Family

Coronavirus - Family - Life :)

Benford’s law

April 5, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’m going to start tonight’s post with a simple game. If you can guess how many Romanian lei are in my bank account, I’ll give you all of it. (In reality I won’t. I can’t. But just imagine for a second.) Actually, to make it easier, you don’t have to guess the full amount, but just the first digit. Given that there is some money in there, i.e. it’s not zero, what digit (from 1 to 9) do you choose? Maybe you’ll choose 5, because it’s in the middle. Perhaps you’ll pick 7, your favourite number. It really doesn’t matter, because they’re all just as likely as each other, right?

Wrong. With absolutely no other knowledge, you should absolutely pick 1. Always. I can guarantee that around the world, there are currently more bank balances with 1 as their first digit than any other. There are quite a few 2s too, but certainly not as many as 1s. A little further behind are 3s, and so on. Comparatively few begin with an 8, and even fewer with a 9.

You see this pattern over and over again. Population sizes (or areas) of towns, cities, or whole countries, lengths of rivers, volumes of lakes, market caps of companies, speakers of languages, vote counts, and so on. Anything that can exhibit a large range of values will show a very similar distribution of leading digits, skewed heavily towards the lower digits. (Not everything works this way, for instance the ages or heights of the people you work with.)

There’s a name for this phenomenon—it’s called Benford’s law—and it has even been used in forensic accounting. People have completely fabricated figures and come unstuck because what they thought were random-looking numbers started with unnaturally many 7s, 8s and 9s. The coronavirus pandemic—where cases increase exponentially—is a perfect example of Benford’s law in action. Look at the case figures for countries or regions and you’ll see a definite bias towards lower initial digits. Heck, you can even see it on my chart below.

As I was writing all of that, I got a phone call from the elderly lady who lives with her husband on the sixth floor. It was a pleasure to talk to her. She was replying to the note I’d sent her, asking if they needed any help with food or other essentials. She said they have people staying from outside the city (breaking the lockdown rules, but hey). Her prediction for the end of lockdown—1st May—is unfortunately wishful thinking. She asked me what my religion was, because it affects what version of Easter I celebrate. I get that question quite often and I always say that I’m a Catholic.

My aunt called me earlier today. She seemed extremely concerned, as if Romania had 4300 coronavirus deaths and the UK 150, instead of the other way round. It’s never that easy talking to her, because she doesn’t really listen. Still, she was thinking about me, and I appreciated that. She also lives on her own, so I’d better call her next weekend.

Here is the latest chart:

Coronavirus Romania 4-4-20
Coronavirus - Family

It’s happened so fast

March 31, 2020 by 0 Comments

That I could come to Romania 3½ years ago – a country I’d never set foot in before – and create a totally new life for myself was wonderfully mad, and only possible thanks to long-haul travel and supranational organisations. A month ago it was still possible, just. Now you can hardly go out your front door. The speed at which everything has shut down still feels extraordinary.

This morning I had a chat with my brother. They don’t want him anywhere near his workplace, and fair enough. Close contact with other people is just about unavoidable in his job. We talked about Brits who are struggling to cope because they can no longer buy unnecessary crap.

Nothing to report, except to say that news coming out of the hospital in Suceava, which has now closed, is horrendous. Twenty-two people died there. Romania’s death total has soared to 65. I now have plotted the deaths on a separate chart from the confirmed cases, which are now close to 2000. (The real number of cases is surely several times that.) The chart of recoveries will be coming tomorrow, I hope.

Romania coronavirus cases 30-3-20
Romania coronavirus deaths 30-3-20
Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching

Some are more equal than others

March 30, 2020 by 0 Comments

I got out briefly this afternoon, just after I’d been up and down the stairs five times, and walked down the Bega a short distance. It was sunny and springlike and blissfully calm, with the willows lining the river and hardly a soul around. Then I had to come back. Any amount of “outside” has a certain level of guilt attached.

