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Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Floriile

April 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

Today is Floriile, or Palm Sunday in English – the last Sunday before Easter. When I went to church as a kid, we were all given palm fronds which we made into a cross; here they use willow boughs instead, and this morning I found some willow draped over my door handle. It’s been a beautiful day, sunny and 20 degrees or so. After a 90-minute maths lesson (I try and avoid teaching on Sundays), I met Mark in town. It was heaving, or rammed as people often say these days. A combination of the fine weather, the religious festival, and all the brightly coloured tulips, brought people out in their droves. We wanted to have lunch, but the sheer numbers of people meant service was even more crappy than normal. Mark seemed to fancy eating in Piața Unirii, but I wasn’t prepared to pay the prices you get there. We sat down at the Timișoreana place in Piața Victoriei, but nobody ever came to take our order. We got something kebabby from next door instead. Then we got a beer from some place. They had different sized bottles including an extra large one. Could we get one of those and two glasses, please? Sorry, no can do. Two glasses means two separate bottles. Sorry, that’s bloody ridiculous. Eating and drinking out in Romania just isn’t worth it most of the time. And if you find a rare place where it is worth it, keep going back there.

Yesterday was a monster day of lessons – nine hours of them. Although they were tiring, I didn’t have any of those online ones with young kids that are so often a struggle. Three of them were in Dumbrăvița, which is a different world, and not one I would wish to inhabit. My maths student’s mum noted that a box of chocolates on the desk were eleven days out of date and threw them away. Just imagine doing that. Chocolates. The mind boggles. It also gets me how many water bottles people from Dumbrăvița get through. Vast multi-packs of those half-litre ones. I always fill large bottles from the well, as is common here, but the modern Romanian way is mindless consumerism.

In the middle of my lessons I spoke to Mum and Dad who had got back from Moeraki. Mum looked good, and the plan seems to still be that they make the trip, but I know that one turn for the worse would probably can the whole thing. Still far from any guarantees at (as my brother called it) t minus three weeks. Then there’s what happens if they do make it. If you’re properly ill, a long-haul flight isn’t a great place to be, and the flight itself (pressurised cabin and all that) can really mess you up if you’re a bit flaky to begin with.

My car. I took it in to another place on Friday. They put it on one of those ramps, then the guy took it for a spin (without me). He told me I’d need to replace the steering rack. Sounds expensive, but I could live with that. I hung around a bit, then he updated his assessment. What about the valve timing? (I think that’s what he meant.) And the shocks. And something else I’ve forgotten. We ought to replace all of that too. I stuck around a while longer as he prepared a quote, which was just over 5700 lei, or £1000 or NZ$2250. The car is only worth about that, so obviously I didn’t take him up on that offer. My spidey senses told me that because I was foreign he was trying it on a bit. Would all of that go wrong at the same time? When I got back I went for a 40-minute drive and, but for a two-second judder, it was fine. I drove it for half an hour yesterday with no problems at all. Mark says he knows a mechanic, so I might try him next. My Peugeot has been my favourite of all the cars I’ve ever owned, so I’d be sad if I had to get rid of it after barely a year. If my parents are coming, it might be an idea to buy the equivalent of AA cover before they arrive.

Football. A surprise in the EFL Trophy final as Peterborough beat Blues 2-0. Posh scored two superb goals in the first half, including one just before the interval, and for all their work it just didn’t happen for Blues. Posh have had a disappointing season, so good on ’em for such a strong performance in the final and a well-deserved trophy. Vast armies of Blues fans descended on Wembley, and they wouldn’t have gone home too happy.

Snooker. Qualifying for the Crucible continues. There have been huge comebacks, at least one final-black decider, and today even a maximum break by Jackson Page. (If he gets another in the qualifying or the main tournament, he’ll win £147,000. You used to get that just for one maximum, back when they were much rarer.) For sheer drama though, I doubt you could top what happened on Friday night. I was trying to follow two matches at the same time: Jimmy White against Ashley Carty and 53-year-old Anthony Hamilton versus Steven Hallworth. When Carty won a close frame to go 9-5 up in a first-to-ten, I switched it off because I had an early start the next morning. Surely it was bye-bye Jimmy. Hamilton, who had been 9-0 up in his match, was still miles ahead, even though Hallworth looked like closing to 9-3. When I got up in the morning, I saw that Carty had beaten Jimmy alright (10-5) and Hamilton had eventually squeaked through 10-8, winning the 18th frame on the black, sometime after midnight. In other words, he narrowly averted the biggest collapse ever in the game. In his post-match interview, he said his eyesight had deteriorated badly, and that had he lost, that collapse would have followed him for the rest of his life. He also said something very British: “It would have been on quizzes and stuff.” I’m glad it didn’t come to that. Hamilton comes from Nottingham, and his nickname is “the Sheriff of Pottingham” which I absolutely love.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The madness of Mum

