Family

Messy money and a Wordle variant

May 12, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning I called Dad because he’d just had his colonoscopy. He still has check-ups every now and then. Everything was fine and all he talked about was how hungry and thirsty he’d felt. Phew. I’m always worried they’ll pick up something.

The previous morning I spoke to Mum. She wanted me to help her with the Wordle, which has been plain sailing for her ever since she took it up last month. Except yesterday, which admittedly was a tricky one. It’s a weird word that half-breaks a couple of rules about what English words should look like. But no Mum, I’m not giving you the answer just so you can keep your winning run going. (She got it in the end.) This was my attempt:

I’m starting to deviate from sensible starting words like STARE or HEART in favour of MANLY or BACON or BARMY or CREAM or other words I happen to like that particular day, usually containing B or M or both. (Although today I went back to the tried and trusted STARE.) In truth, Wordle is getting a bit samey. Not to worry though, because there’s a new kid in town called Woodle, which I love. Woodle is to Wordle as snooker is to pool. I’d encourage anyone with a passing interest in word games to try it.

Am I really cut out for this property shit? I dunno, man. I feel I’m ever so slightly in over my head here. I’ve moved the money across from New Zealand to Romania – that took two late nights in a row because of the time zones and the daily limit – and now I’m grappling with Romania’s banking system. So many damn fields on the online form that could mean just about anything. It would be easier if I could pay in, you know, Romania’s actual local currency rather than having to faff around with euros. It’ll be a relief once I’ve finally moved.

It’s hot here for the first half of May. On Friday we can expect to break 30 degrees. On Sunday I made my usual bike trip to Sânmihaiu Român and was met by both cows and goats on the way. Just before the bike track started, the river was absolutely teeming with frogs.

Buying property - Family - Other sports - Photos

We all need some things to stay the same

May 8, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

Dealing with other people’s systems and processes has always been a major struggle for me – that’s half the reason I’m a private teacher – and buying a flat in Romania on my own is all about having systems and processes thrust upon me. As soon as the vendor gets my money and the sale is confirmed, I’ll have to pay my rates (this will involve a long queue), sort out insurance, and call the administrator (Viki, her name is) to get myself on the official list at the new apartment block. They explained this to me on Thursday. I should have the keys in my hand pretty soon, but I’m in no rush to move in.

In other news, I had a good chat with my brother last Monday. He called me during the day – it was a bank holiday in the UK – and I happened to be in the park collecting water from the well. I was able to give him a tour of sorts. Earlier I’d had a Zoom chat with my cousin who lives in Christchurch. This was a delight – we hadn’t been in touch for ages. Her kids – a girl and a boy, born either side of the devastating earthquakes – came on the line. Unsurprisingly they couldn’t remember me from the last time we’d met seven years ago in Wellington. They seemed great kids.

The snooker which finished last Monday was a fantastic escape from everything else. I haven’t been so engrossed in watching sport of any kind, including tennis, for years. The highlight for me was a toss-up between the Trump–Williams semi that went all the way, and that astonishing 85-minute frame in Yan Bingtao’s win over Mark Selby (which I have since rewatched). Apart from an obvious improvement in standard in all facets of the game, the tournament looked just the same as it did 20 and even 30 years ago. In a world where flying insect populations are plummeting and seasons are all over the place, it’s nice to have a few constants, even if they’re just people potting the same coloured balls with the same sticks into the same holes.

Just after Easter, someone gave me a biggish slab of drob to take home. The word drob hardly makes one salivate, and neither does the description of it: it’s a kind of loaf made from sheep organs with an egg inside. I got through it in a few sittings. When in Romania I suppose.

I played tennis this evening. The walk back from the courts is always interesting. Usually someone points out a plant, seemingly at random, and talks about a tea or other infusion that you can make from it.

I had an interesting moment in a lesson last Monday with the twins. “If you could change one thing about Romania, what would it be?” I asked them. “The people,” they shot back in unison.

