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A wet Christmas

December 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Another Romanian Christmas has come and gone: it’s now Boxing Day morning.

On the 23rd I called my parents before my lesson, which was really only a chat, and then played – and won – a poker tournament. After that I went for a 20 km bike ride, or thereabouts – despite my thick socks, my feet were like ice blocks and I couldn’t wait to get back home. I had another tournament win on my return; I’ve been running well of late. Both my wins came in badugi (first pot-limit, then fixed-limit). I made $110 on the day.

Then came Christmas Eve, a much warmer day than the previous one. More poker, because when you’re winning, you want to keep playing. Run your wins and cut your losses. I joined three tournaments. I came fifth in five-card draw, bombed out of single draw, and then the pot-limit badugi (which I’d won the day before) just ran and ran. This was a problem, because I had Romanian food to make. The English couple had invited me over to their place, and I thought I really should give them a taste of traditional Romanian Christmas food, or my attempt at it. So I tried to play poker and do Christmas stuff at the same time. I wrapped both the presents I’d bought, then rolled all the meaty oniony mix (that I’d previously made) in pickled cabbage leaves to make sarmale, all while the tournament was reaching its latter stages. It was after 3pm when I got knocked out in third, and that was almost a relief. I’d made a more modest profit of $26 for my day’s efforts. I finished off the sarmale – they didn’t need long in the oven – and then moved on to the salată de boeuf. (Why the partly French name, and why call it that when it contains chicken?) It also contains a wide variety of vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, parsley root, olives, gherkins, and gogonele, which are pickled unripe tomatoes.

Then it was all done, and I could pack up and cycle out to the English couple’s place, which according to Google Maps is 8.3 km away. The last bit is always tricky because they live on a half-built estate with unsealed roads, and it turns into a mudbath. Despite my lights I couldn’t see what was what. When I arrived we had a good chat, and ate all the bits and pieces. He’d made a curry, which reminded me of my time in Birmingham. They seemed to quite like the sarmale and salad. I finally managed to empty an oversized can of beer that somebody gave me as a present ages ago. Their big dog took centre stage for large parts of the evening. I didn’t stay late. It started raining on my journey home. Rain is forecast every day until the new year.

So yesterday was a wet Christmas Day. Apart from eating and drinking, not a lot happened for me. My parents had spent the big day down in Moeraki. They have no internet down there, but in the morning (my time) they FaceTimed me from a phone box in Hampden that provides them with a hotspot. It was hit-and-miss: sometimes I couldn’t see them, other times I couldn’t hear them, and other times I could do both but it was all jerky and breaking up. The Christmas wishes were much appreciated nonetheless. Dad said how much he preferred the low-key Southern Hemisphere Christmas, as opposed to the max-stress UK variety. I read the start of A Woman in Berlin, a harrowing diary of an extraordinarily clever woman in a city utterly defeated at the end of World War Two. After a long walk and some more food, I had no luck calling my aunt, but then got through to my brother and his wife. They’d had a typical British Christmas Day, unlike last year when they were heavily restricted.

This morning I had a Skype chat with my friend in Auckland, and then I went to the supermarket; it was almost dead there. I’ve got tidying up to do, then I might go out on my bike again; the rain has eased off, but it’s nippy out there. I have a lesson, but not until 8pm.

I’ll have to think what to do about poker. Last December I deposited $40. I now have $1408. Should I keep doing what I’m doing, or try something more ambitious, whatever that would even be?

Family - Life :) - Music

They don’t know what day it is

December 21, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last night I met Mark (the teacher at British School) in the main square, where it was pretty busy. Unlike last year, the Christmas market is in full swing, although they’ve spread things out a bit more this time, presumably so that Covid spreads out a bit less. We met so that we could watch a colleague of his play a band that was appearing on stage. Eight o’clock came and went, but there was no sign of him or his band. At close to nine, I asked Mark if he’d got the right day, then he checked and saw that it had happened the night before. I’m pretty sure his Romanian colleague did indeed tell him “Sunday”, but Romanians confuse Saturday and Sunday all the time, while Tuesday and Thursday are one the same thing to them. We got some food from the market and then had a beer in a pub called Scotland Yard.

