Family

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Devastated

January 22, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I called my parents on Thursday night. Mum quickly left to play tennis – her first foray onto the court for ages – leaving just Dad and me. What a conversation it was. Skype still tells me it lasted 55 minutes. He said he was devastated by the business with their house. He isn’t someone to use words like that lightly. He said the decision to move from their large but practical two-acre section into their current place – Mum’s decision, ultimately – was a big mistake, and he was deeply moved by Mum’s sincere apology. They now both feel that, in their seventies, they’ve taken on a nightmare that will run and run. We feel so stupid. I was upset and couldn’t think of anything helpful to say even if I know all about property nightmares. They shouldn’t be facing all this unnecessary stress. Mum can’t let anybody know that they’ve had these problems – the shame would be too great – and now won’t invite anybody over. This is all a sign of the times – older people with money, still wanting something bigger and better, never happy with what they have. Plus, until now they’ve always won with property; they’ve never seen it for what it is – a high-stakes poker game that can reap rich rewards but can wreck you for years if the cards turn against you. Dad said they’ll get another quote for their current project, but will probably end up with a more modest plan and once that’s done – how long will it take? – they’ll put the house on the market.

I had a strange dream last night. Well, early this morning. In the dream I was about 25, and for some reason about to return to university where I’d be sharing a room in a hall of residence just like I had a few years prior. I was dreading it. I saw the room I’d soon be moving into – room 205. Just like an old Peugeot, I thought. There was a message on the door of the room, clearly penned by a female hand, that bizarrely included the word “fuckability”. I was worried that I’d get into watching football again. That thought surely came about after watching that football match in real life last Tuesday, and because watching football was part of my real-life university experience. I’d watch the Sunday afternoon games in the TV room, mainly to get respite from all the interactions with people that were impossible for me; as the clock ticked past the 70-minute mark I’d always get that horrible feeling that my escape was nearly over.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Grand designs

January 17, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to my parents who were cheesed off, as Mum put it. Just as the builders were about to get stuck in, they got an in-passing estimate of $800,000 for the job. One zero too many, I suggested. But no, they were expecting it to be $500,000. Sweet jeebus. Now they’ll have to start all over again, taking care not to besmirch these builders’ good reputation throughout Geraldine, and coming up with excuses for the many occasions when nosy (and, let’s face it, competitive) “friends” ask them what’s happening with their house. I was sympathetic to the extent that it was affecting their mood, but (and this might sound rude) their ambitious project itself is neither here nor there to me. Tomorrow they have to make a trip to Wanaka to pick up a painting.

Outside my lessons, and thank heavens for them, life has been a struggle. Yesterday I had my cerebral MRI scan. First I had to go to another clinic for a test to confirm that the contrasting dye wouldn’t wreck me. An allergy test, right? No, we don’t do allergy tests for that. We do something else. Ugh, this is getting complicated. Beyond me. Outside the Nokia office block next to the clinic, I tried calling the MRI place but momentarily forgot that my credit had expired because I’d had problems with the BT Pay app the night before and wasn’t able to top it up. I visited the nearest branch of Orange in the centre of town and got my credit restored, then went back home, took photos of the six water meters and sent them to the administrator of this block who requests them once a month, and called the MRI people who confirmed that the something else was what I needed. I returned to the clinic and got the something else which was just a blood test. The nurse asked if I’d ever had a blood test before because of the way I must have been acting. I felt a mess. I went home for a second time, planned and printed out some material for my lessons, then left for my scan.

The MRI place was just over the border into Giroc. I rode to the stadium and another 2.5 km down Calea Martirilor 1989 which turns into Calea Timișoarei at the boundary. When I arrived I told them my weight, ensured them I had nothing metal inside me, and filled in a bunch of forms. I had to tick “Da” about two dozen times in what looked like a kind of waiver. They chuckled at my distinctly non-Romanian name and email address, but were good-natured. They hadn’t had the confirmation of my blood test, but proceeded with the scan anyway. I stripped almost naked and lay on the bed, my head clamped. I wore headphones and the woman placed a squeeze ball in my left hand; she said she’d stop the scan if I squeezed it. Was it a good thing that I had that option or a bad thing that I might need it? She said it would take twenty minutes so I counted the seconds. The initial screeching noises were like dial-up internet, then they changed to a “duvduvduv”, then a “baapbaapbaap”. The sounds were off-putting at first, but I got used to them. I was still going when I reached 1200; the time was only an estimate, and the noises had a rhythm which made it hard to count seconds with much accuracy. I was in the 1350s when I saw the light of day again. The lady told me that my test results had come through OK so I went back “under” for the contrasting agent to be applied – an injection to my hand, then a few more minutes of “duvduvduv”. It was all over. I got dressed, parted with 930 lei (NZ$320 or £170), then left. I should get the results by the end of the week.