When I wrote last night’s post it was getting late, and I didn’t talk much about the conversations I’d had with my cousins. My cousin in Wellington put things in perspective – after bemoaning my inability to see my parents who live on the other side of the world, she said she couldn’t see her parents either, and they live in Timaru. She and her husband were impressed with the government’s handling of the crisis, although they wished they could have closed the borders a week or two earlier. I only saw the youngest of her three boys; he was wearing a onesie and seemed to be quite enjoying the lockdown.

My US-based cousin was about to play golf with his mates. Umm, should you be doing that? The golf course is even open? He talked about distancing and not touching the flag, but to me, golf just about epitomises “non-essential”. He talked about Trump using his daily media briefings to campaign for the election, while hundreds of Americans are dying from the virus every day.

Mum and Dad are pretty lucky. They can lock themselves down without really being locked down. They have a huge house (by my standards) and two acres to play with. They have money. In theory, these crises – earthquakes, floods, epidemics – are a leveller. Viruses don’t discriminate, you sometimes hear. Except they do. India, for instance, is now completely locked down. One point three billion people. But how do you lock down India? Where a huge proportion of the population lives practically on top of dozens of other people? Where if you don’t earn anything on a particular day, you don’t eat? The lockdown is admirable, but the reality is that untold numbers of very poor Indians will die as a result of the virus in the coming months, either directly or indirectly. Obviously this is an extreme example, but there are stark differences even within a country like New Zealand.

Every day you see or hear something that was perfectly normal until recently, but is now absurd. The buses and trams are still running here, and on the side of a tram this morning I saw a banner advertising “dream holidays” and “cruises like you see in films”.

Today I produced a coronavirus glossary for my students: about 75 terms from airborne to zoonotic, via hunker down and ramp up, complete with definitions and explanations. I hope they find it useful.

In Romania, I still can’t predict where this is going. The health minister resigned soon after making his crazy pronouncement that all two million inhabitants of Bucharest would be tested. The hospital in Suceava has been a disaster zone: nearly 100 doctors and nurses there have contracted the virus. There is a shortage of doctors, or should I say a shortage of good doctors, after so many of them have left the country. At times like these, a brain drain can be deadly. The good news is that if I must be in Romania, Timișoara is probably the best place in Romania to be.

The death toll in Romania is starting to mount. We are now at 43. More than 300 more people tested positive in the 24 hours before the latest figures were released, meaning we are very likely to break 2000 tomorrow. That number supposedly triggers a heightened alert level. In tomorrow’s update I will post two new charts, with figures for deaths (sadly) and recoveries.

Romania coronavirus cases 29-3-20
Coronavirus - Family

It’s so quiet

March 29, 2020 by 0 Comments

It’s quarter to eleven on a Saturday night, slap-bang in the middle of Romania’s third-biggest city. As I write this, I can hear an owl. Every now and then I can also hear a freight train rattling and whistling by on the other side of the park. I’ve never heard the trains before. The cathedral chime for “quarter to” seemed especially loud. Our clocks go forward tonight, in fact, but this year it’s a pointless exercise. Tomorrow it will get dark at close to 8pm, but somehow it’s as if the clock has struck thirteen.

Today I caught up with family – a long chat with my cousin and her husband in Wellington to begin with, then I Skyped another cousin who lives in New York State with his Italian wife (she assured me that her parents in northern Italy are OK), then finally I FaceTimed my parents. Family now seem more important than ever.

I popped my head out of the door just to fill up two water bottles in the park, and even that required a form to be filled in. When I got back I walked briskly up and down the stairs five times (640 steps up and 640 steps down), carrying those ten litres of water on my back.

The news is endlessly frightening. Deaths are now in five figures in Italy and four figures in the UK (and because they only seem to be counting those who die in hospital, the UK figures are probably understated). In Romania, eight more deaths have been confirmed today, taking the total to 34, while the latest increase in cases was at least on the small side.

Romania coronavirus cases 28-3-20
Coronavirus - Family - Hiking - International travel

The calm before the storm?