There’s an eight-part Netflix series called Flavours of Romania, recorded in 2017, which does a brilliant job of showcasing the country. I’m so far half-way through. In each episode, British writer Charlie Ottley travels through a region of the country on his motorbike, bringing the beauty of Romania out in vivid technicolour, without glossing over its major problems. Episode four was on Moldova, and I just loved Catinca, the woman who made pastries and lived next door to Casa Popa, a museum in the village of Târpești. She’s one of those warm-hearted people you find all over the country, especially in rural areas. They keep their traditions alive. (Unfortunately, lately this has included a disdain for modern practices such as vaccination.)

About my brother’s lack of interest in my life in Romania, I think it’s the place more than the person. Romania does that to people. If I lived in Germany instead, he’d have a lot more to say I’m sure, and he’d have almost certainly visited me. I have a lot of admiration for my brother. He’s had a fulfilling career lasting almost a quarter-century, doing something out of my worst nightmares. He’s got a nice house, a lovely wife, a great bunch of friends, and he’s altogether a good bloke. I do wonder what he thinks of his big brother though, now that I’ve ended up here. (I think he’s genuinely happy that I’ve “found myself” here, even if perhaps he can’t understand why.)

The world darts championship is back on. I haven’t watched any of it. It must be a fantastic super-spreader event. Yesterday I read that Andy Fordham, one of the most recognisable figures in the game (he was over 30 stone at one stage, and drank unbelievable amounts), had died last summer at the age of 59.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Split Enz and Crowded House of late. The Finns have godlike status in New Zealand, and you can see why. Here’s Neil Finn’s extraordinary version of One Step Ahead, which he played in Auckland a few years ago.

Here are some of those cards I bought at the market yesterday, including a William Tell card:

Family - Life :) - Photos - Poker

My brother and typical Timișoara

December 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I called my brother on Friday night. As usual, I found it easier to talk to his wife than him. He’s never really liked talking on the phone, and we live very different lives so it’s like he doesn’t know what questions to ask me about my life, or perhaps he just isn’t interested. Come to think of it, I don’t remember him ever asking me about the food I eat, or the people (big and small) that I teach, or how I communicate, or whether the city has trams or buses, or what the local beer is like and how much it costs, or how to pronounce the name of city, or anything. So even before Covid arrived, I never pressed him to come and see me here. I have an inkling that if he were to come here, he’d ask me what the hell I was doing in this shithole, and strongly suggest that I move to St Ives. My sister-in-law would probably like it, though. I shouldn’t be too hard on my brother. He probably thinks I don’t show much interest in his life either, because when it comes to his working life, I really don’t know what to ask. (With my sister-in-law it’s easier. She sorts people’s feet out.) My brother had been stuck in the Brecon Beacons – the same place as he did his SAS selection seven or eight years ago – so it was good to see them both at home.

I played four poker tournaments last night. After bombing out of the first, I had thumping big stacks – simultaneously – in all the next three. The session was shaping up to be something big, but I ran into some choppy waters, and in the end I only doubled my total buy-ins of $15, taking my bankroll to $1277. (My best run came in Omaha hi-lo where I finished 14th out of nearly 700 entries.) It was a long session, and I couldn’t face playing again today as I’d planned, so I went off to Flavia market for the first time in ages. Half a decade ago I went there a lot; it was a good place to pick up some much-needed winter clothes. Then I always took the tram, but this time I cycled. It was a few degrees warmer than in that harsh first winter. Today I didn’t buy anything except a pack of Hungarian playing cards (I’ve no idea how to play with them) and two langoși, which are also Hungarian imports. Langoș is deep-fried flatbread. I bought mine at a stall where they were rolled, fried and served by three women; I had one with cheese and the other with jam. There was quite a queue for them. As I ate them, a man relieved himself in the open. There was a loo nearby, but I guess he wanted to avoid the one-leu charge. The market, just like the one in Mehala, is a fascinating microcosm of Romania. The mici, the beer, the langoși, the second-hand (and fake designer) clothes, the bits of machinery, the people shouting. And today, even a goat. I don’t know why they call it a goat because it doesn’t look anything like one, but it’s a Christmas tradition of grown men dressed in a colourful costume, dancing and drumming and whistling. It isn’t music, it’s a din, but they still expect money.