Here are some more pictures from the lake I visited last month:

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Tennis

No more marathons, and more’s the pity

March 27, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve got my TV tuned to BBC news, with the war now centred on Lviv in the west after the Kremlin said they’d concentrate on the Donbas region having been pushed back by the Ukrainians. Since the first morning of the war, none of this has made any sense at all. Joe Biden has just made a speech, saying at the end that “for God’s sake this man cannot remain in power”. Whenever I see Biden speak about the Ukraine war, I wonder what the orange turd might have come out with.

Today I had my maths lesson in Dumbrăvița – he did well on a practice exam paper – and then when I got home I had a last-minute cancellation, meaning I just one had English lesson before stepping on the tennis court. I played two sets, both with the woman who struggles a bit with her footwork, so I had to run a bit, which was no bad thing. It was a lovely early evening for tennis, and it’s been a great week of weather all round. Blue skies every day.

Yesterday I called my aunt, and this time she answered. I remembered to add “Auntie” before her name. She was much better than she can be. In the past she’s seemed unaware of anything beyond her four walls. She’ll say the weather is bad, I’ll then mention that it’s fine and sunny where I am, and then she’ll almost seem put out by my mentioning other weather. Incorrect weather, as she sees it. I got none of that yesterday. We spent most of the ten minutes or so discussing the war. She still did her usual trick of ending the “conversation” when I still had things I wanted to say.

My aunt would get on well with the eight-year-old girl in Germany whom I teach on Skype. Yesterday’s lesson with her was especially hard because her father was with her the whole time. I made what I thought were fairly strong noises to say that I’d prefer it if he’d damn well go away, but he paid no notice. Half-way through the hour-long lesson her mind wandered. She must be tired, I said to her father. No, she’s just bored, he said. There might not be a whole lot I can do about that. Her English has got noticeably better in the time I’ve taught her. I think that’s down to YouTube more than me; her accent is very American.

Wednesday saw the return of Zoli, my first-ever student here, way back in November 2016. I hadn’t seen him since the very start of the pandemic in Romania, two years ago, when I joined him on a trip to the mountains. As we drove there, he told me that the hut had been closed because of the virus and we’d have to sneak in, and I got angry at him for not telling me before. Though it was beautiful up there in the snow, I was aware that a tsunami of disease and death was about to hit us. I thought I might never see him again, so it was a great pleasure to receive a text from him to say that he wanted to restart lessons. Wednesday’s meeting was hardly a lesson: it was a chat followed by a game of Bananagrams.

I’ve ordered a Samsung phone to replace my iPhone 5½ (as I call it) which I got as a present almost five years ago. My present phone doesn’t charge unless I place a heavy book on it, and then its battery runs down almost visibly (actually visibly if I’m making a video call, say), so I end up not using it much. It’s a low-end Samsung, called an A13 (it cost about NZ$300 or £150) but it seems to do everything I could ever want and much more. What it won’t do, however, is FaceTime, so I’ll have to switch to Skype or WhatsApp or something for keeping in touch with my parents. FaceTime has been so convenient.

Amid all the news of the war, they’ve been showing the PR disaster that is P&O, the once-proud British shipping company. P&O stood for (and presumably still does stand for) Peninsular and Oriental, a name that conjures up the world’s great trade routes and general intrepidness. Now it’s Dubai-owned (ugh), and the name makes me think of an outfit that lays off 800 of its staff on Zoom without giving any notice, and now has a ship that is deemed unseaworthy.

