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Keeping it real

February 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

When I spoke to Dad on Friday he said he’d had headaches (or maybe just one long headache) for two weeks straight. I couldn’t tell from our Skype calls – he’s had 60-plus years of practice at hiding just how bad it is. It must take a terrible toll on him.

Also on Friday I took Kitty to the vet for a pre-spay check-up. She was fine. They swabbed her ears to see if she had mites but she was clear. I marvelled once again at how much vets enjoy their jobs. I never saw a fraction of that level of passion from an actuary. As long as I prevent Kitty from eating or drinking overnight, she’ll have her bits taken out on Wednesday morning. Then she’ll need to wear one of those plastic cone thingies over her head for twelve days so she doesn’t lick or bite the wound. Kitty has been great of late. Three weeks ago I despaired as she darted all over the place when I’d had almost no sleep; I wanted to take her batteries out. Now it seems she’s got used to me. She shows more affection and no longer attempts to escape. Maybe she’s lulling me into a false sense of security, though somehow I doubt cats think on that level.

A recurring theme of my last few posts has been a dislike of fakeness. I’m fine with things being rough around the edges as long as they’re real. I’m clearly not alone in this, and I think my manual teaching style with all my handmade cards appeals to certain people. I even like my experiences to be “real”; getting my car stuck last Sunday wasn’t exactly in the plan, but meeting those helpful locals almost made it worth it. In 2025 there’s more fakeness in our lives than ever before. I hear Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government banging on about AI and I get their concerns about GDP growth and not wanting to be left behind, but I’m not convinced that any of this stuff will make many people feel an improvement in their lives.

Seven months on from their UK election win, Labour have been a massive disappointment. After the pure callousless of the last lot (the Covid inquiry made me upset and angry), I really thought Labour would be much better. Yes, they’ve been dealt a rotten economic hand, but they’ve shown no will to damn well use the thumping majority afforded to them by the electoral system and build a society and an environment that works for British people. Reform the council tax system that is (wholly unfairly) based on 1991 property prices. Nationalise the railways. Stuff that’s eminently doable and would be popular. There’s still time, but if they don’t get their act together pretty sharpish we could be looking at Reform grabbing power next time – a terrifying prospect.

When I spoke to Dad, I suggested that I lack ambition. He said, oh no, quite the opposite. That was very nice of him, but I do sometimes feel I should be trying to achieve more. When I met Dorothy for lunch on Friday, I mentioned my master’s degree idea. She thought it was a good one in spite of the cost. People blow much more than that on a car which quickly depreciates, she said. Talking of degrees, my Wellington-based cousin’s eldest son has finished his degree at Canterbury and is now embarking on a PhD in Sydney. It’ll all be paid for. Not fair, honestly. My cousin is loaded and could pay for his PhD many times over, but she did a PhD herself and knows what buttons to press and what strings to pull.

Book news. There’s no news, which is a concern. I’ll get on to the publisher in the morning.

The highlight of my busy work day yesterday was my two-hour online lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. I asked her to write an essay, which she agreed to do, but only if I also wrote one in Romanian. So I wrote 460 words about my grandmother. A useful exercise. I’ve still got big gaps which, try as I might, I’ve never been able to fill. Sentence structure, mainly. Though my nouns and verbs and adjectives are mostly perfectly fine, I often fail to make my sentences sound properly Romanian.

Conveniently, a break in yesterday’s schedule allowed me to watch some football. Birmingham overcame a slow start to beat Rotherham 2-1 at home. Blues are in a very strong position at the top of the table now. At the same time (following what I said a couple of posts ago) I followed Portsmouth’s home game against Burnley. The atmosphere was just like it was all those years ago. Absolutely mental. The game finished goalless, but it was packed with incident all the same.

Below is a picture from Karlsruhe Park, which is close to the guest house I stayed at when I arrived here in 2016. The German city of Karlsruhe is twinned with Timișoara. This city has many other “twins” including Nottingham in England, but not all of those twins are twinned with each other. That makes me think of equivalence relations that I studied in my first year of uni. Our lecturer called the tilde symbol, which represents an equivalence relation, “twiddles”. This amused me.

A back view of the old abattoir

Family - Life :)

Niece news

January 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning – on the last day of Joe Biden’s presidency – my niece entered the world. She was eight pounds something, so bigger than my nephew. As far as I know both mother and baby are doing fine. A few hours after my brother sent me the picture with no accompanying text, he told me the name. No zeds, no exes, an eminently spellable and pronounceable name consisting of only four letters. That was a relief. My initial thought was to write a limerick using her name – “There was a young lady called…” – because her name lends itself rather well to that form, but I couldn’t get lines three and four to work.

But heck, they’ll have their hands full now. My brother has been truly incredible with his son, but I doubt he’ll be able to give his daughter the same kick-start in life. And I dunno, the world in 2025 just seems so devoid of meaning to me that I don’t think I’d want to bring any more humans into it. Personally I think I’d be a pretty rubbish dad anyway. A Kitty is about my limit.

