nice guy. Fairly serious, I suppose – the unremitting Chinese education system practically forces you to be like that. Suddenly having the odd break from intense study was a revelation to him. When I asked him what he likes best about Timișoara he said the food. Kebabs in particular. Ha! He said he knew just one Romanian word – ciao – which doesn’t exactly count. (Ciao, sometimes Romanianised into ceau, is the go-to word in Banat where I am. In the east of the country you hardly every hear it.) I was impressed with his English. Tomorrow it looks like we’re having a face-to-face lesson.

Yesterday I had my usual suite of lessons, minus the one at 8am. The most interesting one came at the end. My student (a 15-year-old girl, or is she 16?) had to write a 500-word article about anything. No pointers at all. We homed in on a subject pretty quickly though. She’s travelled a fair bit in Romania, and decided to write about the Danube Delta which she visited when she was ten. I’d love to visit that area of natural beauty, preferably with my parents if and when they ever come this way. We nearly finished the article in the time she was with me. This brainstorm was pretty handy; I think she was able to decipher my writing.

When I finished that lesson I saw that Stoke had just scored, reducing Birmingham’s lead to 2-1 in their away game. But Blues clung on to the win, and Tony Mowbray’s revolution continues.

Dad sent me this 14-minute YouTube video from Neil Oliver, a Scottish ex-presenter on matters historical and archeological. It started off fine. The idea of personal money having restrictions and an expiry date isn’t that far-fetched; in China it might already be happening. (Only I wish he hadn’t said it was a fact. It’s just a prediction.) Then he went down the rabbit hole by talking about the Kennedy assassination, and just as I thought he might avoid Covid entirely, there it was. Lockdowns. Bloody masks. Please make it stop! My biggest issue with all these people – and there are no shortage of them – is that they bang on about being silenced. No you’re bloody not! Social media gives you an audience for your stinking fact-free horseshit like never before. At least Dad agreed with me.

I’m about to brave the outside. It’s minus four.

Family - Language teaching - Politics - Tennis

He’s back, and so is Mum’s stress

November 17, 2023 by 0 Comments

I spoke to Mum last night, not long after she’d picked up Dad from the airport. After seeming pretty calm while Dad was away, she suddenly looked stressed again. She was frustrated with the building work progressing too slowly and having to cook for two people with facilities that are even more limited than when I was there. Dad’s journey, which included a 16-hour Dubai-to-Sydney leg, was tiring but he managed. It wasn’t as arduous as my trip, which could have gone horribly wrong in a number of ways. (Of course I’m a lot younger and should be able to cope with the more taxing route.)

I had two more phone chats with Dad before he left, and they helped clear the air after the argument I had with him earlier. I felt upset that my parents attach such a shockingly low financial value to seeing their own family, but also bad that I ended up in an argument with a mild-mannered man like my father. In our last chat he said he’d spoken to my brother who expressed similar views to mine. He’s getting it from both of us. His last meeting with his sister went fine; he’d been an enormous help to her over that month. I wonder what will happen next. Will her children bother to visit?

I see that David Cameron, who isn’t even an MP, is back in cabinet as foreign secretary. Appointing someone to the Lords and then giving him a cabinet position is a new one on me. I thought you had to be, like, elected or something. Shows you what I know.

Tennis finished for the season on Sunday. It was just me and Florin, and this time common sense prevailed – the surface was slippery after the previous day’s deluge, so we just hit balls for an hour without keeping score.

Plenty of work. I had that boy for two hours again this morning, just like last week. It’s a real test of stamina. I’m trying to gently persuade one of my students to stop having lessons with me – she’s extremely spoilt and unmotivated, and she’s taking up a slot I could give to someone else.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Tennis - The UK

Maths, newness, and unwanted grub

October 23, 2023 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I went to tennis but nobody showed up. As I was waiting in vain, Dad called me. He’d just come back from my brother’s place in Poole, and was tired after a seven-hour bus journey full of traffic jams. He said he wouldn’t want to live in the UK again. New Zealand is on a human scale, he said. I see what he means. I remember seeing a road sign around Wanaka: “Christchurch 424 km”. In Romania you see signs showing similar distances. But travelling through southern and central England, you rarely see much above 60 or 70 miles, or 100-odd kilometres. Everything is on top of each other – there are no gaps that allow you to breathe. Dad enjoyed seeing the family – he had nothing but positive words for his grandson – but his (and my brother’s) mental energy was taken up with sorting out his email and phone; he’s always got some tech issue. As soon as he got back, he saw his sister who was surprisingly chatty.