The next hour or so was the best part of the day. I had plenty of time before my lesson with the single pair of twins, but not long enough that I could go home. I bought a cheese pie (8 lei) from a bakery, then a coffee (2 lei) from a vending machine inside a shop. While my coffee was being poured, an animated advert for cigarettes flickered above me. Let’s Camel! Only 19 lei. I liked all the greens and yellows and the seventies-style font. I also liked that while my parents live in the world of smoking permabans and half-million-dollar home renovations, I live in the world of fuck-it-let’s-Camel. I love the rawness of these little shopping hubs located all over the city. I bought some celeriac, leeks and mandarins from the market, then I was off to my lesson.

I had three more lessons when I got back from the twins. The best one was with the 16-year-old girl. We did role plays set in bars and restaurants. One of them was set in a pub, and had three parts, a barmaid, a customer Tina and her husband Paul. I asked her to play the parts of both Paul and Tina. She did Paul in a deep baritone, then rose about five octaves for Tina. This was hilarious.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Writing a book

The boon of the book (so far)

January 8, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

The book based on my time with the guy in Auckland has been uppermost in my mind this week. Many hours spent on it. For my mental health it’s been a real boon. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going.

Fifty years ago my mother was on the ship from New Zealand to England; it left port on 1st January 1973: a six-week voyage (probably not an inaccurate term) via the Panama Canal. She paid $666 for a return ticket – a fraction of the cost of an airfare back then. When the return leg didn’t happen, she was able to recover half of what she’d paid.

My bathroom is done, or just about. I just need to get the bath painted. The work and materials cost about 12,000 lei (a bit over £2000, or around NZ$4000). My parents said you can just about pay that for a set of taps in New Zealand. As for them, they’re about to get the builders in for an altogether more ambitious renovation. They’ll probably need to vacate their house for a period. They’d been stressed because of delays in getting the builders to come. Soon they’ll take delivery of a new electric car. I often wish Mum and Dad could be content with cooking, eating, watching the flowers grow, and playing euchre with their friends, like my mother’s own parents did.

On Thursday my brother had keyhole surgery to repair his knee ligament which had been shot to pieces from overuse in the army. He said he was under general anaesthetic for an hour, and described the experience as like something out of Red Dwarf – that hour was mysteriously deleted. He talked about the artificial intelligence revolution, embracing the concept much more than me. He said, “It’s all fast-evolving mathematics.” Fast-evolving mathematics, you say? (He got an F grade in his GCSE maths.) Are you just making shit up, I asked him. I said that fast-evolving mathematics has been responsible for a lot of misery, like the 2008 crash. To demonstrate I turned my camera around and scrawled a random formula on my whiteboard (making shit up), then added a fudge factor to it. He then said I looked like one of those Open University professors in the eighties, complete with beard. This was, I suppose, what you call banter.

This morning I gave my first maths lesson of 2023. Matei, who started at British School when it opened in 2019, said he now thinks in English, even when he’s alone in his thoughts. For me, a foreign language becoming dominant in my life like that is hard to imagine. He said he uses Romanian at home with his parents and his dog, but that’s about it. His Romanian lessons at school are relegated to minor importance. That verged on sad for me. On the way to our lesson I cycled on the cobblestones of Piața Traian, then had to negotiate a wobbly old yellow tricycle; the man sitting on it reminded me of Omar Sharif, though it must have been watching Doctor Zhivago recently that made me think that. That all lasted seconds and seemed perfectly normal, but before coming to Romania it would have been bizarre.

The darts. What a match the final was between the two Michaels, van Gerwen and Smith. In the second set, van Gerwen left 144 after six darts, but missed double 12 for a nine-darter. Nothing too crazy there, but Smith himself was on 141 after six darts and proceeded to check out on double 12 for a perfect leg. That had never happened before and the commentators couldn’t cope. Van Gerwen, the clear favourite, was just a notch below his best; Smith took advantage. I had a lesson in the morning and I couldn’t watch the end of it. When I went to bed, Smith was 5-3 up. Either there would be a big shock or a big comeback, and it was the former, Smith winning 7-4 after a tense finish.