The inside of a place I looked at last week
If I owned this car, I’d call it Delilah
Anti-communism signs on the 32nd anniversary of the end of communism in Romania
Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - New Zealand - Other sports - Tennis

The benefits (perhaps) of big sport

November 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve got tennis this afternoon, straight after my lesson with the young couple. It’ll probably be singles again with that super-fit guy. We chatted after last weekend’s game, and he attributed his fitness in part to growing up (and going to school) under communism in the Nadia Comăneci era. Sport was a top priority then, as it simply wasn’t when I grew up in the UK, and isn’t now in 21st-century Romania. Sure, we all did gymnastics and swimming and team sports, but unless you were one of the best at football or cricket, we were pretty much going through the motions. I know I was. We certainly didn’t have scouts visiting schools to eye up the best young talent, as they did in Romania. I was, however, exposed to a higher-priority regime when I spent those six months in New Zealand as a nine-year-old. There were inter-school tennis competitions, inter-school athletics competitions, and cross-country runs. I participated in all of that and hated the lot, even tennis, a sport that I otherwise liked.

I saw two more flats yesterday, both in the same block in the Fabric area, which is to the east of where I live now. The block was designated U4, as in “U4 me”, but I don’t think those places were quite for me. In Romanian, U4 is pronounced “ooh patru“. They weren’t bad apartments at all, but do I know what I’m taking on here? I left feeling more confused than anything.

After my Moderna booster, I felt fine for the rest of the day, but at night I got the shivers and slept no more than three or four hours. The next day I felt a bit tired and groggy, but soon I was back to normal. Some short-term grogginess seemed a small price to pay for the level of protection that the extra jab should give me, especially seeing that I’m in Romania where getting a severe case of Covid is a riskier proposition than it would be in New Zealand, for instance.

Mum and Dad missed out on seeing their one-in-800-year near-total eclipse of a blood-red moon. It clouded over at just the wrong time. I had a chat to them this morning. All is well there, although they have taken on a pretty big project with their new house. I also spoke to my brother, who was on his own – my sister-in-law was attending a conference in Liverpool.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Making the news for all the wrong reasons

October 25, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Romania’s Covid woes – excavators being brought to cemeteries to cope with the sheer weight of mortality – have made the news in New Zealand, which is saying something because Romania hardly ever makes the news anywhere. Covid is now killing one Romanian every three and a half minutes. Romanians are now getting vaccinated in much larger numbers, because of the increasingly severe restrictions that they face if they don’t. Far too late for this wave, but it will help in 2022. My parents are worried about me. They fear that all lines of communication could be cut in the event that I get whisked off to some Covid ward. Or corridor. Or car park.

I played tennis this afternoon. First I played singles with the guy of 60-ish, whom I’ve had close battles with until now, but this time I was up 6-0 5-0 when we were joined by a third player; we then played what they call American doubles. The singles match was bizarre because the score was more down to him than me. I really didn’t play that well in the first set. My forehand wasn’t doing what it was supposed to, though in the second set that started to click. I sometimes wonder about etiquette in such situations. Is it poor form not to let someone win at least one game? (To my mind, absolutely not, but I know others see things differently.) After the first set he was marvelling at the colours of the leaves on the big maple tree that overhangs the court, so I’m guessing he had no problem with me.

House hunting has taken a back seat. It involves meeting unknown people which isn’t particularly safe right now. That agent has stopped contacting me. Today I had a look at a place in Mehala, but only from the outside.