And finally, back to tennis. Ashleigh Barty has decided to retire from tennis at the age of just 25, at the pinnacle of the game. After winning Wimbledon and then her home grand slam in Melbourne, she probably thought, just what else can I achieve, and why not play cricket or golf or any of the other sports I’m ridiculously talented in. Tennis will miss her, though; I remember not long ago hearing some commentators suggesting that she might be too nice to ever be a champion. In other news, the no-tie-break final set, which has produced extraordinary drama over the last half-century, is no more. The movers and shakers of the tennis world thought we’d all be better off without that suspense, and now all four grand slams will be (quote) enhanced by a first-to-ten tie-break at 6-all in the final set, as the Australian Open has employed since 2019. I’m always wary of that marketing-speak word enhance. The new system has been billed as a one-year trial, but you don’t usually trial something in the biggest events on the calendar. It’s possible that, say, Wimbledon reverts to what they used before, but in all likelihood this will be a permanent change. Well, until someone else comes along and decides to shorten things even further.

Buying property - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Is it worth the risk?

March 21, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve just come back from my second-most expensive grocery shop in Romania. The only time I spent more was in the headless-chicken initial days of the pandemic. Everything has shot up in price. This reminds me of 2008 in New Zealand, when a block of cheese hit $16 and they were practically giving gas-guzzling Ford Falcons away: petrol had smashed through $2 a litre, which seemed crazy at the time. This morning I met up with Mark, the teacher. We had a coffee; he also had waffles. We had a good chat, mostly about teaching, but he didn’t have much time because he was going to a barbecue soon after.

Yesterday I had my maths lesson with Matei in Dumbrăvița, then two online English lessons when I got back, including one with a new guy who lives near Cluj. Most of my lessons are still online, but face-to-face is coming back gradually. After that I was on the tennis court for the first time this year. We’d planned to start back a couple of weeks ago, but we had a chilly first half of March. The tennis crew is depleted. Yesterday I partnered a teenage girl who is a national-level rower; we played against her father and the older guy I sometimes play singles with. We lost the first set 6-3, and in the second we’d fended off half a dozen match points to be at deuce for the umpteenth time in the tenth game, when time ran out on us. I wasn’t too bad. My serve needs some work; my only ace, which hit the sideline at 2-5 in the second set, came out of the blue.

A silver lining to those awful kidney stones is that I’ve dropped a few pounds. On Friday I had my first haircut since last June; the barber’s comb turned my long thick hair into unappetising grey spaghetti before it fell to the ground. I didn’t really want that much taken off, but hairdressing vocabulary is something I struggle with even in English. I do prefer the slimmer, less caveman-like me, though. (I still have the beard.) On Tuesday I’ll go back to the doctor, and maybe I’ll find out if my stones are still there. I don’t think I’ve passed them, but the pain has gone. Now I “only” have my intermittent sinus pain to deal with, plus the cold that never goes away. (If I’m outside on a chilly day, I have to blow my nose all the bloody time. When I played tennis yesterday I had to wipe my nose after every second point. That’s just life for me.)

That’s more than enough about me. My dad passed out on Thursday night, just after I wrote my last post. He somehow fell into the bath at about two in the morning, and blacked out. He was lucky not to injure himself. He came round, then eventually clambered out of the bath. The next day was a write-off as he had such terrible leg pain, but yesterday he assured me he was coming right. As for Mum, a rogue contact lens had got stuck up her eye, and when she extricated that she was fine. I wish I wasn’t so far away from them. I expect they’ll want to come to Europe at or around Christmas – there will be a new addition by then – but I’d like to make a trip to New Zealand too.

I want to move on with my life, which means finding a new apartment and running a proper teaching business from it, but last week’s near miss has made me even more skittish than I was before. The appalling war in Ukraine has made the local economy very uncertain, then when you add in that I don’t really know what I’m doing, and I’ve had my fingers well and truly burnt before…

I forgot to mention a horrific accident – or pair of accidents – that occurred earlier this month near the Black Sea in eastern Romania. It was a quiet evening, and I got alerts on my phone in Romanian, one of which made me do a double take. Is that really what it says? A MiG fighter jet went down in a remote area, in terrible weather, killing the pilot. Then a Puma helicopter flew out in search of the plane, and it too crashed. All seven on board the helicopter died.

