New Zealand

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

Walls and doors are good

October 17, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 3, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How exciting!

September 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry for making this post so long.

Coronavirus - Family - Films - Life :) - New Zealand

Nearly half a lifetime ago…

September 12, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Twenty years ago today I was recovering from a nosedive brought on by recurrent panic attacks. In late June I was basically fine, but by mid-July I was plummeting at a thousand feet per second. But by now the drugs had started kicking in, and in an attempt to clamber out of the pit I’d fallen into, I was working nights at a sorting office. Dad picked me up every morning at four; I’m eternally grateful for what he did. In a few weeks I’d be starting my final year of university. (It looked for a while that I’d have to delay it. I just couldn’t function.) We couldn’t get Kylie’s latest hit out of our heads. So at half-two on a Tuesday afternoon I was at home with Dad, who was working in the studio. Then the phone rang. I picked it up. It was my grandmother, telling me to switch on the TV. I did, and told Dad he needed to watch it. For a few minutes we thought it might have been an accident. And then we saw the second plane hit. It seems that almost every American old enough to remember can remember where they were.

Staggering but true: neither of the two women’s US Open finalists was even born when 9/11 happened. They’ve both come utterly out of nowhere, in particular 150th-ranked Emma Răducanu who qualified and has therefore won nine straight matches to reach the final, without dropping a set. Răducanu (born 13/11/02) has a Chinese mother and a Romanian father (hence her name), was born in Canada but moved to London when she was two, and now plays for Britain. And there I was thinking I was a mongrel. Her opponent Leylah Fernandez (born 6/9/02), part-Ecuadorian, part-Filipino, and playing for Canada (!), is ranked only 73rd in the world and has gone to three sets in each of her last four matches. Far fewer surprises among the men, where Novak Djoković is one win, 18 mere games, from walk-on-water status. Nobody has won the calendar grand slam since 1969 because it’s damn near impossible to do. For one, Djoković had to overcome the undisputed King of Clay in Paris. Now he’s on the verge of being the undisputed King of Tennis.

Mum and Dad have been busy moving, shifting, lifting. They’re almost there, ready to move into their new house, which is actually reasonably old by NZ standards. If it was up to Dad they wouldn’t be moving at all, but I’m with Mum on this. Their current place seems unmanageably big, with a two-acre garden. If it isn’t too much yet, it soon will be, and right now they still have plenty of emotional energy (how?) for the move and everything that will come after.

If I’m really lucky I might one day see my parents in their new abode. They’ve managed to contain the latest outbreak in NZ, for now at least, and the South Island has remained Covid-free. No such luck in Romania, where they’ve practically given up. Cases are doubling every seven to ten days, and everyone’s going about their normal business in the NZ equivalent of level one-and-a-bit. The NZ opening-up plan is to vet travellers to the country based on rates of disease and vaccination in their home country and any other territories they’ve visited in the previous fortnight. Romania will surely be blacklisted. My idea, assuming the UK is on the green list by then, is to fly to the UK for two weeks before then flying to New Zealand. I’ll need an internet connection in the UK though. It’s hard not to feel some anger at Romanians. A warm, friendly, welcoming bunch of people, but somehow they’re willing to fuck up people’s health and their economy and their kids’ education and the country’s reputation and everything and everybody just because of their flat-earth beliefs.

On Thursday I called my aunt. I was shocked to get through; she hardly ever picks up the phone these days. I was almost as shocked that we had a normal conversation. She mentioned getting an MRI scan for her painful back, and the extreme difficulty of getting medical attention at all in the UK. The collateral non-Covid-related damage caused by the disease is immense.

Last Saturday I went to the film festival in the Summer Garden just across the road. I saw Nowhere Special, a drama based in Belfast and partly produced in Romania, and I didn’t have to pay a penny (or, as they say here, a ban). I won’t give any spoilers here, but it gets a big thumbs up from me. The Belfast accent isn’t the easiest to get right but James Norton certainly pulled it off.

It’s another glorious day here. I’ll be playing tennis a bit later.

Coronavirus - New Zealand - Romania - Tennis

It’s collapsing all around us

June 10, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

The cathedral bells rang out in earnest this morning. What for? It’s the Feast of the Ascension in the Orthodox calendar. As I write, some kind of parade is about to begin on the steps of the cathedral. Someone is testing the microphone: “doi, zece, doi, zece”. Where I come from you go “one, two” and perhaps “three”, but Romanians say “two, ten” instead. No idea why. (Update: A brass band has started up.)