Song of the last few days: Aimee Mann’s Save Me. It’s a masterpiece. It’s part of the soundtrack to Magnolia, a three-hour film that I saw once but can’t remember anything about except the boy who peed his pants on a quiz show.

The weather. It’s like April, with sunshine and temperatures rising into the teens. The mild conditions mean I can get to my lessons easily, but it does all feel weird. This time six years ago I was waking up to temperatures in the negative teens.

Family - Life :)

La mulți ani!

January 1, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

The above Romanian greeting can mean one of three things: “Happy birthday”, “Happy name day”, and “Happy New Year”. Name days, if your first or middle name happens to have an associated saint, are a medium-sized deal here.

It’s still the old year here, but thanks to the wonders of video calling, I’ve managed to peek into the future. My parents saw in 2023 from the comfort of their own home; I dearly wish I could do the same. When I said I’d been invited to an event, making my apprehension clear, Mum said, “This is exciting!” without a trace of irony. She sometimes reminds me of Kingshaw’s mother in Susan Hill’s I’m the King of the Castle, I book I had to read for school. At ten this morning I thought, now I’m about as far from the start of the party as it’s likely to last, and that’s just horrifying.

Last week my British friends asked me if I’d be interested in working at their school. Just no. I’ve managed in the last six years by extricating myself from the system and putting in place rules and processes that work for me, not for some overlord who only arrived last year and will move on to greener pastures next year. Giving all that up might damn well kill me. If I could have some kind of part-time job where I turn up, teach for two hours twice a week, and then leave, while carrying on my private teaching, then by all means. But I just know I’d get dragged into this place where parents spend ten grand a year on their kids and expect A-pluses and Oxford, and in no time at all it would be game over.

My mental health hasn’t been fantastic of late, although when I look back at some of my old blog posts from years ago, it’s bloody amazing. If someone had told me when I was really struggling that I could move to this mysterious country in Eastern Europe and I’d somehow be on an even keel for six whole years and after that I might hit some choppy waters, I’d have bitten their hand off. Whether the culprit is my new antidepressant, even though it’s very similar to the old one, I have no idea.

I’m half-way through Homo Deus. It’s like we’ve recently entered a post-optimism world. My nephew is born into it. We still have our individual hopes and dreams and plans – I have my books, for instance – but on a collective level, what is there?

Family - Life :) - Poker

A new friend, and New Year dread

December 31, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

The building work in the bathroom is done; next week the plumber will do his bit. My teaching room, and just about my whole flat, is a mess.

This morning I had a good chat with my parents. We talked about festive seasons past. Ten years ago (can it be that long?) my brother had all his mess with that crazy woman. Twenty years ago my grandfather (Mum’s dad) died, so Mum was over in New Zealand for that, and the rest of our family had a go-through-the-motions Christmas in England. What a crappy time that was for me, those first few months after university, applying for jobs I didn’t really want and getting nowhere while I packed boxes of CDs in a business park.

Nearly three years ago, just before Covid, I met an elderly couple who had arrived in Romania in 2001. Late in 2020, the husband died of pancreatic cancer. This morning I met his widow, who suffered badly from depression after her loss. She lives in a flat in Iosefin, or is it Elisabetin, the area I used to spend a lot of time walking around when I lived in the old place. It’s just over the river from there. Her block, which is something of a rabbit warren, was built in 1919. It has eleven-foot-high ceilings, what she described as “don’t look” wiring, and a courtyard where people have dumped their lives. Her place looks far more lived in than my bare-bones apartment. Her living room has around 2500 books, most of them bought by her husband, some of which you can’t reach without a stepladder. She is involved in the Baptist church which has been a source of friendship for her. She speaks good Romanian and has worked as a translator here. We talked at some length about language, and Romanians’ struggles to differentiate chicken and kitchen, Tuesday and Thursday, or fifteen and fifty.

I’ve just received the details of tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve party. Seven o’clock start. Jeebus. Why so early? I’ll have hit the wall multiple times and it will still be 2022. In Abu Dhabi. I’m dreading it.

On the 27th I played a whole suite of badugi tournaments and made $67. I might have to knock the online poker on the head because, when I’m trying to write a book, it’s too much of a time sink.