April 11, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning I had a 64-minute Skype chat – surely my last ever – with my aunt and uncle who still (and probably not for much longer) live at their place in Woodbury. It’s up for what they call a deadline treaty, basically a silent auction, and the deadline is just a few days away. I once tried to buy a flat in a similar way in Wellington. (I found the whole thing a bit intimidating, and that made me lowball my offer.) Mostly I spoke to my aunt; my uncle (83) has slowed down a bit. They’ve already put down a deposit on a place up the Downs (they always say up the Downs for some reason) in Geraldine which has something like a third of an acre. Sounds as if it should be ideal for them. (They’d go nuts if they didn’t have a decent amount of outdoor space.) And best they move now before my uncle deteriorates to the point where the move totally throws him.

We spent half our time discussing the move and the other half discussing Mum. My aunt is in regular contact with her. (Even more regular now.) She’s been practically tearing her hair out over Mum’s refusal to see the doctor. She’s been quite forceful with Mum of late, because she knows Mum respects her and won’t get angry with her in the way she does with Dad. Like me, she sees Mum’s recent decision making (the house, and now the business with her health) as a descent into madness.

Mum and Dad have gone to Moeraki for a few days. Mum broke her promise to see the doctor after finally going to the loo for the first time in a week. Crisis averted. Yeah right. I’ve been getting loo updates and tummy pain updates from Dad, which I’ve passed on to my brother. To find out what’s going on with Mum, we all have to basically ignore Mum. I hope she’s managed to get some sleep down in Moeraki – she’s been fatigued a lot lately.

I’ve had six lessons today, all of them with kids. The “highlight” was probably the lesson with ten-year-old Filip. I looked over the homework I’d set him last week. He’d made a few mistakes with the past simple. “Mum told me to write this,” he said. “Well I’m sorry, your mum is wrong.” I didn’t realise his mother had been listening in. At the end of the session she asked me what she’d done wrong. She couldn’t have been too offended because she gave me two Nutella pancakes. Occasional food is one of the little side benefits of my job.

Our beautiful warm weather ended abruptly last Saturday night; it’s been much chillier since then. Not that I mind too much. For one thing, it’s given me an excuse my mustard woolly jumper that I bought second hand a couple of months ago and makes me happy.

Football. Birmingham are promoted following their 2-1 win at Peterborough, aka Posh. Cue wild celebrations. Now they’re aiming for record points. They’re playing Posh again in Sunday’s EFL Trophy final. I’ll try and watch that; it should be fun. Barry Fry, director of football at Posh, was in attendance on Tuesday night. He’d turned 80 the day before. Birmingham’s arch-rivals Aston Villa lost 3-1 at PSG in the Champions League last night, conceding a late goal, but are still not out of the two-legged tie. They’ve done remarkably well just to get this far. Villa have also made the semis of the FA Cup. For all their success, they haven’t won a trophy since 1996, though they’ve had a number of near misses.

Snooker. Now it’s the qualifiers for the Crucible. I hope I can see some of the final-round matches. Two years ago I was able to catch them; it was pure drama. Jimmy White – incredible that he’s still even playing – fell over the line on Tuesday night after coming from a long way back to beat a Ukrainian who played painfully slowly. He won 10-9 in a match that finished at 1:20 am. (That’s British time, not my time. I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it.)

I took my car in yesterday. Somewhat predictably, they found nothing wrong with it. If the juddering only kicks in after half an hour or so, what do you do? What a pain. On Saturday I’ve got a chock-full day of lessons scheduled and I’ll have no choice but to use the car.

Today has seen a record up day on global stock markets. My back seems to have just about come right.