Last time I neglected to mention the role of religion in people’s attitudes to the pandemic and the vaccines. The impact is huge. A prime example here is No-Vax Djoković, a devout adherent to the Serbian Orthodox church, which is very similar to the Romanian version. Both Britain and New Zealand benefit from being increasingly secular countries. (Djoković had a battle on his hands last night against the impressive Matteo Berrettini, but survived a hiccup in the third-set tie-break to edge through in four. They started the match at 8pm local time; the spectators were forced to leave during the fourth set to avoid falling foul of the 11pm curfew. That was bizarre.)

I had a lesson this morning with a woman who caught Covid in early April along with her husband and small son. They’re still all suffering from memory loss, fatigue, and a succession of colds. Scary stuff.

In some sad news, the Bigăr waterfall, which I visited with my parents in 2017, collapsed on Monday evening. It was a popular tourist attraction, enhanced by being slap-bang on the 45th parallel north (the opposite of which might be familiar to certain readers of this blog). The weight of moss and the build-up of limestone caused it to give way.

21st June 2017

I see that Auckland has leapt to the top of the ranking of the world’s most livable cities, with Wellington in fourth place. I’m not quite sure who’s measuring this. Lack of virus obviously comes into it, but last time the I visited Auckland I was sorely disappointed. A soulless city, with house prices beyond livability for most.

On Tuesday I got my first haircut in eleven months. A good job done. My next chop might be ages away.

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

Am I a monster? And a big send-off

June 3, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

After that train wreck of a lesson, I didn’t sleep much on Monday night. Or Tuesday night. Even last night I didn’t do particularly well. Maybe I am just a bigot who can’t tolerate people with different views from my own. But in between I’ve had a bunch of lessons that have gone perfectly well, including one with am easy-going guy who said that Romania was better under communism and the country now suffers from “too much democracy”. Yikes. He’s 33 and would have been a toddler when the Ceaușescus came to a sticky end, so he has no more memories of living under communism than I do, but that’s his opinion and he’s entitled to it. But nobody is entitled to get on trains and planes and attend weddings and see Fiddler on the Roof at the fucking opera and potentially expose hundreds of people to a deadly virus. Sure, some people are hesitant and that’s understandable. What are the side effects? Haven’t these vaccines been concocted rather quickly? (Yes. And it’s one of the great feats of mankind.) How does messenger RNA work? You can reason with these people. The point-blank refusers, however, you can get fucked.

Last night I woke up suddenly. Where’s that awful music coming from? Then I remembered I’d set my alarm for 4am so I could watch Graeme’s funeral, streamed live from Timaru. I was a few minutes late and I when I connected, my cousin from Wellington – Graeme’s eldest daughter – was speaking (very well, as she always does). There was a big extended family present – he leaves behind his wife, five children and a baker’s dozen (as they put it) of grandchildren. Not everybody could make it because the Ashburton bridge, now shaky after the torrential rain, is making it hard to travel south from Christchurch. The speeches were brilliant, honestly. He was appreciated much more than I realised. He was a very good man, a family man, with a big heart. (His propensity to fart in inappropriate situations didn’t come up in the speeches, strangely enough.) I always got on very well with him – he could have conversation about almost anything – and my memories of him go back to our trip to New Zealand in 1986-87. I spent quite a lot of time with him in 2003-04 just after I arrived in NZ to live. He helped me find a second-hand car, and taught me what some of the farming equipment being auctioned off at the Temuka saleyards was. The last time I saw him was in Wellington in 2016, just before I left the country.

Three poker tournaments yesterday. I busted out of the PLO8 just before the money, then I came back from a poor start to finish third in the single draw for a $15 profit, then in the pot-limit badugi I built up a monster stack only to crash and burn for a min cash. My bankroll is $722. If and when it reaches $750 I plan to beef things up a bit, by playing five tournaments in a session instead of my current three, including the odd night session, and playing the occasional spell of cash.

It’s a beautiful sunny day here. Not a cloud in the sky. The birds are chirping away and the trams are clattering by.