Family - Films - Life :)

Being alone at Christmas is actually OK

December 27, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

The worst thing about being alone at Christmas isn’t being alone. That bit’s fine. No, the worst part is people telling you if you’re alone at Christmas, then something must have gone wrong in your life. I could have gone over to England, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. (It’s chaos there at this time of year normally, even without everyone going on strike.) It was nice having three days to myself, not having to talk to students or to the builder, and certainly not to a dozen people all at the same time. On Friday (the 23rd) I went over to the English couple in Dumbrăvița, where we ate the sarmale and salată de boeuf I’d made earlier that day. They gave me a present: a book of Romanian recipes, in English. The book has a very pleasant rustic feel to it. Whether I’ll actually cook many of the recipes is another matter though. Here are the ingredients for “toba”, for example: 2 pig’s trotters, 2 pig’s ears, 2 kidneys, 1 tongue, 1 heart, half a pig’s head, 1 pig’s bladder or a thick cow’s intestine, … The list almost entirely lacks anything that doesn’t gross me out. I’m now reading Homo Deus, the sequel to Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, and every page I read makes me think about becoming a vegetarian. More and more people I know are making the conversion. There’s one snag right now though: I live in Romania which is just about powered by pork. In summer I get by with very little meat, but in winter I’d be struggling.

Those three days gave me the chance to reflect on a few things. Like, wouldn’t it be nice to have a cat? When I go out for lessons I’m often surrounded by cats and other furry friends; the companionship is clearly beneficial. Pets haven’t been a big part of my life until now. When I was little, though, we had a tortoiseshell cat. She was mute and had virtually no interest in chasing mice or anything else. A zen cat. My parents adopted her as a kitten – there had been a plague of kittens near their old house. When I was nine, and the cat was two years older, we spent six months in New Zealand, so Mum gave her to one of the teachers at her school. A few weeks later a letter arrived at our Twizel house in Temuka. I’m sorry but we seem to have mislaid your cat. The big negative of getting a feline friend is what I’d do if went away. I’m planning to spent three or four weeks in New Zealand during our summer, so perhaps I’ll wait until after then. Four wheels first, four paws later.

I didn’t get up to much over the three days. I went for a bike ride, read my book, watched Doctor Zhivago for the first time (great film), and did a really good job of busting out of poker tournaments just before the money. Of course I caught up with family. My sister-in-law sent me photos of my nephew at his first Christingle service. Christingle. Such a funny word, isn’t it? These oranges with candles poked in them weren’t a thing when I was a kid. Then it was his first Christmas. I suspect I’ll receive lots of pictures of firsts over the coming months and years.

Dan the builder is back now. He’s a nice guy. We just had a chat about the mildness of our current winter. It’s a far cry from what I experienced six years ago when I learnt all that winter vocabulary such as țurțuri (icicles) and chiciură (hoar frost). He said that during the Ceaușescu period they used army trucks to clear the chest-deep snow. This year it seems all the snow has been dumped on the US. It’s like a war zone in New York State. My cousin and his wife, who live near Albany, are now in New Zealand, but they had a heck of a time getting a plane out of America. Dan should be finished tomorrow, when Bogdan the plumber will also come back. Soon I’ll have a new fully-functioning bathroom (I hope), then I’ll need to give this place a damn good clean.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

A low ebb

December 19, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

At about the time I wrote my last post, my nephew was in hospital. He was having trouble breathing and his oxygen saturation was down, so he spent the night there. He now appears to be fine, but it was a scary day or two. At that age, things can go so wrong so fast. This incident made me wonder if having kids is even worth it. From day one to day 10,000 or 15,000 or if you’re really (un)lucky 20,000, they’re a source of constant worry. How do you sleep at night? There’s gotta be some, I dunno, benefits to counteract the neverending stress.

Last week was probably my worst, from a mental health perspective, since I washed up in Romania way back when. Loads of lessons despite some last-minute cancellations, and those I coped with even if I sometimes got drenched on the way to them. But I’ve also had the builder here to help sort out my bathroom and at the same time throw everything out of balance, and I’ve just been, well, low. Those books, what’s the point exactly if (as is very likely) they never get published and hardly anyone reads them? Yet another exercise in futility, as if I haven’t had enough of those already. And of course I’m stuck here on my own, getting older, seeing my parents get older, wondering if and when I’ll need to go back to New Zealand and how on earth I’ll afford to live in a place where the average house costs a million dollars.