March 9, 2020 by 0 Comments

I FaceTimed my parents this morning. That might be the only way I’ll get to see them for the foreseeable future. On a screen. Strapping themselves into a flying tube packed with 500-odd other poor souls, for roughly a day, might be out of the question long before they’re due to take off in late May. It’s sad, but there’s a very real chance I’ll miss them for the second summer in a row.

When the first Romanian cases of coronavirus presented themselves, my Biziday app alerted me with an ominous chime. For the next handful, only a message flashed up on my screen, which I often wouldn’t see until later. Now I’m not getting messages at all, and probably won’t unless and until somebody succumbs from the virus. So far “only” 15 cases have been confirmed in Romania including five in Timișoara, the same as in the whole of New Zealand. The level of panic is (so far) very low. Very occasionally I’ll see someone sporting a mask. At the supermarket this morning all the shelves were stacked with loo roll. Scented, quilted, embossed, polka-dotted, you name it, they stocked it.

The situation in Italy seems to be something approaching mayhem. This afternoon we had wet weather and I decided to watch the Serie A match between Parma and SPAL, which was a local derby of sorts. I hardly ever watch domestic football these days, but all Serie A matches are now being played behind closed doors, and I figured it would be a bit of a novelty to watch crowdless top-level football, live from Parma which I visited in 2010. At kick-off time all I could see was a large zoomed-in football in the centre of my screen. Apparently the players were on the pitch then, but the Italian Sports Minister had just made an announcement – he wanted games called off entirely, fans or no fans. The game did go ahead in the end, 75 minutes late, and SPAL won 1-0.

Lombardy and the surrounding regions, encompassing Bologna and Parma which were a pleasure for me to visit, are now sealed off. This is (or was) Italy’s economic powerhouse. The impending lockdown was leaked and chaos ensued. It’s been an awful day there, with 133 further deaths. The Wikipedia page on the outbreak in Italy now looks absurd – the initial cases, in their ones and twos, described in great detail, but the entry for 8th March simply states that more than 100 people died in Lombardy alone.

I read a piece by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, saying that when America is facing an epidemic on this scale, having this particular man-baby at the helm is dangerous. He’s dead right. It’s a shame someone like Krugman isn’t president.

In other news, my student has invited me on another trip to Cuntu (the name is still horrible) and/or Mount Țarcu, where I went last June. He’s planning it for next weekend. It’ll be a damn sight colder than it was then, so I’ve really got to make sure I’m properly prepared. I bought some boots, a bag and some wet-weather gear from Decathlon, the go-to place for this stuff, without completely breaking the bank, but still need a warmer sleeping bag. And absolutely no tinned food this time – there’s nowhere to cook it.

I mentioned to my parents that I’d browsed tents in Decathlon and was amazed just how much tent technology has come on. This prompted Mum to show me photos – the best she could on a grainy FaceTime screen – of our camping holiday in Northern Spain in 1988. Back then you could have a cheap, simple holiday by a Spanish beach without hordes of people. The trip did have its moments, though. Half-way through our three-week stay, my parents had the bright idea to visit Sitges, a resort near Barcelona where they’d clearly had a great time in the seventies before I and my brother came on the scene. Dad drove close to 400 miles, through the night, in his Mazda. Then when we arrived, Sitges had obviously changed. The sea was soup-like. My brother didn’t like to get his face wet, and Mum sensibly stayed out of trouble too. But Dad and I went in, properly, and were sick for the next four days. We went back up north and saw out our holiday up there. We went to and from Spain by boat – 24 hours each way, to and from Santander. The return sailing was rough and my brother got seasick.

I’ll give my brother a call now and see how much he remembers. My guess is a lot – he has very good recall of his early childhood. I’ll also see how much bog roll he has.

Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Writing a book

Is it time to panic yet?