Family - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos

Wanting to get at the truth

April 7, 2025 by 0 Comments

I tried calling Dad last night. I hoped to get him in the short interval between Mum going to church and him going to Pleasant Point to fly his plane. With the time changes, this meant calling at midnight. I didn’t get a reply; he’d probably already gone to Pleasant Point, meaning that an interval when I can get him on his own simply doesn’t exist, unless it’s too windy for him to fly. (Normally I’d get a chance on a Tuesday when Mum plays golf, but since she got ill she hasn’t been playing.) I wanted to get Dad on his own because the only time I get the proper unspun news on Mum is when she isn’t there.

I called again this morning my time. Mum was clearly much better. Colour had returned to her cheeks. She looked better, in fact, than any time in the last two weeks. This could easily be a false dawn; we’ve had them before. She’s refusing to visit the doctor. I’d now put the chances of seeing them next month at 60%. (God, it’s gone up and down a bit, hasn’t it?) Encouraging, but still far too low to plan road trips or book accommodation or anything crazy like that.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Unusually, I had a long gap between lessons, so I sat in the park in Dumbrăvița – the nice part of Dumbrăvița – and read Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. A brilliant read. I’d managed to get half-way, then found I couldn’t concentrate, probably because of all the Mum stuff. I’m nearing the end of it now.

On Thursday I had a good lesson with the “I’m bored” girl. I made the whole thing about animals. Unfortunately I can’t do that every time, and anyway after a few sessions of animals she’d get bored again.

Word of the year so far: tariff. A lot of people still don’t know how many Rs and Fs it’s got. Trump’s tariffs (essentially half of the US’s trade deficit with each country, with a minimum of 10%) don’t make any sense and they may well have been whacked out on ChatGPT. But if we didn’t already know, we know now that the old world, the hyper-globalised world of the eighties onwards, is history. By the way, I’d dread to think how much my KiwiSaver has dropped in the last few days.

I’ve been watching the Tour Championship snooker which is being played in Manchester. The final is between John Higgins and Mark Selby. Higgins leads 5-3 in a first-to-ten, though Selby won the last two frames of the afternoon session. Lots of big breaks surrounding one out-of-character safety-heavy frame which Higgins won in 57 minutes. It’s unlikely I’ll see the finish because I have to make an early start in the morning.

Football. Birmingham hammered Barnsley 6-2 yesterday. Shame I didn’t see it. Barnsley had someone sent off in only the third minute, but at half-time it was one apiece. Then in the second half Blues went mad. With seven league games left, Blues now have a quite ludicrous 92 points.

Tulips in the park near the tennis courts on Friday.

A lovely day to be in town. Big spreads, especially in the US dollar rates.

I used to live in the building on the right. A fifth-floor apartment is for sale.

One of many lizards in the botanic park on Friday.

Dumbrăvița yesterday. My brother assures me that these are African geese.

I took this picture, which is on my street, because of the typically Romanian signage.
Family

I probably won’t see them

April 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

She’s still “not right”, whatever that means exactly. She needs to go back to the doctor again, but who knows whether she actually will. From what Dad said in his email, the chances that I’ll see them next month have plummeted to about 40%. I’m sure that Mum would prefer not to make the trip anyway, even if she was perfectly well. I think my percentages have been overestimates all along, for that very reason.

Update: My brother called me shortly after I posted that last paragraph. He’d just spoken to Mum and Dad. Things don’t look great. I’d guess 25% now. He’s resigned to the idea that his kids might never see their paternal grandparents again, and his daughter may never see them at all. It would be so damn difficult and expensive for all four of my brother’s family to make a trip over there, and my parents mightn’t be all that bothered even if they did. I suppose 25% isn’t zero, but they might already have made up their mind weeks ago regardless. And it is weird and concerning that Mum hasn’t discovered the root cause of her problem. The most important thing is Mum’s health, even if the “family political” implications of it are rather upsetting right now.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Getting Mum unblocked

April 2, 2025 by 0 Comments

Good news from Mum. After a painful day on Sunday that made it likely my parents wouldn’t be flying, she saw the doctor the next day. He said her constipation was a result of her colonography rather than the (still mysterious) underlying issue itself. The doctor gave her a box of sachets, kind of like the ones I put down the bathroom sink when it gets blocked. She took ten (!) of these sachets on one day, and they seem to have unblocked her. Unless something else kicks off, it’s more than likely they’ll make the trip now – I’d put it at something like 85–90%. (It must have been under 50% on Sunday. They were fearing the worst.) They’re due to arrive five weeks from tomorrow.