Yes, the bathroom. Last week the builder, a heavy smoker in his late forties, spent four days here gutting everything and making a start on the tiles. The builder’s name is Dan, and he’s back again today. The plumber, who should be coming on Wednesday, is Bogdan. So just like Dan, but he has to deal with the bog. Nominative determinism in action. It would have been easy if I could have just left Dan to his own devices but at times I’ve had to make decisions. Friday was a bit fraught. In a gap between lessons I went with him in his van, first to the tip, then to Dedeman where we spent well over an hour. That place, where everything is orange and blue, reminding me of Uncle Ben’s sauce, is disorienting at the best of times. In places like that I freeze, or even worse I concentrate on all the wrong things, like why it is that Romanians call the middle traffic light galben, or yellow, when they’re clearly orange. Is it because portocaliu, the Romanian word for orange, has too many syllables? (Officially in the UK, the middle light is amber, but nobody actually calls it that unless they’re trying especially hard to be an annoying twat. In the New Zealand road code – I’ve just had a look – it’s officially yellow even though everyone in NZ surely calls it orange. I see that Toby Manhire, writing about the Covid traffic light system, is no fan of the yellow designation.)

Back to Dedeman. I first had to choose some floor and ceiling tiles without pissing Dan off too much. Which browny grey or bluey grey or whitey grey do I choose? Shiny or semi-shiny or non-shiny? I almost thought, sod it, I’ll get the one with the bright pink fish. Then I chose a loo and a sink and a cupboard and so on and so forth. We made several stops as Dan got his quarter-tonne of cement and gypsum board and many other bits and pieces. I got so lost in there. “Get the trolley and bring it back to me,” he said. But, but, that’s like eight aisles away and I wasn’t paying attention. Back home, we had to haul the vast bags of cement up the stairs to my flat. I managed, but struggled to keep up with the smoker half-a-dozen years older than me.

I spoke to my brother last night. His wife’s family really go to town with Christmas activities, and he seemed almost envious of the non-Christmas I’ll end up having. He was grateful for the lockdown two years ago. We talked about our aunt who seemed pretty good on the phone when I spoke to her last week. But physically she’s a mess; my brother doesn’t think she’ll be around much longer. We discussed, of all things, the new notes and coins with King Charles’s portrait. He said that monarchs alternate the direction they look in, so Elizabeth faces right while Charles will face left (I knew that), and that queens wear crowns but kings don’t (I didn’t know that). Soon this will all be moot – cash is rapidly disappearing from Britain.

The deadliest and stupidest football World Cup ever is over. The football – none of which I watched – was a roaring success, as it was always going to be. Yesterday’s final surely ranks as one of the greatest games of all time, but why can’t they damn well decide it properly? (Five of the knockout matches, or about a third, went to penalties at this World Cup.) “Nobody has come up with a better way” is such a lazy argument. There are no end of better options. My favourite is to gradually remove players from each side after 120 minutes until someone scores. With all that space, someone is bound to. I’m aware here that I’m over 40 and younger people think shoot-outs are “sick” or whatever, so they’re unlikely to go away any time soon. By the way, I only maintained a vague interest in the World Cup (go Morocco!) because of the boys I teach, many of whom had never seen a normal World Cup before. For them, this is normal.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Photos

Winter is upon us once more

December 2, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

… but right now it’s pretty benign. I’ve just been to watch the parade for Romania’s national day. This time it was outside the cathedral, and from where I stood I looked directly up at the windows of my old apartment. In the past the parade took place outside the Timiș council building, and last year we all congregated in Central Park as the tanks, police cars and fire engines went by in the middle distance. They played the national anthem – one of only a handful in a minor key – and then there was a lot of hanging around as mostly inaudible sermon-like speeches were delivered before all the military vehicles and people in uniform drifted by, and two choppers flew overhead.

I’m now on day two of escitalopram after my vanilla citalopram ran out and all shipments had been halted. No side effects yet, touch wood. I got the results of the tests I had on Monday. My cholesterol is high as it’s always been, and some of my liver enzymes seem to be elevated – hopefully when I see my doctor next Tuesday he’ll tell me what that all means. I’ll also ask him to refer me to a specialist. I continue to be pleasantly surprised by my level of medical care in this country. I could see a doctor at the drop of a hat if I needed to, not like in the UK where I’d be waiting days. I’m baffled by how accepting the Brits are of their increasingly shitty reality. Maybe the easy availability of consumer goods makes them lose sight of the big picture.