Yesterday I caught up with Mark in town. It was his idea to eat at a place in the bastion, but when we got there it was totally dead. After almost coming a cropper on the icy tiling outside, we decided to check out Eat Like a Man just off Piața Unirii. We were intrigued by the name and bearded man logo. It’s basically a burger bar where you can order a normal-sized meal like we both had, or a totally abnormal-sized one. We polished off our burgers and chips in no time, while pondering whether this or that item on the menu was sufficiently manly. It’s quite a small place. The decor is bright yellow and black – Wellington colours – with none of that awful ambient music. So many places are all modern and insipid and hospitally and I can’t handle them.

Dad got an email from the people who manage their flat in St Ives to say that water had been leaking into two flats below. They had to get their friend to check it out. As it happened, there was no leak from their flat at all, but not before Mum and Dad had been sent into a mad panic over the potential cost. They still have their other St Ives flat too. At 75-odd, they shouldn’t be dealing with this. Dad told me recently about one of the model planes he flies, one that he’d designed and built himself a little while ago. (I tried to imagine doing that myself. Yep, I know what planes look like. I could probably draw out a plane and cut the bits out of balsa wood and glue them together. But would the thing fly? Not a chance. I wouldn’t even know what bits and bobs to put inside to make it fly.) This is the man who has made a living from his paintings for 45 years and put together 25 pictures for my small book. A man of many talents. He said he’d like to be in his shed designing and building model planes, but he can’t because of all the work that’s still required on the house. That made me feel sad.

Family - Music - Photos

At last some shut-eye

January 18, 2025 by 0 Comments

Still no baby news. I wonder who will be the US president when she’s born. I heard that Trump’s inauguration (ugh) will take place inside because it will – quite aptly – be bitterly cold on Monday. Heck, it’s been eight years since his first one and everything now feels eight times worse.

Elena, my neighbour who lives above me, got back yesterday. I’ve just been up to see her. She seems in remarkably fine fettle after such a trip. Her journey hasn’t affected her ability to talk, that’s for sure.

Mum and Dad have been down in Moeraki since Tuesday. They’re able to call me from there now by tapping into a neighbour’s wi-fi. Before they’d have to use some hotspot thingy outside the fish and chip shop in Hampden, and normally the line was terrible. So far they’ve had a disappointing summer, weather-wise. When we spoke it was unseasonably cold and windy there, despite the blue sky.

I slept better the last two nights. Last weekend and early this week were a total mess. Kitty’s constant darting around was doing my head in too. Seriously Kitty, you can stop this shit now. She’s calmed down a bit since. One of her favourite haunts is the top of the old cupboard in the “balcony” bit of my living room. Another of her favourites is my desk, because of all the pens and other stationery for her to play with. She’s very curious.

Since my self-imposed YouTube ban I’ve been using Spotify a lot more for music. There are two songs I’ve been playing over and over lately. One is Sad White Reggae by British band Placebo. Heaven knows why the song is called that. He talks about being on a train to Scotland (I think I just really like trains) and about every river flowing “back to Dundee”. The song is about loss. And insomnia. It just all seems to fit. The second song is Crowded House’s Four Seasons In One Day. Such a Kiwi expression. The weather could be pretty damn changeable in England too. But in Timișoara we don’t exactly get nor’westers springing up out of nowhere, or cold southerlies, or the river suddenly half-way up people’s gardens. We’re nine hours’ drive from the sea after all. Anyway, the best line of this Crowded House song for me is “Up the creek and through the mill” which is where a lot of us feel we’ve been dragged, a lot of the time. I should also mention the line “The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain”. I bet a lot of people were confused by that one.

After visiting Kaufland (one of the big supermarkets) today, I decided to look around rather than head straight home. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

One of Timișoara’s other train stations

Bega-Pam: off to the left is the bread factory. I don’t know if it still operates.

A brace of bums. I don’t know how they managed to get BUM on both their cars.

The old water tower

Popa is the surname and perhaps Romania’s most common.

But how do they know?

Cat - Family - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos

Phase five (plus Kitty pics)

January 13, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’re all waiting for my brother’s second child to arrive. It can only be a few days away now. If my niece is born on Thursday, all three of the numbers in her date of birth (day, month and year) will be square. (That’s with the year as 2025, not just 25 which of course is also square.) That’s obviously the last thing that matters. Her name doesn’t even matter all that much. All that really matters is that she’s healthy.