February 28, 2020 by 0 Comments

I might have to lose my beard, dammit. I saw my doctor this evening, and he told me all my facial hair isn’t very face-mask-friendly. Yep, it’s got to that stage here. There’s currently a very Romanian headline on Digi24 (a national news site): Watch out in churches! Don’t kiss the icons! Don’t shake hands with other churchgoers! I’d seen all kinds of scare stories about empty shelves at the supermarket, but this afternoon everything was hunky-dory. I did pick up a few extra cans though. Who knows where this will end up. Timișoara is at some risk, because it’s the closest major Romanian city to Italy, Europe’s coronavirus outpost.

At this rate my parents will be cancelling their trip to Europe for the second summer running. Dad also has his latest mini (I hope) health scare. Yesterday he had a scan, and next week they’ll be shoving a camera down his willy, as he put it. In Wellington I worked with CCTV footage of drainage pipes; this sounds like a scaled-down version of the same thing.

The owners of this flat want to sell. They haven’t put my rent up in the three-plus years I’ve been here, while rents on average in Timișoara have soared by at least a third, so I’ve had a good run. But still, bugger. I’ve enjoyed being in this central location, and finding a new place at short notice is always a hassle. It’s possible I won’t have to move out at all, because the buyers are likely to be investors. The sale price is €100,000 – that’s a lot by local standards – and when the estate agent came on Monday to take photos, I could tell she thought it was overpriced. “But there’s no balcony! And all you can see from the window are the cathedral and the park!” If I do have to move, it might be worth forking out a bit extra for somewhere with a space that I can dedicate solely to teaching. For three years I’ve been teaching in my living room.

The book. I met with my Romanian teacher on Tuesday, and outlined to her my idea in what I thought was shocking Romanian. The idea is pretty simple. There are loads of English textbooks (and the like) written by Romanians, and sadly most of them are terrible. There are also plenty of English learning materials written by native speakers living in the UK or America, and these are, on average, eight times better. But they’re not geared towards Romanians and the aspects of English that they, specifically, find difficult. This is where I come in (I hope). I’ve given well in excess of 1500 lessons in my time here, and the same difficulties and mistakes crop up time and time again, often from students who otherwise communicate at a pretty decent level. I want to present each of these big-ticket items with a how-to-do-it page and an illustration. Luckily I know a man who can do rather good illustrations, and he seems willing to help during the times when he hasn’t got a camera stuck up his dick. My Romanian teacher knows the market and has some contacts, so hopefully I’ll be able to make a go of this.

Family - Language teaching

Just doing my day job

February 19, 2020 by 0 Comments

There just isn’t a whole heap of news at the moment. Timișoara is balmy for the second half of February; the kids are disappointed we’ve had a virtually snowless winter, though I wouldn’t entirely discount an appearance of the white stuff in March.

I had my fourth lesson with the ten-year-old boy who continues to impress me. He knows the English alphabet upside down and backwards; most adults have a tough time with their G and J and E and I and W and Y but he managed just fine. His grandmother lives there, in their typically Romanian apartment, and I’m always amazed by her hair. Midway through the lesson she handed me a big bowl of frișcă, or whipped cream, topped with a kind of purée made from chestnuts. I’m not used to eating something that sweet in the middle of the day, and I only got through about half of it.

One of four lessons yesterday was with a guy who doesn’t lack confidence when it comes to speaking – for a lot of people that’s more than half the battle – but he’s still speaking Romanian with English words. I went through some exercises with the goal of getting him away from word-for-word translation, but they were rather tough for him.

This morning I had one of my rare half-and-half English and Romanian sessions at the university. In our previous session the teacher gave me a signed copy of her mother’s recently published children’s fantasy book about a dragon-like creature and a kite. The Romanian word for both of those things is the same – zmeu – hence it was a kind of play on words. It was a lovely story. I learnt that her mother is something of a celebrity in her home town of Alba Iulia. I meant to discuss my book idea with her, but we ran out of time. I did send her a message though and who knows, maybe I can start to get the ball rolling.