I had my latest lesson with the four twins yesterday. They live in the west of the city, a half-hour bike ride away, beyond the road that’s being churned up to lay new tram tracks, and almost right next to the 1000-seater rugby stadium. Yes, rugby is played in Romania; the national side will play in next year’s World Cup. Romanians tend to pronounce “rugby” somewhere between ruby and ribby with no hint of a g, and I try to point them in a more native-sounding direction. The lesson went fine, although the younger boy sat out one of the games, saying he was bored. In the lesson with the single twins on Monday, we discussed what things are supposed to bring good luck in certain cultures, such as a horseshoe, a four-leaf clover, or a rabbit’s foot. We then went on to lucky colours and numbers. What numbers are lucky? The boy said, in all seriousness, 69, without seeming to realise what it meant. Where did you get that from?! “Toma from my class said so.” Tell Toma he’s wrong!

Mum and Dad are back home. Dad said he’d been looking forward to getting back, but felt flat the moment he actually did so. It’s funny how that can work. For him, it might have just been all the chores that they were suddenly confronted with. They told me about the woman they sat next to on the plane. She was Indian, in her fifties, and was clearly far out of her comfort zone. She squatted rather than sat, as if being on a chair was alien to her (perhaps it was in the town or village she came from) and spent the whole journey with a blanket over her head, never eating anything or even taking a sip of water. For ten hours. She had the aisle seat and couldn’t get that she had to move out of the way to let my parents sit down. She didn’t know a word of English. And for some reason she was flying to New Zealand. I found my parents’ account of her fascinating; there’s the basis for a whole novel right there.

The Glass Hotel is great. I’m coming to the end of it. She’s done her research, that’s for sure. I like all the references to shipping, They make me think I’m back in Devonport in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis (which is a major theme of the book). Late at night I’d watch the dockers, lit up like fireflies, from the window of my flat. I became a container spotter: P&O Nedlloyd, Maersk, Hamburg Süd, the occasional Matson. Each colossal container ship carried thousands of these huge boxes, many weighing 30-odd tons, and that made me feel pleasantly small.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :)

An agonising day

November 30, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’d just about got over my latest kidney stone business when Sunday happened. I woke up at about 5:30 with sinus pain, the sort that eats into the quality of my life without completely wrecking it. I got up just before eight. The pain in my left sinuses was still there, and getting more intense. By nine it had become unbearable. Sheer agony. I didn’t go to bed, because pacing up and down helps relieve the pain at least somewhat. Normally the excruciating pain lasts two hours, but what if it doesn’t this time? What if the torture lasts hours or days on end, what then? It did start to subside at eleven, and I went to bed until half-two. I couldn’t eat anything – it wouldn’t have stayed down. The rest of the day I was on a go-slow, and even two days later I feel devoid of energy. Yesterday I felt a strange calmness come over me, as if nothing in the outside world really mattered. No TV please, and no internet if I can help it. Do my lessons and don’t do much else.

Yesterday I had an early-morning lesson, then went to the doctor’s surgery for blood and urine tests. When I got back I made myself a late breakfast (because I had to fast before the tests), and in the middle of eating it, the phone rang. You haven’t paid. The lady used the posh Romanian word for paid, achitat, instead of the common word, plătit. You’re right. How embarrassing. In the afternoon I had the face-to-face lesson with the single pair of twins, and I passed by the doctor’s on the way. All the tests came to 356 lei (£63; NZ$120), so it wasn’t especially cheap. I’ll post my results next time. I seriously need to consider surgery on my sinuses. My normal doctor, who is generally very good, prescribes me pills or sprays that are of very little benefit. As Mum said, spray and walk away.

I’ve been quickly getting through (and thoroughly enjoying) The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel. It’s the second book of hers I’ve read, the first being Station Eleven which is all about a fictional pandemic and its aftermath (I reread bits of it at the start of the Covid outbreak).

Mum and Dad are now on their way from Singapore to Christchurch. They Skyped me from the airport this lunchtime (my time). All around I could see Airportland. Flashing (and surprisingly fast) buggies, travelators that seemed to stretch miles, and a sign saying Changi Terminal One. Changi consists of four vast terminals. They were too tired to enjoy their stay in Singapore much this time, although they’d had a very good beef dish from a street market, or bar, the night before. On the London-to-Singapore leg, they had to contend with a screaming baby for the entire 13½ hours. When I spoke to them today, they dearly wanted to get home.