Buying property - Family - Life :)

Feels like we’re all running out of gas

March 18, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

When I spoke to my parents this morning, they were showing their age. Mum had just about gone blind in one eye overnight, while Dad had a sciatica-like jabbing pain in his right leg. I’m 11,000 miles away and I can’t do a damn thing. Last weekend I spoke to Dad, pre-leg pain. Mum had gone to church. They’d just had a “friend” to stay; Dad said that Mum was stressed to the max the whole time and could have erupted at any second. Since I left New Zealand, I’ve missed out on Mum’s volcanic (and irrational) side.

Yesterday I got pretty close to buying that flat I mentioned in my previous post, but after making an offer and receiving a counter-offer of €8000 more, I backed away. This is a minefield, isn’t it? I may still end up buying the place. The owner is in Mexico (why there?) and won’t be back in Timișoara for another three weeks, so there’s no way I can sign anything before then. I want to do this and start running a proper business, but right now I’m stumbling in the dark, at the mercy of a highly uncertain economy. My only saving grace is that this time I’m only putting half my eggs (or hopefully fewer) in one basket.

I got the new fridge-freezer delivered, but god, installing it was a performance. This flat has a funny V-shaped laundry “corner” which meant I couldn’t remove the old appliance without disconnecting the washing machine, and shitshitshit how do I turn off the cold tap? I’ll be knee-deep in water if I’m not careful. Then after sorting that out, I had to remove the doors of the new fridge-freezer because it wouldn’t fit otherwise. That’s about as close as I want to get to actual DIY, but in my new place (if I get that far) I might be forced into doing some. It was lucky that the fridge broke down in March and not August.

On Monday my sister-in-law sent me her latest scan. It looks amazingly human now. A human that will have the same last name as me. The due date is 20th September.

Tomorrow I’m getting my first haircut in nine months.

Here are some before-and-after petrol prices at the same forecourt. Unlike some stations which are in danger of running out of digits on their signs, this one can handle 10-lei-plus petrol.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - Headaches - Language teaching - Life :) - Poker

My flat search, my brother’s job search, and 19/1/12

January 20, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s a nippy Thursday morning here. I took this picture just before my lesson which started at eight. You can see the hoar frost on the trees and the near-full moon. The days are noticeably pulling out: a fortnight ago it was almost pitch black at that time.

I haven’t had much luck getting new students at the start of 2022, but yesterday I got a call from the mother of a 17-year-old girl, and I agreed to give her daughter tuition for her C1 Cambridge exam. Teaching for advanced-level exams is not my forte – they’re basically a game in which I lack experience, rather than a simple test of English – so I might not be much help.

No maths lesson with Matei this weekend – his family are going away. It’s been interesting being back in his room again. The huge world map on his wall always fascinates me because it makes Europe seem so small. He told me that his grandmother, whom I often had conversations with, is now suffering from Alzheimer’s. She must be almost eighty. That’s sad.

I saw the doctor on Tuesday to get my pills. I mentioned my headaches and gummed-up nose, but after seeing 35 Covid patients in a single day, his focus was on the virus which wasn’t my issue. (I took a rapid Covid test last week, just in case. I was negative.) He gave me the requisite temperature and oxygen saturation checks, and even checked my blood pressure and gave me a once-over with a stethoscope, and everything was fine. He then prescribed me a drug called Quarelin for my headaches. If I can’t rid of this head pain, and the frequency and duration reach the levels that Dad had to deal with when he was my age, life might not be worth living. I’m serious. Dad had a wife and family. I don’t.

I’ve finally dismissed that flat which initially seemed so promising. The lack of sun isn’t something I can risk. I look back at all those places in Auckland and Wellington, and the correlation between natural light and my mood – if not necesarily a causation – is definitely there. I’m interested in three more places and I’ll make some phone calls later today.

My parents told me that they heard a loud bang last Friday. What the hell was that? It was the Tongan volcanic eruption. They could hear it from 1500 miles away? Holy shit. The scenes following the eruption are of total devastation.