Kitty. Yikes. She’s so damn active now. After four days of relative calm when she’d happily jump on cupboards and just sit there, she’s now darting through my flat at breakneck speed, often dragging something noisy. Especially at night. I just know she wants to be outside, running around chasing stuff. I hadn’t been sleeping well even pre-Kitty, and my doctor prescribed me Optisomn which has magnesium plus a concoction of other ingredients: melatonin, hops, vitamin B6, and passionflower. But hyperactive one-year-old Kitty isn’t helping me. Last night was pretty much a write-off, sleep-wise. Today I went (for the first time) to Jumbo, a Greek-owned hypermarket near the airport which sells cheap kids’ toys, cheap household stuff, cheap decorations, cheap stationery, and yes, cheap pets’ toys. I don’t know if I’ll go back there in a hurry because the floor was lethally slippery and it has a horrible layout where there’s only one way of getting from any point to any other point and you end up walking miles. I must have spent an hour there, all the time in a complete daze. I did however get Kitty a bed and a bunch of things that go rattle and ding, to go with the scratching post and few toys she already had. With a bit of luck (!) she might stop thinking that plants or flash drives or grout around the bath are toys.

Kitty pics, including the trip to the vet

I’ve had a good week of lessons, including (unusually on a Sunday) one today. No sessions with those “AI bot” young women, that’s probably why. I won’t be so lucky in the coming week. And in between I’ve had some brilliant customer service. The vet was simply a lovely person, the little lady at the pharmacy was extremely pleasant as always, and even at the mall (which I tend to avoid) I got service with a smile. I often lament Romania’s poor customer service, so when it’s the opposite it deserves to be mentioned too.

There was an interesting moment in my lesson with the 14-year-old twins on Thursday. They played Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in a joint effort. For the £8000 question, I asked them what Concorde was. A very fast what? Plane, train, car or boat. They used their 50/50 lifeline which gave them just plane and train as options. They went for train and it was game over. While I was in the middle of explaining what Concorde actually was, the boy said “who cares”. Seeing my face, he then said “only joking”. Ah, but you’re not really joking, are you? You actually don’t care. And that isn’t your fault. It shows that when you move 20 years forward and 1000 miles east, something culturally pretty damn important (there was the crash in 2000 too which was a massive news story at the time) becomes a total nothing.

Football. Birmingham beat Lincoln 2-1 in the FA Cup. They took the lead after just 30 seconds, then with 15-odd minutes to go, Lyndon Dykes rifled home the sort of volley they use the word “exquisite” for. It was a brilliant strike. Lincoln got a late penalty that probably shouldn’t have been a penalty, but Blues held on for the win. They’ll be at home to Newcastle in the fourth round. Quite a fun draw. Another game that caught my eye was Tamworth against Spurs. It was 0-0 after 90 minutes. Up until last season, that would have meant a replay at one of the best grounds in the country, a heck of a day out and a nice big windfall for plucky little Tamworth. But no, replays have been scrapped. The game proceeded to extra time, and Tottenham won 3-0. In a few years, they’ll probably ditch extra time too. Everything just gets that tiny bit more crap, doesn’t it?

In my head I can split my time in Romania so far into four stages. The fourth stage has been the longest, starting at around the time Russia invaded Ukraine. But I’ve just had the feeling in the last few days that phase five has begun. The books, the cat, tuning out of the news, thinking about what the hell I’ll do if and when I leave Romania, and even maybe studying again.

Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Kitty update

January 9, 2025 by 0 Comments

This morning I took Kitty to the vet to be jabbed. She had a thermometer stuck up her bum (What is normal body temperature for a cat? It’s not something I’d ever thought about. Turns out it’s a couple of degrees higher than for humans), then she got the rabies vaccine. The vet – a middle-aged lady who was lovely – said we were on the verge of being rabies-free after 15 years of no cases, then a case popped up in Timiș two years ago which reset the clock to zero. The vet said that three-coloured cats like Kitty are almost always female, for some genetic reason. I can see there’s a long Wikipedia page all about the genetics of cat fur.

She’s been a pleasure to look after so far. I was amazed this morning how easily she slipped into a pink zipped bag I’d bought for her. Having a pet means you have conversations and interactions that you otherwise wouldn’t have. For instance, my brother called me on WhatsApp so his wife and son could see her. He told me not to put the food and water near each other, and gave me the evolutionary reason why: a cat (whose sense of smell is much stronger than a human’s) may think that its water is contaminated if its food source is too close by. There’s a lot I’m finding out.

Last night I spoke to Mum and Dad. They’d clearly been speaking to my brother who must have knocked some sense into them about the cat. I really didn’t understand it – my brother has had a cat for years. It’s maybe something to do with me living in an apartment, whereas my brother lives in a house. Dad thinks you can’t do anything if you live in a flat. But the way they were talking on Sunday, it was like I’d have to pay to put Kitty through university.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about doing a master’s degree in linguistics. Probably applied linguistics – the practical implications of it – though I wouldn’t mind knowing more of the theory too. I still get confused when it comes to velar fricatives and the like, and I doubt I could accurately diagram a sentence. If I did it, I’d probably do it over two years (I have too much work to do it in one) as a distance learning course from a UK university. The biggest benefit would simply be the knowledge, though having the piece of paper at the end wouldn’t do me any harm if, say, I wanted to go back to New Zealand and work there. There’s one major snag in all this: the cost. It would set me back £10,900. Eleven grand. It’s a fair old chunk of change, especially when I live in Romania and everything is at a much lower level. I might not even get accepted. I’ll ask my brother what he thinks – he seems to be the go-to guy for just about everything right now.