Two new students tomorrow – a twelve-year-old boy and his mother, separately. Tomorrow will be St Andrew’s Day, the first of two public holidays. Thursday (1st December) is Romania’s national day. Many Romanians have decided to take Friday off as well, giving them a five-day weekend.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music

Feeling cabbagey

November 25, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

The walls of my Ceaușescu-era apartment are thick, solid concrete, so sound from other flats rarely travels into mine. Smells often do, however, and there’s a distinct meaty cabbagey whiff right now. Romanian cuisine is often meaty and cabbagey, especially at this time of year.

To get to the nitty-gritty, it’s been a pretty shitty week. I had stomach pain on Monday night, just after I wrote my blog post, and I hardly slept at all. It’s my kidney stones again, isn’t it? Luckily Tuesday is when my usual after-hours doctor is on duty, so I saw him after muddling through four lessons. It was hosing it down and I was sapped of energy but I had to make the trip. I was like a drowned rat when I got there. After waiting for a whole family to be seen to, he did all the usual checks like blood pressure, then I lay down on the table for an abdominal ultrasound. He checked my organs in turn – at one point he examined my liver for Covid-related damage of which there was none – finishing with my kidneys. I now just have one stone – not three like in February – which is in my right kidney. It’s 5 mm wide which is only borderline passable. I also had some tiny stony stuff in my left kidney, which he called “sand”. He seemed surprisingly unfazed by all this, and gave me some pills to relieve the pain caused by the build-up of gas. The pain was nowhere near as severe and persistent as nine months ago, coinciding with the start of the war in Ukraine, and it’s basically gone away now, but I feel whacked. Yesterday I even managed to fall off my bike on the way home from a lesson. I was in a rush, it was wet, my handlebar grip flew off, and I ended up with just a grazed knee and hand. It could have been something far messier. I’m now going to get the cheapest hairspray I can find, which hopefully will glue the grip to the handlebar.

I had a quick chat with Mum and Dad yesterday. They were in the library next to a shelf with Andy McNab books, and had to keep the volume down. They’re always worried about me, what with me being stuck here on my own. Their train from Poole to Cambridge on Monday was at a standstill for two hours, meaning they hit Cambridge in rush hour and a relatively simple journey turned into a stressful messful ordeal. Nothing has been simple about their trip. They fly back home tomorrow night and frankly they can’t wait.

I’ve had a good amount of work this week, though less than it feels like I’ve had. The lesson with the four twins went decently – I now have a handle on the girls’ unusual names; I’m no longer drowning in a sea of A’s and E’s and I’s. One incredible thing keeps happening with teenagers (though sometimes younger children too) and old rock bands. On Monday the single twins both wrote a paragraph about their favourite band: Metallica. Their favourite song, they said, was Nothing Else Matters. It is an amazing song, and according to Wikipedia it was released on my 12th birthday, which is bloody ages ago now. On Tuesday my 16-year-old female student came in a Guns ‘n’ Roses top with pictures of magazine cuttings dated 1988. On Wednesday I had an online lesson (finishing at 10:15 pm – ugh) with a 15-year-old boy who popped up on my screen in an AC/DC T-shirt. The eight-year-old girl in Germany – I’ll see her online later today – said her favourite band was Depeche Mode. It keeps coming. Admittedly I’m dealing with a tiny sample size here, but if it’s even partly replicated elsewhere, it’s nothing short of a phenomenon. And why? I asked Guns ‘n’ Roses Girl why, because I was so intrigued by that point. Modern music is really bad, she said. If she means mainstream modern music, I agree 100%.

Another interesting lesson was with a 32-year-old bloke who likes his football and parties. He’s close to an absolute beginner. We did some food vocab, and I asked him to pick out the foods in the pictures that he’d eaten in the past week. Chicken, burgers, pizza, chips, cakes, and hardly a fruit or vegetable to be seen. Good god man, you’re a human dustbin. I sometimes have a go at Mum on this blog, and immediately feel terrible about it, but she made sure us two boys got a proper healthy diet, which we’ve largely maintained in adulthood. Lack of McDonald’s and the like in our home town (there’s one now) certainly helped.