Dad’s sister seemed to have blocked his phone, and he thought she’d deliberately severed all lines of communication with him for good. But then on Sunday, out of the blue, she called him. She might be selfish and frustrating, but it turns out she isn’t actually an ogre.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

No more time wasters please

February 4, 2020 by 0 Comments

My brother called me during the fifth set of yesterday’s men’s final at the Australian Open. I didn’t answer. I thought before the match that Dominic Thiem had a real shot, and arguably he should have won. Djokovic had been there so many times though, and he wisely chose not to press when he went two breaks down in the third set, deciding instead to save his energy for sets four and five. Djokovic’s serve is now more of a weapon than it used to be, and he’s certainly beefed up his second serve. Throughout his career he’s continually made tweaks to his game. This notion that he’s boring and robotic and does the same thing over and over is, frankly, bollocks. He’s a genuinely nice bloke and super intelligent to boot. I don’t get people’s dislike of him. The only dark spot for him in the final was at 4-4 in the second set. Having just broken back, he was twice pulled up for taking too long between points. He dropped his serve again in that ninth game, and having lost the set, he ranted at the umpire on the way to losing six straight games. Sorry Novak, the clock had hit zero both times. You don’t have a leg to stand on. As for Thiem, he’s knocking on the door now. Hopefully he can barge through it soon.

I saw most of the men’s final, but only a single game of the women’s in between my lessons. Another first-time grand slam winner in Sofia Kenin. She lifted the trophy by winning a whole bunch of tight matches including the semi-final and final. Muguruza’s big, high-risk game paid dividends at key moments in her close semi-final with Halep, but in the final it seemed to have the opposite effect.

It was a pretty good tournament all round. And heck, it looked for a moment that it might not happen at all. The tournament started amid orange haze. But we were treated to some fine matches, my favourite being Nadal’s drama-packed four-set win over Kyrgios.

When the tennis was over, I called my brother (who has zero interest in tennis) back. He was fine. He told me about their new hens. They aren’t laying yet because all their energy is being consumed in growing feathers. We talked about our aunt who, for some reason, seems to have blocked Dad’s phone. Dad can’t imagine what he’s done “wrong”.

My brother celebrated Brexit Day on Friday night. Yes, it’s become reality. He’s wildly optimistic about Britain’s post-Brexit future. (This attitude makes as much sense as the other extreme. Right now we simply don’t know, and it’ll be many years before we do.) My immediate priority is being able to stay in Romania beyond the transition period which expires at the end of the year.

My first Syrian student (I’ve since acquired another) didn’t last long. Last week he twice cancelled lessons on the day, and third time (yesterday) he didn’t show up at all. He told me he’d overslept. For his 6pm lesson. I said if we wants to continue he’ll need to pay me for the lesson. He said no thanks. I’m glad to get shot of him.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

Supporting the underdog

January 25, 2020 by 0 Comments

Latest news from Dad. His never-ending headaches have finally ended. They won’t dog him for the rest of his life as he’d feared, and it seems the culprit was his tooth after all. Being headache-free (apart from the odd ones he always gets) has given him a new lease on life. That’s the good news. The less fantastic news is that he’s found blood in his urine and will be having tests, and who knows what they will turn up.

Old age. I often forget that Dad is five months short of seventy. Today I bumped into the elderly couple who live on the sixth floor. She had just been to the dentist. She showed me her teeth – she’s one of the several million Romanians who have none of the ones that sprouted naturally. This time they told me their ages – she’s 79, he’s 88. He told me that in the fifties and sixties, people used to stroll up and down what is now Piața Victoriei: it sounded like an Italian-style passeggiata. Now he said it’s full of gypsies and people who don’t care. The lift was out of order, so they had no choice but to painstakingly climb the stairs.

It’s been a tiring but productive week of lessons. On Tuesday I had my five-kilometre walk from the end of the tram line to Urseni to meet the 12-year-old girl. It was quite a trek, even if he road had been sealed since Google went there, apart from the last little bit. After the lesson her father took me into town (he was driving that way anyway), and in future her mother will pick me up from the last tram stop. I enjoyed the lesson – it made a refreshing change to teach a girl, after having a string of boys who play computer games endlessly and dream of being YouTubers when they grow up.