Yesterday I made a cottage pie (something British!) and quince crumble to give to Viorica and Petrică, the couple in their late sixties who live on the top floor. Viorica has been so helpful to me. Without her, I’d be having cold showers all through winter. This is too much, she told me, and spooned half of the food onto some plates, leaving me with the other half. A few minutes later my doorbell rang, and she handed me back almost all of the half that she’d originally taken. “I appreciate the gesture,” she said. But not the food, obviously. When I gave her the pie she asked me where the beef had come from. Kaufland, I said. Maybe she sees supermarket meat as poor quality or something. Older Romanians have these ideas, I’ve noticed. Oh well.

On Saturday I only had one lesson – two hours of maths with Matei. He’d just got an A grade in a test, which will allow him to take the extended GCSE maths paper. He only needed a C for that, so in other words he smashed it. That’s obviously great. I still think he can improve though. He’s good at following processes – move this over to the other side of the equation, now square both sides – but still lacks a good understanding of how numbers fit together. When I say numbers, I mean fractions, decimals, percentages, roots, powers, the lot. He reaches for the calculator at the first opportunity. Funnily enough, one thing that helped me with this when I was growing up was a crappy calculator with an eight-digit display, which my maths teacher called a “Noddy calculator”. Tap in 1 + 2 x 3 =, and it would tell you 9, not 7. So I’d learn about the order of operations, which at the time we called BODMAS. My Noddy calculator preferred SAMDOB. Divide 2 by 3 on that same calculator, and you’d get 0.6666666. Multiply that by 3 and it spat out 1.9999998. As the real answer is clearly exactly 2, that taught me something about the perils of rounding. A handy feature was being able to quickly repeat an operation over and over again by mashing the equals button. If you started at 1 and repeatedly multiplied by 2, you’d see that (a) the final digits cycle through 2, 4, 8 and 6, and (b) the numbers get very big very fast – just like the grains of rice on a chessboard – until they got too big for the screen. Dividing by zero was an immediate no-can-do. Why was that, I wondered? On fancier Noddy calculators with a square root button, you’d see that repeating square-rooting brought you closer and closer to 1. Now kids have better calculators – even the ones on their phones are way superior to Noddies – but the old Noddies gave you a better idea of how numbers fitted together. Plus you could tap in 5318008, turn your screen upside down, and have a giggle – this doesn’t work on your phone. After maths on Saturday, I really did play tennis. This was singles again with the other Florin. I lost two games out of the 23 we played.

I’ve now been in Romania for just over seven years. In my head, I split that time into four phases. Phase one was from the moment I arrived (October 2016) until the summer of 2018, when everything was new and exciting. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The regular trips back in time. That proper first winter. Living in the centre of such a beautiful city and trying to build my teaching business (all those phone calls, when I could hardly speak the language!) was like nothing I’d experienced before. I look back at that time with great fondness. Then came phase two. Timișoara and English teaching had become normal. Routine. The newness had gone. That lasted until the outbreak of Covid. Terribly scary, and horrific for many people, but (and this probably sounds awful) at least it was something new. I enjoyed the quiet of the lockdown. The parks in the springtime with the birds and the flowers. The focus on the simple things. That third phase lasted two years until we clambered out of all the lockdowns and restrictions into a world of having to achieve again, and in my case a move and feeling unable to cope. I’d really love phase four to be over. New Zealand – that feeling of newness, of something different – was wonderful, but it was just a temporary respite.

Language teaching - Life :) - New Zealand - Politics - Tennis - The UK

We should leave it at that

October 16, 2023 by 0 Comments

The rain is lashing down and I’m grateful for it – I’d have really struggled on the tennis court. I played two hours of singles with Florin yesterday; when time ran out I was up 6-1 6-2 4-6 5-0. That second set score was deceptive – the set was a real battle of attrition, full of long rallies and close games that I somehow won. My efforts left me bereft of energy for the third set, in contrast to the Energizer bunny almost two decades my senior down the other end. I then got a second wind from somewhere. Before tennis I had three lessons – one maths and two English. My 16-year-old English student reiterated what he’d said before, that if Russian forces hypothetically attacked Romania in a couple of years’ time, he’d do all he could to flee the country rather than defend it. He said, “What is there to defend?” Yeesh, where do I start?