Living on the edge of a time zone has its oddities. We’re still on summer time until next Sunday morning, so right now it’s dark in the mornings until eight. There has been serious talk of EU countries ending their twice-yearly clock changes, though that has stalled, probably because of the Covid crisis. If Romania were to observe permanent summer time, it wouldn’t get light until 9:15 am in December in Timișoara. I like the long summer evenings here, so clock switching gives us the best of both worlds. I imagine it’s a minority position, but I’d choose to keep the time shifts.

Last night I had a marathon poker session, and a deep run in Omaha hi-lo, but only made a tiny profit from the four tournaments I played. My bankroll is in four figures for the first time, at $1001.

The two pictures above are from Parcul Regina Maria.

The last three pictures are from Mehala. The sign on the power pole is telling dog owners to clean up after their “quadrupeds”, or four-legged friends.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Poker

Walls and doors are good

October 17, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had a look at another flat on Thursday. It was only three years old. At €100,000 (NZ$165,000), it was cheaper than the previous one I looked at, but the layout, with the kitchen and living room all together as one room, made it a non-starter. “Look! You can have your lessons here,” the agent said to me. Just no. I need my office to be accessible without entering the kitchen area at all, and certainly not inside the kitchen. The shelves in one of the bedrooms were loaded with fishing trophies. Dozens of them. I then met the current owner who wore a kind of fishing tracksuit. He showed me to the garage, which was predictably full of fishing gear. For some reason I asked him if he also had guns, and he answered no, unequivocally. I wasn’t a big fan of the area either, but as there’s a nice park nearby, I didn’t dismiss it entirely. But the unremitting newness of everything would have got to me. “See, they’re building a big supermarket, and a kind of mall. Right there,” the agent said, pointing out a large steel skeleton. Great. Timișoara is not exactly lacking in that department already.

Viewing that flat was useful, as now the agent knows what is and isn’t suitable for me. She told me that almost all new builds have that open space, with a combined kitchen and living area. That just means I need something less new. The trend is for fewer walls and doors, but walls and doors can be good a lot of the time. I recently watched breakfast TV, where they did a piece on people in various countries returning to the office as the Covid situation improved, and when I saw an open-plan office I just about broke out in a cold sweat. I worked many years in that environment, but how long would I survive now? I could do six months, if I knew it was only going to be six months. They also showed an office full of cubicles, which looks more austere, but it’s actually less awful to work in. Even mini-walls help. (As for hot-desking, don’t even get me started.)

After a week of mostly crappy weather, it’s a bright, sunny mid-October morning. I had some decent lessons last week, but I still wouldn’t mind one or two new students. The low point was on Thursday when my student (a guy in his mid-thirties) got a phone call from his father to say that his 83-year-old great uncle (whom he was very close to) had died from Covid, after his doctor had told him not to get the vaccine. (Just wow.) I suggested that we stop the lesson, and after pressing on with a translation exercise for a little longer, he agreed. He was understandably struggling to concentrate. Yesterday my student, a woman of 26 (I think) told me that her 74-year-old grandfather had survived a three-week battle in hospital with Covid. Petrică (mid-fifties) from the tennis club had a kidney condition, then was hospitalised with Covid last winter, before the vaccines came. He’s now on dialysis three times a week. He told me he hadn’t had a pee since March.

For my parents and anybody else living in New Zealand, especially the South Island, the virus must still feel abstract, a bit like it did for me in the early days. But it not, it’s killing people and doing long-term damage to those who survive it, and it’s coming your way. I was delighted to read that 2.5% of NZ’s population got the jab on a single day, in a high-profile Super Saturday “vaxathon” campaign. They were late to get started on vaccinations in NZ, but they’re certainly making up for lost time now.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. They’d just been down to Moeraki. Mum has sent me some pictures of the boulders, some broken and filled with water. I was happy when they told me they didn’t do much there apart from read. With all the house stuff, they really needed the break. We talked about our globetrotting experiences from 30-plus years ago, a subject that comes up quite often. Modern long-haul flying involves mega-hubs where you’re basically cocooned in airportworld. It didn’t used to be like that; the process was slower and more arduous. Dad remembered a time we landed in Jakarta (either ’86 or ’89) and just breathing in the air told you that you were in some faraway land. Airports were fascinating places then (the smells!), before they got all Guccified. Planes themselves were different too; if you didn’t want to be stuck in your seat you could slink off to the area around the galley – my brother did this all the time. You saw more out of the window too – the crew didn’t enforce artificial night-time. My younger students are amazed when I tell them that you could smoke in the back half-dozen rows of the plane. That would be unthinkable now.