My brother wants to leave the army. He’s had enough of his courses that take him away from home five days a week and hardly inspire him anyway. He recently applied for a job which he didn’t get (unfairly, he thinks). He’s invariably grumpy and uncommunicative at the moment, so I really hope he can find something to cheer him up.

Poker tournaments. Since Christmas I’ve had one win and five second places. What a shame it isn’t the other way round. At the weekend I was heads-up in a $4.40 pot-limit badugi. My opponent covered me, just. I got dealt the 204th best hand in the game. That doesn’t sound very good, and it’s not, but heads-up against an aggressive opponent it shoots up in value. It was just a bit too good to fold. We got all our chips in, he turned over the 203rd best hand (!), and I had to be content with another runner-up spot. My bankroll is now $1562.

It’s now ten years since my grandmother died, four months prior to her 90th birthday. How time flies. I often wish she could have seen me in Romania. I sometimes dream about sitting in the square with her, having a coffee or a glass of wine, watching the world go by.

Coronavirus - Family - Headaches - Poker - Tennis

A GOAT and a donkey

January 8, 2022

by plutoman 0 Comments

Just a quick one from me this morning, as I’m about to head off to Dumbrăvița in the rain for my maths lesson. (Update: the rain has turned to snow.)

Omicron is now spreading like wildfire in Romania; the doubling rate of new cases is four days. The graphs at the top of this blog are already hopelessly out of date – I’ll soon go back to daily updates. In countries like the UK, where people have actually been getting vaccinated, the new variant has been mild, but who knows what it will do in Romania where (incredibly) the majority of the country is still unjabbed. We’ll soon find out.

I spoke to my parents on Thursday night. They gave me updates on all the renovations on their new house. They might have bitten off more than they can chew. I just hope they get professionals in as much as possible – it’s not as if they can’t afford to. Will this be the year we finally see each other? It’s been three years, and I miss them terribly. Thank heavens for FaceTime.

Mum and I talked about the Djokovic saga. She’s a fan of the Serb, so she was much more equivocal than me. (I used to like him too.) To my mind, Djokovic is getting what he deserves here. His attitude to Covid has been lamentable from the start. He organised the Covid Cup superspreader event in summer of 2020 and has been a vocal anti-vaxer. He’s idolised in Serbia and has surely convinced many thousands of Serbs to remain unjabbed like him. Then he tries to waltz into Australia, which has some of the strictest Covid rules on the planet. Bugger him. And I don’t care if he’s won the Australian Open nine times and he’s the GOAT and blablablah (or is it maa maa maa?). He isn’t the only one to blame. The authorities, especially Tennis Australia, have behaved appallingly here too. His appeal hearing takes place on Monday, and it’s possible he’ll still be allowed to play. If so, he’ll be booed to oblivion. I hope he’s deported on the next plane.

On Thursday I had a terrible day. Luckily I only had two lessons – one in the early morning and one in the evening. I’m now almost sure that what I thought was acute sinus pain is actually migraines. I had two or three hours of intense pain in the morning and around lunchtime, and it took the rest of the day to recover. Dad has suffered from migraines (with much greater duration and frequency than me) since he was a teenager, so I suppose it’s not a surprise that I’ve ended up getting them. I tried to watch Don’t Look Up on Netflix and listen to one of the Reith lectures (about AI), but even all of that was a struggle because I was hypersensitive to light and sound. More about that next time.

Poker. Two second places on Wednesday took my bankroll to $1477. I made $46 on the morning. I tried, with no success, to play razz, a lowball stud game. I’ll give that another go, probably at the weekend.

The apartment. I’m still very interested, but also very apprehensive. I’ve booked another viewing for Monday.

Books - Family - Life :) - Poker

A wet Christmas

December 26, 2021

by plutoman 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

by plutoman 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

by plutoman 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.