Family - New Zealand - Poker - Tennis

Some sad news from NZ

May 31, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I called my parents, and they told me that Graeme had taken a rapid turn for the worse and wouldn’t make it. Two hours later, he passed away. It’s all very sudden and very sad, even if he did extremely well to ever reach 80 after the lung problems he developed decades earlier that forced him out of work. I always felt a bit sorry for him. He helped bring up four daughters, who all turned out to be self-assured and successful, and one son who moved to Australia. He was always taking his daughters skiing or sailing, but despite all that, they treated him as a bit of an oddball and a joke in his old age. He was different from his wife who was has always been more active socially. She has always kept her cards close to her chest, and quite possibly he never stood a chance after his accident but she didn’t let on.

The funeral will take place in the next two or three days, but there’s confusion as to exactly when. South Canterbury is being blitzed by a weather bomb – relentless rain (approaching feet rather than inches) making Geraldine a virtual island.

Friday would have been both the 70th birthday of Dad’s cousin (who died in December) and the 99th birthday of Dad’s mother (who died ten years ago). Here’s a post I wrote about my grandmother’s 88th birthday, back on my old blog. That was the last time I ever saw her.

People getting old. Falling apart both physically and mentally. It’s such a dreadful thing to watch. Yesterday at the tennis court I watched it (the physical side of it, anyway). People’s bodies seemed to be falling to pieces. The guy with whom I played that unfinished energy-sapping match just before Christmas is having back trouble and is shadow of the man he was then. Viorica seemed even less mobile than usual. Then there’s Petrică with his kidney condition made worse by Covid. I kept thinking, heck, it must be my turn next.

Poker. In this morning’s PLO8, I almost fell short of the money but just before the bubble I escaped with a quarter of a three-way pot to survive. Straight after the bubble burst, I found myself almost chipless but ran my tiny stack up to something substantial thanks to some good starting hands, only for my opponent to hit a runner-runner wheel to eliminate me. Had I won that I would have been motoring, but it wasn’t to be. The pot-limit badugi was over in 20 minutes – I never won a hand. I made a monster, he made a bigger monster, and that was that. When that was over I was still in the single draw. (At one stage I was playing three tournaments, in three very different games, at the same time.) With eight remaining, I had a nice big stack and put it to good use on my short-handed table. I started the seven-man final table with 68,000 chips and the lead. With a following wind, or even just a gentle breeze at my back, I might have won the whole shebang and a load of bounties. Instead I faced a headwind. I did claim another handy bounty, but with four left I twice pushed with an equity edge but both times I lost out, and it was game over. Not a bad morning though – those bounties helped me make a $23 profit from the single draw – and after a slightly frustrating month in which I only turned a small profit, my bankroll is now $707. I feel I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough with Omaha hi-lo. A few deep runs and finally I might actually be getting it.

Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Other sports - Poker

No Shangri-La for me, but at least I can stay

April 7, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My apartment here in Timișoara has been sold. The agent told me on Monday. Luckily I can stay here, and I certainly want to for the time being. Then that evening I got a surprise knock on the door from the elderly couple on the sixth floor. They’d heard this place was for sale and were interested in buying it. I had to tell them that it had been sold hours earlier.

On Sunday I played tennis again with the smoker in his late sixties who coughs and spits his way through the game. We talked vaccines, as we all do right now, and I expected him to be one of Romania’s many anti-vaxers. He just fits the profile. But no, he’d been pfully Pfizered and was quite vocal about all the “idiots” who refuse the jab. I shouldn’t have been so quick to pigeonhole him. When he started smoking, probably half a century ago, practically all men in Romania smoked. And it’s really hard to give up!

I had a good chat with my cousin in Wellington on Monday. It’s funny dropping in on Virus-Free World. It sounds like some mythical land, a Shangri-La. They’re about to introduce a trans-Tasman bubble with Australia. Fingers crossed that doesn’t all blow up in their faces.

Last weekend the Boat Race took place. I didn’t watch it; I didn’t even know it was on. It was one of those things I watched as a little kid, hoping Cambridge would win, because I was born there and lived just down the road, and because I thought their duck-egg bluey-green colour was way cooler than Oxford’s boring dark blue. But Oxford always bloody won. Last Saturday’s race was interesting because Covid restrictions it took place on the Ouse at Ely, just around the corner from where I grew up, instead of on the Thames, so Cambridge had home advantage of sorts. And they won both the men’s and women’s races.