Poker. I haven’t been able to make much headway of late, but I’m only down a few dollars for the month so far. My bankroll is $987. Staying up late to play seems to give me headaches, so I’ll try and avoid that.

I’m meeting the British teacher this afternoon. (Should I be worried about this, even though we’re both vaxed and he’s had it? He sees kids all day. These are the sorts of things I have to concern myself with.) Then I’ll be playing tennis.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - New Zealand - Tennis

Amid all the gloom, I’m more bullish on the flat thing

October 3, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a rather depressing week. HMS Romania is sinking and the deckchairs are being rearranged as I write this. On Friday there was yet another fire in a Covid ward, this time in Constanța, killing seven. Smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, sprinklers, they’re practically a foreign concept here. The hospital’s fire safety certificate probably took some backhanders to get. (I spoke to my sister-in-law on Friday night, and she was incredulous that people actually died in a hospital fire. For the third time in a year.) As for Covid itself, nobody knows what you can and can’t do anymore, except that we now have the green pass which allows vaxed people to get into places that the unvaxed can’t, although I bet the “border checks” are pretty damn porous in places. I thought that tennis would be a no-go this weekend, but I got a call on Friday to say that I could play as long as I had my green pass. So yesterday I turn up at four, I show my green pass to the woman in the hut, and I’m good to go. Then Ionuț turns up, and hang on a sec, you haven’t been jabbed, have you? In fact I seem to remember you being vehemently anti. Hmmm, I bet he slips the woman a few extra lei and he gets to play. Fifty-fifty chance at a minimum. This is Romania. But no, sorry mate, no green pass, see you later. He didn’t complain, and a minute later he was off in his car.

The average daily death toll from Covid in Romania is nearing 200, and set to go much higher. How could it not when vaccination rates are so low and our restrictions are so watered down? In January I naively thought the pandemic would be just about over by now. I didn’t see Delta coming and I stupidly thought that people would jump at the first opportunity to get vaccinated just like I did. I mean, why wouldn’t you? The last six months have been a massive eye-opener.

I got a lot more enthusiastic about buying a flat last week. The agent sent me some pictures, and you know what, these are nice. Good locations too, outside the ultra-modern areas that might send me into a mental tailspin. Some of them were even fully furnished. They’re pricier certainly than the one I looked at two weeks ago, but I might just have to fork out the money. It’s money I have, after all. It’s been hard to tee up any viewings because of how things work (or don’t) here, pandemic or not, but hopefully I can see two or three in the coming week. I’ve got to do this.

I ended up getting into an argument with my parents this morning. Jacinda Ardern is now doing a pretty terrible job apparently, because of race relations. That’s Priority A to them, especially Mum. And everybody else in New Zealand thinks so too! Aha! There you go! I’m not saying that their concerns don’t matter, because they do, but from my vantage point New Zealand has far bigger problems than that, ones that affect people day to day. Number one is surely that it’s too expensive. How do you buy your first home? Maybe you simply don’t. But that’s hardly a problem my parents face, nor the people Mum talks to at the Geraldine golf club or her church coffee group. My point was that it’s dangerous to assume that everybody’s priorities are the same as yours, especially if 80% of the population don’t even live on the same island, and you rarely meet anyone under sixty. I remember my super-intelligent friend from university being almost certain that Remain would win the EU referendum by a mile because everyone he knew thought Brexit was a dumb idea. Same thing. “Everyone he knew” was a tiny cross-section. In 2014 I remember a colleague being shocked that National won the NZ election because “nobody voted for them”. Talking of 2014, John Key’s “hermit kingdom” comments were ridiculous. God, that “NZ Inc.” backdrop. I remember one of the CEOs I worked under (the only one who was a complete arse) used to go on about “En Zed Inc”, which I found nauseating.