I see that Blues play Lincoln in the FA Cup on Saturday. It’s an early kick-off, so I’ll be busy teaching. Lincoln are known as the Imps – their club crest is a funny imp mascot thingy. All these cool little traditions of English football. Lincoln, by the way, is where my brother did his degree through. His graduation ceremony took place in the picturesque Lincoln Cathedral. The whole city is extremely picturesque if Google Maps is anything to go by. (I don’t think I’ve ever been there.)

One last thing. This morning I saw an article in the Guardian on the unremitting beigeness of people’s homes, a few days after I’d (sort of) written about the subject myself. Dressing your kids in beige is bordering on cruelty to me. One sentence that stood out to me was: “It is difficult to resist being a leaf in the wind of trend and fashion.” I dunno, I seem to find that quite easy.

We’ve had lovely spring-like weather the last three or four days, with temperatures climbing into the mid-teens. We’ll be back down to earth with a wintry bump very shortly, though.

Cat - Family

This one wasn’t on my bingo card

January 7, 2025 by 0 Comments

Get cat. Not on my “goals for the new year” list. But on day five of 2025, I took possession of Kitty. My British friends in Dumbrăvița somehow acquired it – her – but because they have two large dogs, they were desperate to have it rehomed so she didn’t get killed. She’s been vaccinated and dewormed and defleaed, but not spayed. I really hope she isn’t pregnant. I hope to keep her within the confines of my flat. She’s little – just under three kilos – and a mixture of black, white, and a kind of caramel brown colour. So for now at least, I’ve joined the 48% (accordingly to a survey) of households in Romania with at least one cat. That’s a really high number, but when I look at the sheer number of cats skulking around any street or apartment block, it passes my sniff test. Yes, Kitty is her actual name. I’ve got a cat that’s basically called Cat. My friends called her that, and it’s even written on her little booklet. Though they said I could change the name, I won’t, because I can’t think of anything better (it’s harder somehow when she’s multicoloured), and I live in Romania where Kitty isn’t a generic cat name.

When I told my parents that I’d acquired a cat, they were apoplectic. Really angry, both of them. As if I’d destroyed my life. Why would you do this to yourself? You’ll have to clean out the stinky litter tray, it’ll make a mess of your furniture, you’ll have to make trips to the vet, and how will you ever be able to go away? You live in a flat, for crying out loud. You damn well get rid of it before we come over. They were also angry with my friends for foisting the cat on me, as they saw it. And yes, I get it. Having a pet is a complication, and fewer complications is nearly always a good thing. Before Kitty arrived I was up half the night thinking of all those complications. But jeez, they spent nearly a million dollars on one massive complication that utterly dwarfs having a mostly independent animal in your home; because of it they couldn’t go away for years, and it ended up making my brother pretty upset. Me too, honestly. When I showed Mum the cat on our Skype call, she perked up a bit – “It is actually quite a nice-looking cat.” When I was little, we had a female cat called Pep. In 1989, prior to our six-month stay in New Zealand, Mum gave Pep to one of the other teachers to look after. After a couple of months in Temuka we got a letter from her: Pep had gone missing. We never saw her again. Since then, my parents have become pretty anti-pet. A few years later my older cousin dumped her fat cat on us; I’m sure it had a name but for us it was just The Cat.

It’s quite possible I won’t have Kitty for all that long. Dorothy said she’d really like to have a cat, whereas I’m basically cat-agnostic. Fine with one, fine without one. If she really wants Kitty, she can have her.

I stumbled upon something online today that said that 48% of Birmingham residents have at least one tattoo. I wasn’t looking for anything related to Birmingham, and certainly not tattoos, so I’m not exactly sure how it came up. Anyway, that’s a staggeringly high figure, and the same as the cats-in-Romania number. Maybe I should get a tattoo as well. Mum and Dad would really love that.

Update: I’ve just spoken to my brother. I showed him the cat and told him about Mum and Dad’s reaction. They’re being bloody ridiculous, he said. Without prompting, he mentioned their insane house business.

My niece is likely to arrive any day now.

Family - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos - Politics

Darts and car parks

December 30, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just got back from my lesson with ten-year-old Filip. (They don’t mess around with ph in Romanian, let alone poncy French spellings like Philippe.) We had our session in his little sister’s room, which was full of shelves piled high with books that obviously weren’t for her immediate benefit. There were novels that would have been bought in the seventies, travel books, and medical books including a fat tome all about excretion.

Yesterday my brother called me on WhatsApp. The little one was still up and about. I had my first-ever verbal interaction with him. I picked up the word Christmas and a whole load of babababa-sounding words which my brother translated for me; he was talking about family members.