After my lessons today with the Cîrciumaru family, I was glued to live score updates from the first-to-ten fifth-set tie-break between Roger Federer and John Millman. Federer won six straight points from 8-4 down; Millman will surely be devastated. I wasn’t too happy either – I’m kind of over Fed now, and would have liked the gritty Aussie to have pulled off the upset on home turf (he did shock Federer in the US Open in 2018). I did a rough calculation in my head of the chances of a Federer comeback from 4-8 (which is a deep hole for anybody, even Federer), assuming both players are of an equal standard. The “answer” depends on how big advantage you think the server has on each point, but it’s somewhere in the region of 1 in 18. Obviously, if you drop the “equal standard” assumption and instead assume Federer has some kind of edge (probably a psychological one due to his vast experience), his chances go up, but I wouldn’t go any higher than one in a dozen.

I’ve watched bits and pieces from Melbourne. My favourite match so far has been the one between Tommy Paul and Grigor Dimitrov. Paul was up two sets but Dimitrov came storming back and served for the match in the fifth, only for Paul to break back and play an absolute blinder in yet another deciding tie-break. There have been so many.

And Serena is out, beaten by Wang Qiang 7-5 in the third set, while Coco Gauff had another massive result in beating last year’s champion Naomi Osaka in two sets.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The skis and ski-nots

January 19, 2020 by 0 Comments

This week has been pretty work-heavy and I’m OK with that. Today I had my 100th lesson with Octavian – he’s my third student to rack up three figures. My number of students (to date, since I arrived here) are rapidly closing in on that mark too – I got a call this morning from the mother of a ten-year-old boy who, on Monday, will be number 99. I was supposed to see Ammar (number 98) this evening, but he called me at the last minute to say he couldn’t make it. We’re meeting tomorrow instead. This morning I did meet the IELTS-obsessed Victor (number 97) for a 2½-hour session which he wants to make a regular Saturday fixture. We spent the first hour on a long essay he’d written – I can’t fault his commitment. As for Ammar, I’d like to ask him about his journey from Syria, but I don’t want to pry.

In my fourth winter here, I’ve learnt that Timișoara people can be divided into two groups – those who ski and those who don’t. It’s hardly an even split – skiing is beyond the means of most here – but the people I get to teach aren’t “most”, and among them, skiing is a status symbol. Like most status symbols, skiing comes in levels. Hiring skis and boots for an occasional weekend is one thing, but becoming an accomplished skier with all the latest gear and spending weeks at a time in some Austrian chalet requires a whole other magnitude of moolah.

After watching the darts last weekend, I dipped into some old footage on Youtube. First I watched the tail end of a 1984 semi-final involving Jocky Wilson. Back then, you could smoke and drink on stage. In fact it was almost compulsory. Jocky Wilson smoked and drank a lot. At the end of the match, which he lost by a whisker, Jocky collapsed as he tried to congratulate his opponent. Eight years later, and they’d banned the on-stage drinking, supposedly to clean up the sport’s image. As a little boy I remember darts was always on TV, but by 1992, perhaps due to the game’s seediness, they only showed one tournament. I watched the ’92 final live at my grandmother’s place; my brother and I were staying the night there. My brother wanted to watch the Crufts dog show, which was delayed by this marathon darts match that Phil Taylor won, famously beating Mike Gregory in a sudden-death leg. I then had a look at the 2004 BDO final, which I didn’t see because I’d just moved to New Zealand, I had more important things to do like find a job, and I doubt I couldn’t have seen it anyway in Temuka. Judging from the decor and the crowd atmosphere, it could easily have been the eighties, but the 2004 final was won by the one and only Andy Fordham. He must have been at least 30 stone, and his arms were thicker than my legs.

I had a good chat with my brother this week. They were about to buy some more hens; their current stock has been depleted to just two. He said they’ll get ex-cage hens that have been pecked to within an inch of their lives and have never seen the sunlight.