Work hasn’t been bad, though I wouldn’t mind one or two more students. (A lockdown would help.) I had a whole hour with that seven-year-old girl. (Or perhaps more accurately, she had a whole hour with me.) She got through my exercises on numbers and colours and farm animals faster than I expected. Twenty minutes left. Now what? Some conversation, but it was hard. I’m hoping we have two half-hour sessions this week instead; an hour is a long time for someone of that age.

Sunny day today, with more Ionuț-free tennis (poor chap) in store for this afternoon.

Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - New Zealand - Poker - Politics - Tennis

How exciting!

September 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My uncle – another one – is celebrating his 80th birthday today. He and my aunt visited Timișoara after coming to the UK for my brother’s wedding. A retired (or semi-retired) farmer, he still does a ton of physical work. The idea of slowing down is alien to him. I guess he’s been lucky – he’s lived ten years longer than either his older or younger brother, who both died of cancer. Ten years ago I went to his previous big birthday bash – in the middle of the rugby World Cup, and we watched the All Blacks’ first match against France. Israel Dagg (what a name) was probably man of the match. The world has spun off in an altogether darker direction since then.

Mum and Dad are now in their new place. It was weird seeing them on FaceTime with the new backdrop. So much wood everywhere, including on the ceilings. Dad described parts of the new house as “horrendous” and in dire need of renovation, but his horrendous is my kind of meh. I would just about kill to have their new place, as long as I could transport it out of Geraldine. Just before the definitive move, they had a horrendous day where their lawnmower broke down and my uncle’s (birthday boy’s) trailer, which Dad had borrowed, also needed expensive repairs.

I need to move away from this flat but I don’t want to. That’s the situation I’m in. Again, I’m having flashbacks to 2011, although then I didn’t actually need to move. It’s just that society had told me that someone of my age should buy a property – you’re a failure if you don’t – and my job, which gave me the licence to buy, was a ticking time bomb. And yeah, I thought it might actually make financial sense. But there was no excitement then, and neither is there now. The phrase “How exciting!”, as it relates to buying property, drives me mad. My biggest worry with this move is that it could kill my mental health, which has been so much better ever since I moved to Romania.

Last Monday I did have a look at a place in the Bucovina area, near where I once had lessons. The agent led me up to the fourth – and top – floor of a Ceaușescu-era block. Pinned to the walls of the staircase, bizarrely, were pictures of islands and beach resorts with golden sand and deep blue sea. It was something you might have seen in a prison cell. At the flat I was greeted by an elderly couple who had lived there for 35 years, and a very yappy dog. Everything in the flat had a seventies or eighties feel about it. There was even an old typewriter. The flat was easily big enough, but it would have needed serious work. I mean, it would have been OK for me, but potential students would have found it a turn-off. No lift either (again, I would have coped), and perhaps the biggest minus was a lack of any sort of view.

Then on Thursday I tried to visit some agents. This isn’t like New Zealand or the UK; they’re not really interested in dealing with the public. The first place had an intercom system which nobody answered. They didn’t answer their phone either. Fantastic. Just round the corner was another agency, located in a modern fourth-floor office. It was the same company that I rented this place from when I arrived. A woman took down my details and we had a chat. She told me that the young employee who had just two lessons from me in 2016, but honestly changed my life by tipping me off about the flat I’m in now, had left the company to train as a psychologist. I told her about some of the areas I liked, then inevitably she started peddling brand new apartments in the south of the city. I’ve been to that area, and nothing is more than five years old. I’d worry that living there, even if it might be good for business, would leave me depressed. Maybe not, but it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

What else? There’s a Hungarian festival on in the city, perhaps the last thing that’ll be “on” before the plug is pulled. Last night we had country music at Piața Operei and there was even a re-enactment of a battle. They’re selling various bits and bobs, Csiki Sör beer, and overpriced food.