Because I had a cold (and still do), I drove to Dumbrăvița on Saturday for my pair of two-hour lessons, instead of cycling there as I normally do. It’s my only work destination where driving is a significant time-saver. I came back via the mall, because my doctor’s clinic is now attached to the mall and I knew he’d be there. (I wanted to pick up my monthly allocation of pills.) But being a Saturday between Christmas and New Year, the multi-storey car park was a nightmare. I entered through the barrier, drove up and down and around in circles for ten minutes, then decided the whole thing wasn’t worth it and headed through the exit. They give you an hour’s free parking. My doctor’s next stint is New Year’s Eve so I’ll see him then instead. I got flashbacks of the Park Street multi-storey car park in Cambridge, which was even worse. When I was little, Mum went shopping in Cambridge on a Saturday (she often brought me along) and parked in that horrible car park which was built in the sixties, as so many architectural monstrosities were. Its levels were called “decks” which were denoted by letters going up to L, if memory serves. She mostly parked on Deck F. Then we walked down the staircase which stank of pee. I don’t remember Mum being all that stressed by it; she must have got used to it. I’m happy to report that a wrecking ball was taken to that hellhole a few years ago. (I once read a book that was partly set in a different Cambridge car park, sometime in the nineties. This was the Lion Yard car park, which no longer exists either.)

Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. I was born towards the end of his only term, so obviously I have no memory of him as president. But it’s clear to me that he had more compassion and integrity in his little finger than the thought-free, morality-free president-elect has in his entire body. Carter was a victim of circumstance and America’s celebrity culture. America boomed under Reagan, and later Clinton, but you have to wonder at what long-term cost.

The darts. On Friday I saw Damon Heta hit a nine-darter, the second of this year’s tournament. (Christian Kist earlier got one.) Unlike a 147 in snooker, a perfect leg of darts happens in the blink of an eye. Heta got £60,000 for that, Prostate Cancer UK benefited to the same tune, and someone in the crowd also took home sixty grand. Unfortunately for Heta (just like Kist before him), he didn’t win. When I started my maths lesson, he was 3-1 up against Luke Woodhouse in a race to four, but he proceeded to lose the final nine legs of the match. One match that stood out for me was Ricardo Pietreczko, a German who appears rather awkward in interviews, against Scott Williams, who looks for all the world like someone who I’d have avoided like the plague at school. Maybe I’ve got him completely wrong and he was the shy and retiring type, but I doubt it. No wonder I wanted the awkward guy to win. Which he did, 4-1, after a very solid performance. Another match I had my eye on involved Ricky Evans. A cartoonish figure, his face is a picture every time he throws, which he does at lightning speed. He was beaten yesterday by Robert Owen of Wales, 4-2. I was glad to see Chris Dobey get through, but the real story must be last year’s champion Luke Humphries who lost 4-1 to Peter Wright.
Update: I’ve just watched a dramatic match between Dobey and Dutchman Kevin Doets. Dobey was looking good but it almost slipped away from him. He scraped through in a deciding set to make the last eight. Both players missed a plethora of doubles, adding to the drama.

The book. Lots of monkeying around with fonts and formats, but it’s coming together.

Standing on the new footbridge over the Bega, with the old one just in front of me.
Books - Family - Life :) - Writing a book

My un-Christmas

December 27, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s Boxing Day here. The day after my un-Christmas and the 20th anniversary of the tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people.

Last Thursday, the 19th, I had a video call with my friend who came to visit in September. He was about to travel to Normandy to spend Christmas with his girlfriend’s family. I told him that seeing him in Timișoara was a real highlight of my year, which was the truth. He surprised me slightly when he said that it was a major highlight for him too. I suppose I’m just not used to people saying that seeing me is a highlight.

On Sunday, straight after I wrote my last post, I went to Dorothy’s church. Unlike a lot of churches, this one seems harmless. The service lasted 1¾ hours and included a few carols, including one with a verse in French. I quite enjoyed the mini-detour into French. But gosh, that sermon. When will this thing ever end? He was tireless, not even taking a sip of water. Mercifully, at last he said (in Romanian), “As I come to the end…”. He spoke for 45 minutes. I was subjected to some pretty bad sermons as a kid – the priest mumbled so much that you couldn’t make out what he was saying – but at least none of them lasted 45 minutes. Afterwards there was food – good food and plenty of it – and chat, which I wasn’t really in the mood for, though I did talk for a while with the Aussie lady. Before I left, Dorothy gave me an old map of Timișoara, printed in 1983, as a sort of Christmas present. The cathedral, which was completed during the Second World War, was conspicuous in its absence. The government thought it could deny the existence of a major religious landmark by simply leaving it off maps. How bizarre.