Around the world and beyond, we’ve had a deadly earthquake in Myanmar, an near-total eclipse, and major political developments such as Marine Le Pen being barred from running in the next French presidential election (for now at least). But as for me, not a lot has happened. The eclipse, which I tried to watch with an eight-year-old girl during our lesson last Saturday, was a damp squib. It all looks pretty normal so far, doesn’t it? And then the came over and that was that. On Sunday I went up and saw Elena, the lady who lives above me. I took Kitty along for the ride. Kitty hasn’t quite been the friend I’d hoped for. She’s just, well, there. And here, and everywhere. I might talk more about her next time.

Last night I watched Birmingham’s match at Bristol Rovers. The first half was great: Blues scored early (a brilliant strike from Keshi Anderson) but Rovers equalised and really dominated the half. They were unlucky not to be ahead at half-time. The second half wasn’t anything like as open. A few minutes from the end, Blues were awarded a soft penalty which Jay Stansfield tucked away, and they snatched a 2-1 win which they hardly deserved. After that result and a 4-1 home win over bottom-placed Shrewsbury last weekend, a colossal points total is still on. I see that Blues have entered a partnership with Birmingham University, my old alma mater. I also noticed the players had “Visit Birmingham” on the lower back of their shirts, before realising it also said “Alabama” in small letters. So they’re palling up with anything called Birmingham, even if it’s 4000-plus miles away. That’s something that their local rivals Aston Villa, far more successful than Blues over the years and with a fancier-sounding name, can’t really do.

One final thing: this morning I got the cazier judiciar which is a document that I’d applied for in early March that should allow me to update my residency permit in time for the upcoming Romanian presidential election.

Family - Language teaching - Politics

Busting boredom: not an easy task

March 31, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’ve just switched over to summer time. New Zealand moves to winter time next weekend. The combined two-hour time shift will make it a bit harder to contact Mum and Dad between now and October. In the meantime I should get to see them in the flesh. Still no guarantees there. For Mum it’s very up and down, hit and miss, and she still keeps pretending things are OK. Her sister-in-law, for whom Mum has a lot of respect, has been a big help – it’s largely down to her that she’s seeing the doctor tomorrow. I just know how Mum will be at the doctor’s. Just a bit of pain, nothing much really, I don’t suppose there’s much you can do, I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy.

I’ve got one lesson today, a Sunday, which should take my total for the week to 28½ hours – just under my target. This lesson is with a woman in her late forties. Yesterday I had lessons with four females aged between 8 and 48, so this weekend is entirely boy-free. On Thursday I had a lesson with an 11-year-old girl that I’d like to forget. I was teaching her directions when I saw out of the corner of my eye that she’d written something on the map I’d given her. Mă plictisesc. “I’m bored.” I told her that writing something like that isn’t very nice and she doesn’t have to see me if she doesn’t want to. In fact I said that if she did something like that again, it’d be over. I’d tell her mum that she’s not to come anymore. She then put her serious face on. When she said she had too much schoolwork and homework and private tuition in other subjects, I sympathised. She’s a victim of Romania’s pretty terrible education system. It means that I can make my lessons as unboring as possible and it’s unlikely to make much difference. A “highlight” of our session was when I gave her (for the first time) a writing exercise. A choice of three options to write about, including a time machine, which she chose. I hoped she’d write about the dinosaur age or flying cars, but she said she’d use her time machine to zip forward to … next week. Tech and social media makes a teacher’s task even harder. Say I’m teaching a girl who’s really into horses. I can include as much horse-related stuff as I like in my lessons, but she’ll still just want to watch horse videos on TikTok.

One thing that came out of that awful Signal group chat (leaked last week) was the US government’s hatred for Europe. If it wasn’t already obvious, that exchange confirmed that they really despise Europe and everything it stands for. That includes the UK. The “special relationship” was always tenuous as best and is now positively dangerous. As for visiting the US, I’m glad I did that ten years ago because I certainly wouldn’t do it now. There’s so much about America now that I find abhorrent. Having read American Psycho (which contained a whole lot of Trump from 35 years ago), I see that America is turning, at a rate of knots, into a crass Batemanised version of itself. Only straight, rich, white males matter. Anybody else is no more than an object. And straight, rich, white males who aren’t unquestioningly loyal to you are threats that must be eliminated.

Cat - Family - Other sports - Politics - Writing a book

Emotional distance

March 27, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’re having a warmish finale to March, but it’s grey and at times wet. Not a ray of sunshine to be seen, even in the long-range forecast. This could be England. (I much prefer this to the hellish temperatures we’re likely to get three months from now, though.)