I played singles tennis last night, again with that super-fit near-60-year-old. We only booked the court for an hour, and at the end I was up 6-4, 4-2. I lost the first three games. The first game went 16 points but was almost devoid of rallies. In the third game I had a break point, and hit a shot I thought he might struggle to return, but he ripped a cross-court forehand that was out of the top drawer, and the next two points slipped from my grasp too. It was all happening too damn fast. I made sure I had a good sit-down before coming up to serve. The games had been close, and there was no reason why I couldn’t come back. It was overall a good game with plenty of winners from both of us, although he lost concentration in the middle.

Poker. Back-to-back second places, and big comebacks, on Friday, though I made such bad starts to both tournaments that I couldn’t get many of those damn bounties. After blanking all three of last night’s attempts, my bankroll is $979.

Work. It’s OK but I could do with more of it. (Someone called me wanting only face-to-face lessons. Um, there’s like this thing on the news that you might have seen.) Thursday was a good day, however. One boy in particular has come on so far in his English since I started with him that it blows me away. He’s gone from a kid who knew a few words and didn’t say boo to a goose to an intelligent teenager who has a bloody good command of English. It’s so pleasing to see.

Justin Trudeau has been re-elected prime minister of Canada despite his party losing the popular vote. Their system isn’t nearly as awful as the US one (stupid amounts of money, stupidly long campaign, stupid everything basically) but it still ain’t great. The Germans are going to the polls right now.

Boris Johnson resorted to his schoolboy Franglais shtick again last week. “Prenez un grip”, “donnez-moi un break”. Mildly amusing to an Englishman for whom mumbling pointless French phrases for five years was an iconic part of his upbringing, but it would have fallen flat elsewhere.

It might just be me, but I can’t see how we’ll ever escape from the environmental mess we’re in. Humans are just terrible at dealing with problems that happen incrementally over periods of time greater than a lifetime. We still think we can consume our way out of this. We can’t.

Sorry for making this post so long.

Coronavirus - Family - Films - Music

The sights and sounds, soon to be silenced

September 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

The Covid Express freight train is careering towards us, and as such, this is probably the last normal weekend we’ll have here for a while. Buskers playing Por una cabeza. Weddings and baptisms on the steps of the cathedral. We might still get the buskers for a little while, but mass-participation events will soon be verboten, or as they say here, interzis. Last week the government agreed to mandate the Covid “green pass”, which you can get if you’ve been vaccinated, had a recent negative test, or recovered from the illness in the last six months. Supposedly you’ll need a green pass to enter a pub, but if and how the various birturi or cârciumi will enforce that I’ve no idea. On the local website, people were up in arms. It’s discriminatory. Yes you’re right, and that’s the whole point.

Yesterday I watched Hated in the Nation, the last episode of season three of Black Mirror. Disturbing, as always, but very thought-provoking. What a monster we’ve created in social media. The writers managed to include the destruction of Britain’s natural environment, hence those creepy swarms of fake bees that reminded me of The Birds. The characters, especially the female Met police detectives, were spot on. Before Black Mirror I tried watching Atypical, a series about autism, but I gave up after a few minutes. Honestly I couldn’t stand it.

Music. I still often listen to Musicorama, the local radio programme, when I get the chance, making sure I Shazam any songs I like. Two recommendations: Heart of Fire by 22-year-old American blues rocker Ally Venable, and Bulunur Mu by Amsterdam-based Turkish folk rock band Altın Gün. Last weekend we had a parade of international musicians that then performed in the Rose Garden. They come every year – except last year, obviously – and they always add considerable colour and joy to the city centre.

Poker. Three tournaments today, including a second-place finish in the single draw which snapped a streak of ten tournaments without a cash. I almost totally missed out on bounties though, mainly because I made such a bad start. After that, my bankroll has ticked up to $946.