The following day I had three lessons, all of them with boys, then later I had dinner with Mark and his wife in Dumbrăvița. It had started to rain just before I got on my bike, and I very nearly wimped out and took the car instead. I took my salată de boeuf and other bits and pieces. Whenever I go to their place at the far end of Dumbrăvița I think that I could not live there. No little bars, no market stalls, no ornate cast-iron doorways, in fact nothing at all more than a few years old. It would do my head in. When I got there, I was immediately greeted by the less placid of their two big dogs. (The one nice thing about where they live is the wood nearby, which is great for the dogs.) We sat down and shared a meal. Ambient music, the sort that I never choose to listen to in any circumstances, emanated from their smart TV. They were mostly very good songs, but annoyingly “ambientised”. We talked a lot about teaching, which makes sense – we all have that in common. We also talked about religion. It isn’t taught at all at their school, when really it should be. We all wondered how a very high IQ doesn’t stop a person having very staunch – and sometimes dangerous – religious beliefs. I only drank one glass of wine, because I knew I’d need to be alert the next day. After we ate, they taught me how to play the card game Shithead. I do remember playing it in France in 2000, but couldn’t remember a thing about it. Mark’s wife gave me a whole load of information without ever telling me that suits didn’t matter. Finally I twigged. So suits don’t matter?! That was the first thing you needed to say! I mastered the rules eventually, but as the game relies pretty heavily on short-term memory and mine is pretty bad, I can’t imagine I’d ever be any good at it. The rain had stopped by the time I left, though I still got pretty muddy. When I got home the darts was still on – this was the last session before Christmas, and the best of the tournament so far, but I couldn’t watch much of it because I needed to be up the next morning. I did however see Florian Hempel lose out in a close match; I’d really wanted him to get through.

The next day was Christmas Eve. A work day. Ten hours on the book, in five two-hour chunks. No interruptions. At one point my doorbell went. Almost certainly carol singers who had tailgated through the front entrance. I ignored it. This reminded me of when I studied for my final university exams. I spent the day writing explanations for the 25 pictures that Dad drew. Some were simple, others much more complicated. There’s probably still some tweaking to do, and then there’s the business of getting the layout right. Neither the pictures nor the explanations are a uniform size.

Christmas Day. I felt a cold coming on. In the morning I spoke to my brother who was up early sorting out his son and about to sort out the turkey too. Then I called Mum and Dad who were already done with Christmas dinner which they had at their place. Mum’s brother and sister-in-law had been, along with Mum’s niece with her (I think) third husband. We talked about a potential name for my little niece. My nephew has a five-letter, one-syllable first name, which follows all the rules of the English language, right down to a magic E to prevent it from being the plural of something sticky. My brother chose that, as far as I’m aware. But we have a feeling that my sister-in-law is less conservative than him (or me, for that matter) when it comes to names of humans, and it’s probably her turn this time. We’ll see what they come up with.

After the video calls, I read the whole of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach yesterday, with the exception of the first chunky chapter which I’d already read. Imagine if that could be a regular thing. No work, no having to see anybody or deal with any ghastly instant messages, just sitting down and reading almost a whole novel. On the Beach, written in 1957 and set in Melbourne following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, really was a compelling read. I read it with a map of eastern Australia open; at times he would refer to places as they were gradually “taken out” by radiation as it spread southward. I read the final chapter in bed, still not knowing what would happen. As always with an older book, there were a lot of interesting language aspects. One, he uses ‘ld as the contraction for would, instead of the now standard ‘d. Two, he uses directly as an adverb of time, to mean “as soon as”, as in “I went home directly I finished work”. That threw me the first time I saw it. Three, he calls a fridge a frig, which means something very different to me. Frig is also one of the two Romanian words for cold, the other being rece. I suppose fridges were still pretty new in 1957, and the spelling hadn’t been standardised. I’m glad we settled on fridge rather than frig. On the same theme, I remember when mike was used as the short form of microphone. Then mic took over, which is nowhere near as good in my book. Mic goes against English spelling rules, and the c ending makes the verb forms mic’d and mic’ing clumsy; miked and miking worked just perfectly. Imagine if we called a bike a bic. Ugh. Four, he uses the ligatures æ and œ in words like anæsthetic and manœuvre, which you rarely see these days. As for manoeuvre, that’s such a messy word. Yes I know it’s from French. The Americans spell it maneuver, which I prefer, but ideally I wish we’d all just go with manoover and have done with it. And five, he calls babies it. Yes, we still do that sometimes today, but not usually when we know the gender, which is the case when he says it.

Wow, this has been a long one. I went for a brisk walk this sunny morning after taking a Lemsip. Here are some pictures:

Big Ceaușescu-era apartment blocks on the other side of a large vacant section

This bar was once open from 8am to 11pm, but has been closed a while. The patio area next door now looks to be a car wash. This is on Strada Mătăsarilor, or Silk Merchants Street. The Mătăsarilor cemetery is nearby.

I don’t know what the story is of this writer who is seemingly still alive (yes, they erect gravestones in advance here).

A rather nice gravestone and poem; this young woman died during WW2.

I must have been past this large building several times without really noticing the designs on the top.