Last night I had a chat with my brother. Inevitably, we talked about Mum and Dad. Especially Mum. My brother said she has an incredible knack for emotionally distancing herself from her family. We mentioned Dad’s mother who flew to New Zealand in 2005. She was 83 and largely immobile. She flew business class and needed a wheelchair to get to and from the gates. It wasn’t an easy trip, and it came at great expense – business class isn’t cheap and she wasn’t exactly wealthy – but she did it because she really wanted to see her son, even though she knew he’d be coming back to England in a couple of months for his heart valve surgery. That was the operation that nearly killed him and that Mum (emotional distance again) didn’t go over for. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a mum that really wanted to see us (and her two grandchildren)? One major difference between 20 years ago and now is the proliferation of ways to make video calls, but Skyping and Zooming are no real substitute, even if Mum thinks they are.

Mum hasn’t got any worse, so I’m bumping their chances of coming over back up to 80%. I’m concerned though that, apart from the scan, she’s done nothing to investigate a problem that started years ago. Taking a bunch of laxatives doesn’t get to the bottom (ha!) of the issue at all. As for Dad, he’s been in pain because he bit his cheek badly in the middle of the night. He has a habit of doing this – the insides of his cheeks are full of scars – but this episode was particularly bad.

Book news. Not great. Dorothy got in touch with the “publishers” yesterday. They’re now saying they’ll do 500 copies but the book would need to be accepted somehow by the Ministry of Culture and, if that happens, it’ll come at an unknown cost to me. I have no idea how their distribution works, if it works at all. There are a lot of ifs, suddenly. If it’s going to cost me more than a three-figure sum (in pounds), I’m out and I’ll try and find a publisher worthy of the name. They certainly exist in Romania, but the one I’ve been dealing with certainly isn’t it.

More chaos in the Trump “administration”. That leaked Signal group chat prior to the attack on Yemen. I mean, seriously, what a joke. And it obviously was a joke to them, with their use of emojis. This is what we’re dealing with here. A bunch of 12-year-olds. The idea that they’d even discuss something so serious and sensitive over some chat facility is ludicrous. And why did they need to bomb Yemen (and kill dozens of innocent civilians including children) anyway? It reminds me of the Tory ministers’ – and Dominic Cummings’ – WhatsApp messages during the early stages of the Covid pandemic. They didn’t have a clue, nor did they care. How have we sunk so low?

Last time I spoke to my parents, they had a game of cricket on TV in the background. New Zealand were playing, presumably in a Twenty20 match. Mum mentioned that NZ had already qualified for the football World Cup, long before it even happens. Well that’s nice, but that isn’t the achievement it used to be. The 2026 World Cup will feature 48 teams and 104 games. It’s too big. Everything has got too big. That’s half the reason we’re in this mess. What’s more, the group games – all 72 of them – will only serve to eliminate 16 of the teams. Most of the action will take place in the US; all the more reason to give it a miss. I watched NZ qualify for the 2010 tournament (32 teams) by beating Bahrain. That felt exciting and, well, meaningful, especially since NZ gave such a good account of themselves in the main competition. I wish I’d been around to see NZ qualify for the 1982 edition. It was a marathon campaign. The All Whites won in Australia to put them in the final round, then they eventually beat China in a do-or-die play-off. A country of three million beating one of close to a billion. Only 24 teams qualified then, so it was a huge achievement.

There has been a break in domestic football to accommodate international matches. This weekend the final run-in starts. There is talk of Birmingham breaking points records. Most teams in their division have eight or nine games left. Blues have eleven, including the EFL Trophy final. Their packed schedule might be their undoing; we’ll see.

Kitty injured her neck on Monday. I don’t know how she did it, only that it must have happened while I was out. There was a raw red patch. Later that day I saw blood on the windowsill in the little room next to my office. As I’d expect with Kitty, she was totally undeterred by this.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching

It’s all gone to shit in America

March 25, 2025 by 0 Comments

Last week I got 31 hours of lessons. My best lesson was probably the one with the 16-year-old girl on coordinate geometry. She was clearly cheesed off with her latest maths teacher – she’s had so many now – and I thought I explained the topic in a way that she could understand. It was a productive session.