So New Zealand has voted in a new National-led government. It was on the cards. I felt sorry for Chris Hipkins, who seemed to me a thoroughly good chap and a very hard worker, leading a dysfunctional party and in the end flailing around trying to make something happen to turn the tide that was rapidly going out on Labour. Because that’s really what that election was – a resounding vote against the incumbents rather than a positive endorsement of National. Indeed, National got a smaller share of the vote than they did in 2017 when they lost power to Jacinda Ardern’s Labour. Crucially this time though, they had some partners to (comfortably) get them over the line. What an opportunity Labour squandered. They won a rare majority in 2020, a mandate for real change, and then they pissed around on fringe issues that didn’t help to make people’s lives better, instead of say, let me see, building homes that people can actually afford. This all serves as a warning to the UK Labour Party. The next UK election is a year or so away, and with the Tories being frankly disgusting right now, Labour should win. But if they don’t use that power to bring about positive change (and boy does the country need it), it won’t mean a thing, and the Tories will likely be back in charge next time around.

On Monday I met a lady from New Zealand (an Aucklander) who lived in Timișoara from 2006 to 2010 and was back visiting the city as part of a round-the-world trip. She was staying with Dorothy. She was pleasant enough, but we just didn’t have that much in common. In the evening I had a new maths student – a 15-year-old girl – who came here for a two-hour session. The following day – the day Dad arrived in London – was a shocker for me. I didn’t quite plumb the depths of 31st January, but at times I got close as I felt overwhelmed. The “emergency” online maths lesson with Matei, which finished at 9:45 that evening, helped to calm me down. Work was going OK; it was just everything else that was a mess. Wednesday was the miraculous day of the Barclays money. Thursday was a weird one. I rode to the north of the city for my lesson with the spoilt teenage girl, but she wasn’t there. I rang the doorbell and called her on the phone. Nothing. I hung around for 20 minutes and went home. Oh dear. Did I offend her so badly that she wanted nothing more to do with me? Did she tell her father and they decided to get back at me? Just after I got home, she sent me a message to say that her phone had died, and we had an online lesson in the evening. On Friday the electrician was supposed to come but he didn’t. Later that day I had an allergy test – 24 pricks on my arms – which confirmed what I thought, that my sinus problems aren’t allergy-related at all. When the receptionist gave me the bill for the test (525 lei, equivalent to NZ$190 or £90), my jaw literally dropped. Now that allergies are out, I’m free to get my prescription for various pills and sprays, which I’ll take until Christmas.

I had a good chat last night with Dad. I usually do have good chats with him. His days are dominated by bus trips to see his sister at a private hospital in Cambridge. He’s able to take advantage of the £2 bus fares that the government introduced earlier in the year, and which I also benefited from in June. My aunt has ups and downs but the trend is clear. She isn’t going to bother with chemo now. In fact she told him that she’d like to pop off in her sleep, sooner rather than later. I spoke to my brother on Friday, and we both sort of agreed that it might be better not to see her. In July he brought the little one over to her place, and it was the highlight of her year. She called me immediately afterwards, and the way she spoke about meeting her great-nephew was quite touching. Perhaps it’s best to leave it at that.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Tennis

A typical Saturday

October 2, 2023 by 0 Comments

All of a sudden we’ve hit the last quarter of the year, the one that includes – gasp! – Christmas. It also includes sodding Halloween, which I’ll soon be forced to discuss in my lessons with kids. I don’t have a problem with Halloween in itself, but in Romania we could do without yet another American import.

Yesterday I had five hours of lessons in Dumbrăvița. I’d planned to head to the English Conversation Club after that, then onwards to tennis. Despite taking ages to organise myself I left in plenty of time, but then I realised I’d forgotten something important and had to come back for it. That meant I had time to grab some biscuits from Kaufland to take to the club, but not enough time to also drink a coffee from the vending machine. Normally I have two coffees on a Saturday morning in quick succession, one from Kaufland and another from Matei’s dad. Yesterday though Matei’s parents were out, so I ended up going without coffee altogether. I did quadratic graphs with Matei, interspersed with random chat, then I dashed back to Kaufland for a mochaccino and a quick bite to eat before my two hours with Octavian.