Family - Photos - Politics - Romania - Writing a book

Good news about the books, an un-election, and some pictures

December 8, 2024 by 0 Comments

I see I somehow neglected to mention my meeting with the publishers, so here goes. It was a weird meeting with the mother and daughter that lasted all of two hours. The mother likes to talk. She’s a French teacher, and sometimes she even switched from Romanian to French. Like I said, weird. At the beginning I was presented with a print-out of both the picture book and the A-B section of the dictionary. I started to comment on the picture book – for the love of God, don’t stretch or squoosh Dad’s illustrations as you’ve done here – before zooming out to the big picture. Before we start talking fonts and formats and stuff, can you assure me that this book, I mean these books, are actually going to see the light of day? The answer was yes, which was by far the most encouraging thing in the whole meeting. I was worried that everything Dad and I had done to this point might be in vain. It seemed EU funding will pay for a large chunk of it. (Of course, this is Romania, so until I actually see the books in print I can’t be 100% sure of anything.) Sometimes I struggled to articulate – in Romanian – what I wanted to say, but we managed to flesh out some important details. Surprisingly, I’m in charge of the layout, not them, and I agreed to a deadline of 15th January to get the small book sorted. This won’t be an easy task because the pictures won’t all be the same size, they’ll need varying amounts of explanatory text, and so on. We agreed that both books would be in B5 format, roughly 7 inches by 10, though the picture book will be landscape and the dictionary portrait. I have no plans for Christmas, which means I’ll have time to spend on the books.

Yes, Romania, where you can’t guarantee anything. Even whether elections actually happen. On Friday they (Romania’s supreme court, I think) invalidated the first round of the presidential election, less than two days before the second round was due to take place. (In fact, overseas voting for the second round had already begun.) This was a major shock. A couple of days earlier, documents were made available that showed that Putin supporter Călin Georgescu had been hugely promoted, probably by Russia, through algorithms (and money) on TikTok, which is Chinese-owned. The re-run of the election probably won’t happen until March, and it’s unclear if Georgescu will be allowed to run again. Last weekend’s parliamentary elections are still valid as far as I know, so presumably Klaus Iohannis (the current president) will stay in place, with the new parliament, until March. But really, all bets are off.

I spoke to my parents this morning. Mum had her shiny new crown. She described the space-age process of X-rays followed by scans from every angle that enabled the crown to be 3D-printed. None of this business of having to bite into a mould; it’s all cutting-edge stuff. The price is cutting-edge too. I could see a lovely painting of Dad’s which they’d hung in the kitchen; it was of the fruit and vegetable market in Cambridge. We discussed my brother, who has been pulling out every imaginable stop to complete his latest assignment for his master’s. Master’s. Where on earth has this motivation come from? He called me during the week for help with a spreadsheet. Luckily I spent quite a few years dealing with spreadsheets in a previous life. Only six weeks until I’ll be getting a niece.

I had four lessons yesterday – two English, two maths. Matei wanted to talk about the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a gargantuan American health insurer. Delay, deny, defend: that’s apparently what was written on the shell casings. Matei said that his death was being celebrated all over TikTok. I suggested that celebrating the brutal killing of someone with a wife and family who was just doing his job isn’t really OK, even if the company is as parasitic as the one he headed. But at least this has shed a light on the unforgivable state of US healthcare and insurance. Unfortunately I suspect it will all just blow over like everything else in America. It’s headline news for a week or two, but ultimately nothing happens. Just think of George Floyd. Or the numerous school shootings. Or the 2008 financial crisis where the big banks got bailed out as people lost their homes, and people shrugged their shoulders. They just put Trump back in, after all.

Last Sunday I went out for a spin, visiting Peciu Nou, Cebza, Petroman (which isn’t far off my online name) and finally the decent-sized town of Ciacova which its cobbled streets and square. My brother called me while was in Ciacova, so I gave him a bit of a tour. I still hope one day he will visit me in Romania. After getting off the phone, a dog bit my leg, completely out of the blue. He or she (I didn’t pay attention to that) didn’t draw blood, otherwise I’d have seen the doctor.

On Sunday evening I went into town and saw the parade of army men with torches, for the national day celebration.

I sent this picture of Peciu Nou to Dad, who wants to turn it into a painting. He wanted to see the other side of the street, so it looks like I’ll be making another trip there.

Cebza

Petroman

Various pictures of Ciacova

40 kg piglets for sale

No trains have been down this track for a while

National day celebrations. Eight years ago, this was all so new and exciting, even though my feet froze.

Books - Dreams - Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Music - New Zealand - Politics - Romania

Pulling teeth

November 22, 2024 by 0 Comments

A storm ripped through last night at 3am; for an hour and a half I couldn’t sleep. It’s still blowing a gale (or something at around a force 6 or 7 at least) now. And it’s raining hard. Either before or after the storm – I can’t remember – I had my first dream to feature Donald Trump. I was in a small town or village on a sunny day, having been on one of my excursions in the car, when he appeared. There was no rally or anything; he was just there, surrounded by a handful of people. It was all very civilised. He seemed to be at least six foot six. My instinct was to get away from him for fear of being shot. In the same dream, or perhaps the next one, my laptop caught fire.