Yesterday I spoke to my cousin in Albany, New York. Inevitably we discussed the Trump presidency, world events since he took over, and where we go from here. Who might get nukes next? We agreed that the world is a volatile, more dangerous place now. Where we disagreed was on America itself. I have a far more negative outlook for the US than he does. He thinks America’s famous checks and balances will still hold and that there will be proper midterms in 2026 and a proper presidential election – which Trump will play no part in – in 2028. I’m far less convinced. The checks and balances nearly failed on January 6th 2021 and they did fail four years later because there’s no way Trump should have been allowed to run again. Yes, I know about the 22nd amendment and how changing the constitution is practically impossible at this point, but who’s to say the constitution will even mean anything in 2028? Or the courts, or congress, or anything? I keep coming back to a podcast I watched the day after the election. Nothing is off the table now. Absolutely nothing. Trump could be a dictator, in power for life, and the vast majority of Americans will either be perfectly happy with that or too caught up their own pointless shit (or just trying to survive) to even care.

I watched the rest of Nomadland. It was beautiful in a way. A lot of it was very moving. The saddest moment was when Swankie died. (The woman who played Swankie is very much still alive. But she lives in a van in real life; her husband died of a brain tumour.) The abject failure of the American system, whatever that even is, just about forces people to go off-grid. Live in a van, become trailer trash (I think that’s the term), maybe homeschool your kids. America is a country of extraordinary natural beauty and very welcoming people, but its incredible culture already seems to be a long way in the past. Diners, baseball, neon signs, Chevrolets, sixties counterculture, Simon and Garfunkel’s America with a four-day hitchhike from Saginaw, Michigan to Pittsburgh. I visited some of the southern states ten years ago because that’s what I wanted to see. Now it’s giant stroads with no pavements, giant SUVs, giant retail parks, giant billboards advertising insurance, constant reminders that you could lose it all, with everything sponsored and monetised and commodified.

Yesterday I was in Peciu Nou when I spoke to Mum and Dad on Skype. There was a discordant peal of bells from the nearby church and a crane – I hadn’t appreciated the wingspan of these birds – landing on a lamp-post. Mum is still much the same, with her stomach pain and irregular trips to the loo. She’s on various medicines, presumably to shift it all.

There’s one other lesson I should talk about: maths with an 11-year-old girl. Her knowledge of compass points was sketchy to say the least. I mentioned this to my brother who’s been teaching his son compass directions at the age of two and a half. I think he’s got a better handle on them than this kid does. Compass points are less ingrained in Romanian life than in the UK (or even more so in New Zealand). Northland, Southland, Westland. Warm nor’westers, cold southerlies. I grew up in East Anglia. I went to university in the West Midlands. Places are “up north” or “down south”. When I was at school, the mnemonic for compass points was “never eat shredded wheat” which I thought was rather good. It even rhymes.

Cat - Family - Films - Life :)

Tough to take

March 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

So when I spoke to Mum on Wednesday night I said that I’d fly over to New Zealand if they couldn’t make it over to Europe. She replied, “Are you sure? What about your work?” Well, you know, if I come it’ll be in the height of my summer when I’ll want to escape the heat and will have less work anyway. Plus I can still give online lessons if I want. It was only yesterday that it dawned on me. She couldn’t give a damn whether she sees me or not. Or my brother. Perhaps she’d even prefer not to see us. It took so long for me to figure it out because it didn’t seem possible. How can somebody not care about seeing her own children? Yesterday I sent her a message: “I really hope you can get your tummy troubles sorted and start making regular trips to the loo. Right now Kitty is sunning herself on the window ledge and she says she can’t wait to see you.” In her reply she just blanked the whole issue. As for Dad, he’s certainly better than Mum in this regard, but even he isn’t exactly champing at the bit to see his kids. Or grandchildren. This is tough to take. Last night I woke up at 2:18, checked in on Kitty, then spent the next three hours chewing all of this over in my head. I’m now putting the chances of Mum and Dad coming at 70% – down a bit, but still decent. But even if they come, it won’t be with any real enthusiasm.