I worry that 16-year-old Octavian’s rather non-native-sounding accent may now be set in stone. Is that my fault? In part, probably yes. Or more accurately, when I started teaching him six years ago (!) I was too inexperienced to know I needed to focus more on that aspect of his English. He also still makes a lot of word order mistakes – We went yesterday fishing – which I can’t beat out of him however hard I try. It’s all a little frustrating given how good his reading and listening are. Octavian made two big overseas trips over the summer. He spent four weeks in the UK, then another three with his family in the US – they visited New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and probably somewhere else I’ve missed out. I chatted to his mum about their US trip and she was shocked at the extreme poverty in so many parts of the country and the depressing lack of nutritious food. She was glad to get back home. Octavian enjoyed it more I think. As for the UK, he said that his favourite place was Norwich. How interesting. I only visited twice and liked it a lot, too. The market with brightly-coloured covers over rows of stalls, all on a slope, was gritty and crazy at the same time. Best of all I liked Norwich’s position, away from the hopelessly congested area surrounding London. The air was noticeably different there. The second time I visited Norwich was for a job interview in 2002. It was at Norwich Union, an insurance company that now goes by Aviva in all its dismal symmetry. The firm was (and presumably still is) big – its offices occupied several edifices in a row on one street. I enjoyed the train journey from Cambridge to Norwich and the lunch I got from the market. In between was the interview which wasn’t so great, in part because I didn’t really know what the job was about.

When I was done with Octavian – we worked on an IGCSE reading paper – I had an hour with his six-year-old sister. You need to bring a lot of ammo to a lesson with someone that young. A colour-the-fish sheet might last five minutes if you’re lucky. While I was in the lesson, Dorothy messaged me to say that the English Conversation Club was off (yet again) because people had decided they had better things to do. Post-Covid everybody seems to have better things to do all the time. Not too far away is a place that sells second-hand bikes, and the cancellation allowed me to pop in there. Only two were for sale – apparently it’s the end of the season. I liked the look of one of them which was going for 1250 lei (£220 or NZ$450) so I may go back there. I then had time to kill before tennis. I went past the wooden-stick-making factory for the first time since I gave those lessons there years ago. The factory is still there, but so too is one of the many small malls that have sprung up around the city in the last five years.

Tennis. Singles again, with the same guy. From 2-2 and 15-40 on my serve I won the first set 6-2, despite not serving very well (with the exception perhaps of those two points in the fifth game). In the second set I led 2-1 but then he hit one of those purple patches to win the next four games. I closed to only 5-4 down and played a scrambling point to reach 30-all on his serve in game ten. I then made errors on both the next two points; it was disappointing to concede the set in that manner. What we managed of the third set (before darkness fell) wasn’t easy for me, but I’d built a 4-1 lead by the end. In theory you should only lose one time in nine with that lead, assuming both players are of equal skill and there’s no advantage in serving.
Update: We played again this evening. We had the court booked for an hour, which only gave us time to play one long set after we warmed up. We went to a tie-break which I lost 7-4. I thought I played fine but he’s such a tough opponent when he’s on form. I look back at the people I played in that season in Wellington and all the passing winners I was able to make. No such luck with this demon at the net. The key game I felt was on his serve at 4-4. I led 0-30, he hit the baseline to win the next point, then played an extraordinary point that I thought I’d won several times, then found the baseline once again to move to 40-30. I lost the game five points later without doing a heck of a lot wrong. If he keeps this up I’ll really have my hands full. If the weather isn’t too hot, he ties his King Charles spaniel to a post while we play, but he’s now been told not to bring it (her) anymore. We laughed about how life gets harder with each passing week as barriers are continually put up around us. Next to us were some girls playing volleyball. One of them wore a top that read “Scorpions 1993 World Tour”. She wouldn’t have been born for another decade and a half. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon – that’s what it is – on here before.

I now have no hot water. That’s the next stage in the long and circuitous process of getting my central heating set up.

Someone trying to sell a saxophone (and other instruments) at the market last Sunday

Some quite beautiful baroque music on the Bega last night