Here’s a map of the weather warnings that were put out yesterday. The combination of high winds and (in higher terrain) blizzards has made for quite a complex picture. I’m in the orange zone:

Last night I had a chat with Mum. What’s happened to your tooth? A crown had fallen out. She’d already been to the new gleaming-white state-of-the-art dental practice in Geraldine; in ten days she’ll get a replacement crown at a cost of $1800. Dad then came on the line to say he’d just sold a painting for the same amount (I don’t know if that was net or gross). It took me three days to do that! As if three days was a long time. I immediately thought, just imagine being able to make $600 a day doing what I’m doing. I told Mum that if she could hang on for six months (!), she could get it done in Romania for a fraction of the cost. Coincidentally I’d just been reading David Walliams’ Demon Dentist with a very bright girl of almost eleven before this talk of dentistry with my parents. After the dental talk, conversation turned to the various haka and hikoi that have been going on lately in New Zealand.

In a lesson on Tuesday my student went through a long article about career choices. The author of the article likened career decisions to an octopus where each tentacle needs to be fed and accommodated. Tending to your “practical” tentacle too much can mean you neglect your “social” tentacle, and so on. It mentioned that as your salary increases, your expectations increase likewise. You’ll never be properly satisfied. Reading this sort of thing emphasises how atypical my own experiences have been. In January 2008 I went to Melbourne for eight days to attend the Australian Open. And to see Melbourne, which I liked a lot. Then when I got back to work everything got pretty crap pretty quickly. I’d muddled along for a few years as one of the young guys, but all of a sudden a bunch of actual young guys and girls joined the department and I was 28, supposedly a level above. The others at my level were suddenly doing life stuff like buying houses, getting married, having kids, and spending proper money on cars. They were progressing. It became obvious, within the space of a few weeks, that it wasn’t going to work for me. So I actually cut down on my spending, squirrelling away $500 a week for the rest of ’08 and the whole of ’09, until the end finally came in December. When I was in New Zealand last year, I stumbled upon some old payslips from 2007. Oh really, that much? That was the last year, in fact the only year, that I was at least somewhat into my corporate job. I was part of a team of just five. That all felt an awfully long time ago.

Tuesday was when some of the more notable lessons happened. In the morning I asked a 28-year-old what he thought the worst (or most destructive) invention in modern human history was. He quickly shot back: social media. There are several other contenders: leaded petrol, cigarettes, landmines, nuclear weapons (though they may have prevented destruction), and plastic. But all of them were invented even before my parents were born, in some cases centuries before. If you’re talking about the worst invention in the last 75 years, social media must be it. It’s destroying the fabric of our society like nothing else, and it’s horrifying to watch this destruction unfold in real time. That evening I had a 90-minute session with a 23-year-old woman. Teaching women of that age is invariably hard, but this session was excruciating. I got one-word answers from her, if that. Look, this isn’t working. I’m saying five words for every one of yours. (I was being generous.) I was getting a real Demon Dentist feel about the whole thing; it was like pulling teeth.

It’s been a slightly frustrating week, with an above average number of cancellations. I’ve tried to make the most of the annoying downtime by making new games and exercises, for both English and maths. I made a set of cards with the numbers 1 to 100, to help with understanding factors, multiples, primes, and all the rest of it. I’d planned just to go up to 40, but then thought I may as well go the whole hog. I’m happy with the system I came up with. Black for odd, red for even (like the suits of a normal pack of cards), a purple border if the number is prime, squares in the corners to denote a square number, and a small triangle on the right if the number is triangular. It was important not to make it too busy. On the back of each card I wrote the prime factorisation and all the factors of the number.

I’ve been playing my Primitive Man LP by Icehouse (an Aussie band who were big in the early eighties) a lot lately. Icehouse came on Radio Hauraki a lot back in 2007, that one year when my job was meaningful. It was usually Great Southern Land, or sometimes Hey Little Girl. But there are other very good songs on that record too, like Goodnight Mr Matthews. A lot of the tracks remind me of Split Enz who were big at around the same time.

I gave up on Honey & Spice in the middle of the fifth chapter. Whoever the target market is for the novel, I’m as sure as hell not it.

It’s an important time for Romania right now. Citizens (i.e. not me) go to the polls three weekends running. This Sunday is the first round of the presidential election. The parliamentary elections follow on 1st December, which happens to be Romania’s national day, with the second round of the presidential election taking place on the 8th. The far-right anti-everything-except-Trump-and-Putin party will surely increase their vote share. If they gain power, Romania could go the same way as Hungary. Let’s hope not.

I’ve got an important meeting this evening regarding the book(s) I’ve been writing with the help of Dad. More about that next time; it’s been a long post.