On Wednesday morning I went to the bank to pay some money in. It’s a horrible branch, but it’s near the supermarket and I wouldn’t need to talk to anybody anyway. Just deposit the cash via the machine, then leave. The place stank and the machine’s screen seemed to be covered in a hazy brownish black muck. It was only when I tried to wipe it off that I realised the “muck” was on the inside. As usual, the machine rejected some of my notes and I had to repeat the process six or seven times. Finally I was done. Not the exact amount I’d planned to put in, but close enough. But then it swallowed my card. Um, did I just imagine that? I looked around just in case. No card. Jeez, what now? If you wanted to see anybody, there was a long queue. I spoke up. The machine has taken my card. The teller, a woman of 40-odd, told me to join the queue like everyone else. At this point I made a scene. This isn’t normal! Join the queue. The woman didn’t even look at me, or anybody else. I was braced for an hour in the queue followed by who knew what. A few minutes later I heard a young woman say, in English, “Is this your card?” The machine had spat my card out while she was using it. Amazing security they have there. I was relieved, but won’t dare visit that branch again for at least a year. Half an hour later, at the queue for the supermarket checkout, an older man was having difficulty with his Kaufland app. The cashier (a woman of 50 or so) really laid into him. You have to do this, then this, don’t you get it?! The man simply accepted this appalling treatment in a way I never would have. I love Romania, but the customer service here continues to be dire.

I’ve started watching a 2021 film called Nomadland. I’ve only seen the first 20 minutes, but I can tell it will be fascinating. It’s about Americans who have lost their jobs and survive by travelling around the country in RVs, getting odd jobs here and there. I was going to write more about America and its decline, but I don’t feel like writing much more today. I’ve teed up a video call with my cousin who lives in New York state.

My latest maths student is proving hard to teach. She can calculate, up to a point, but hasn’t yet learnt how to think. Teaching that isn’t an easy task at all.

Driving - Family - Language learning - Life :)

If we come over

March 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum’s scan was all clear. A relief: it isn’t colon cancer. But what now? She’s already seen the doctor since then (great that it was so quick) and she’ll now have a colonoscopy. Dad has been more insistent of late – it won’t just magically go away if you ignore it – without bugging her to the point where she gets angry. On Monday Dad said “If we come over…”. If. Yikes. It’s seven weeks until they’re due to arrive. I told my brother that they’ll still probably make the trip – I said an 80% chance – but he thinks I’m being optimistic. If they do cancel, the first thing I’ll do is book a trip to New Zealand. For my brother, who can’t simply do that, it would be pretty devastating. (My parents know this, you would hope, which is why I’m saying 80%. Also, Mum’s pain hasn’t got any worse.)

Last week I got a reminder to renew my car insurance. Seriously? It’s been a year? I clearly remember the day I picked up the car. All that gubbins at the town hall in Sânandrei, then actually having to drive the thing. It was fine to begin with, but then I hit the city traffic and am I even going to survive?! It’s been seven years. When I finally parked it after a hair-raising 20-odd minutes, I was distinctly clammy. I remember my drive to Recaș the following week – on a sunny day – and how exciting it was to visit another town at the drop of a hat like that. Then there were those trips to the mall to get all the paperwork done. These state-controlled offices are always so forbidding, and the vehicle registration office was no exception. I did end up with a comedy number plate, so there was that, and it was worth paying for a broker to sort me out. Without her, I’d have been sent from pillar to post without having a clue what was happening. I’ve been really happy with the car and the added freedom it’s given me, but at times on my various trips last summer I thought, you know what, it would be quite nice now chugging along on a train and looking out the window or reading a book. As for driving in Romania itself, well that all seems pretty normal now, though roundabouts (there are so many of them) still feel kind of weird here, and I’m not the world’s best parallel parker. I suppose I very rarely park in the city, parallel or otherwise, so I don’t get much practice.

Last weekend there was a fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia which killed at least 59 people. It happened at a club called Pulse in the town of Kočani, which only has around 25,000 people. The fire was caused by a pyrotechnic display, but a raft of safety violations contributed to the terrible death toll. It’s all very reminiscent of the Colectiv fire in Bucharest, not long before I came to Romania, which killed 64. Just like the one in North Macedonia, Colectiv only had one exit. Of those 64 deaths, most of them didn’t occur at the club but later, in hospital. The hospitals had diluted disinfectant which was a dreadful scandal in itself. (When I was a student in Birmingham, there was a popular club called Pulse. I only went there once. That was enough for me.)

I had my weekly Romanian session on Monday morning. The truth is I’m not learning anything anymore. If anything I’m going backwards, and I’m at a loss to know what to do about that. (One-on-one sessions, which I had for a short time in the autumn, would certainly help. Dorothy is at a higher level than me, and her involvement doesn’t help.)