Mum and Dad are moving, definitively, a few hours from now. Some neighbours will help them move their bed and sofa, but so far they’ve done almost everything themselves. Tomorrow I’ll get to view at least one apartment, and that will feel like I’m making a start.

Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Tennis

Making myself move

September 18, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just been on the phone, and I should finally get to look at a couple of apartments on Monday. I need to do this, but motivating myself hasn’t been easy. It’s scary, honestly, and anyway I’m quite happy being slap-bang in the centre of town. While Covid is still ravaging the country it hardly matters that my apartment isn’t ideal for face-to-face teaching or that the cheap-as-chips furniture is on the verge of falling apart. The two I’m interested in are both in a similar area of the city, near a park. If I bought either of them, I’d still have over half the proceeds left from my Wellington apartment, so maybe I could look at buying a rental too.

On Wednesday I started lessons with a seven-year-old girl who lives on the outskirts of Stuttgart. She was born in Germany and speaks both German and Romanian. (By their standards, they’re getting cheap lessons out of me.) With someone that young, it’s never easy, especially online. I mean, keeping your arse on the chair is a skill at that age. In a trial lesson, I only did half an hour with her. I showed her a picture full of stars of various colours. How many blue stars are there? What other colours can you see? When there were still the purple and orange stars to count, I asked her: “Are there any more colours, or gata?” (Gata means “that’s all”.) “Gata,” she happily proclaimed. Her father called me back yesterday to say that yes, she wants to carry on.

The US Open finals. When you think you’ve seen everything in sport, Emma Răducanu goes and rips up the history books. She came from nowhere to win 20 straight sets, one of the greatest prizes in the sport, and $2.5 million. I didn’t stay up and watch her final with Leylah Fernandez but kind of wish I had. Djoković then had his chance to rewrite history too, but he was surprisingly overpowered and outclassed by Daniil Medvedev who hardly put a foot wrong until the last few games. Djoković was flat, and Medvedev, who moved so well for such a big guy (six foot six), took full advantage. The Serb had taken many more hours than his opponent to reach the final and it showed. He might also have been better off skipping Tokyo, where the heat got to him. Still, the crowd, who didn’t know to shut up when a player is about to serve, nearly allowed Djoković back in it. I was glad that Medvedev closed it out in three sets.

Sir Clive Sinclair, of calculator, computer and electric vehicle fame, died yesterday. He was something of a hero where I grew up, not far from Cambridge. There was a Sinclair factory just down the road, and every man and his dog got hold of a Sinclair calculator, which took a 9-volt battery, in the seventies. I think my father still has his, with its blinking red digits. This must have been the second version; the first iteration was famous among maths geeks because if you tried to divide by zero it would actually attempt the calculation and go mad. For a short time (I was maybe seven) we borrowed one of his Spectrum ZX81 computers with rubber keys and that badass rainbow logo. I remember getting it to spit out increasing powers of two, and playing a game called Manic Miner on our second-hand TV; this involved hooking up a cassette player which made weird noises as the game loaded. Clive Sinclair was clearly a clever bugger. I remember seeing him on Late Night Poker, a UK-based poker tournament with hole-card cameras, in the summer of ’99. That was the first time I’d heard of Texas hold ’em.

As for my poker, I’ve managed to get nowhere in my last nine tournaments, and I’m essentially even for the month, with a bankroll of $933.

Mum and Dad are about to move. They keep digging things up of mine, or occasionally my brother’s. This morning Mum asked me if I wanted to keep a nineties-era Wallace and Gromit figure which once contained shower gel. In the end I said yes. They’re now looking forward to finally moving out, although Dad will probably miss their home of 17 years.

The virus is ripping through Romania now, as I knew it would. There was never any doubt. While temperatures remain high and the sun is shining it doesn’t feel too bad, but when we’re surrounded by autumnal fog and the ambulances are blaring every other minute, life will take on the stark metallic grey hue that it did last October, but perhaps even bleaker.