In my last post about everything becoming too big, I totally neglected to mention the Ever Given, the gargantuan quarter-mile-long cruise ship that was wedged in the Suez Canal for six days, blocking about 12% of all global freight. We’re bursting at the seams here.

I played a single draw poker tournament this morning, or at least attempted to. My connection to their server kept cutting out. It was hopeless. I only saw about dozen hands in the times I sporadically reconnected. After blinding way down and busting out, I contacted support asking what I could do to mitigate the problem (I had no internet issues other than with their server), and if they could refund my small buy-in. They got back to me pretty quickly and, to my surprise, refunded my buy-in as a “goodwill gesture”, though with a big dose of “this is your fault”. This didn’t happen to the others at your table, so you can’t blame us. It reminded me of the time I got a wisdom tooth taken out and was in agony during and after the extraction. The anaesthetic didn’t properly work, and I was up all night bleeding and in excruciating pain. When I went back to the dentist, whom one of my work colleagues accurately dubbed “the Indian Butcher”, he strongly suggested that it was my fault because my experience “doesn’t usually happen”. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to get a refund, but I don’t know how to prevent being disconnected again.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - New Zealand - Poker

Tough times ten years apart

February 28, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My friend from Birmingham emailed me yesterday to say that he’d just seen his mother (who lives in the same city) for the first time in months, all masked up and physically distanced. No hugs. His father died about seven years ago. That must be hard. My parents live on the other side of the world so seeing each other is hard enough, virus or no virus, but when your mum is just there… I have been toying with the idea of a trip to virtually virus-free New Zealand. (NZ likes to be free of things. GE-free, pest-free, predator-free, smoke-free.) I’d have to quarantine for two weeks, but I could work in isolation.

The numbers are going back up in Romania, no doubt about it. The more contagious UK variant is, slowly but surely, becoming the dominant one. The weather is rapidly improving – we’ve had glorious days that have felt like May – but we could be in for a spring just like in 2020, under national lockdown. Unlike the UK, Romania is employing a two-jab strategy, so while 600,000 Romanians have now received both shots of the vaccine, most people are still fully exposed. (Anybody who has only just had their first dose is fully susceptible, too.)

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the deadly Christchurch earthquake; 22/2/11. I was still living in Auckland then. Three weeks earlier I’d had an interview in Wellington for the job that I didn’t want. I was going through a bout of depression, though the previous evening I’d managed to play tennis. (Yes, tennis night was Monday. From memory I lost my singles but won the doubles.) I was in Devonport library when I heard the news, and a couple of hours later my boss at the insurance broker’s on Queen Street called me to ask if I wanted my old job back. I’d worked on claims for the first Christchurch quake until December. Yes, please! I was back there the next morning. A meaningful job with no bullshit (especially in such circumstances). I had a relaxing ten-minute ferry journey each way. Then in another three weeks they offered me the Wellington job, and with much (justified) trepidation I took it.

On Thursday I had one of those rare car-crash lessons. It was my first lesson with a woman who said she knew no English whatsoever. The charger port on my laptop had broken, and no matter which way I wedged the cable in the socket, it wouldn’t charge. I used some very good materials from the Lingoda site, but had to explain them in Romanian (with difficulty) while being distracted by watching the battery level drop like a stone. My laptop was about to die so I resorted to using my phone, and I must have seemed rather unprofessional. I’ve since managed to make a connection again – I daren’t move my laptop a millimetre from its current spot on my desk – and I hope I can get it fixed on Monday. Hopefully my new student hasn’t already given up on me.

Four more poker tournaments today. The first one (Omaha hi-lo) lasted barely ten minutes. A crazy five-way all-in on the flop, I had good equity, but none of it materialised. Then single draw, which came to an abrupt halt when my good hand was outdrawn. Then pot-limit badugi. I made a very fast start, then went card dead, then kept sticking around until I was the short stack with only three remaining out of 100 entries. I survived some hairy moments and eventually eliminated one of the other players for a useful bounty. (Makes a change.) I didn’t last too long heads-up, but I made a $48 profit for finishing second. This evening I played the limit badugi and chipped up well, but when my big pat hand got outdrawn in a monster four-way pot, that was pretty much that, and I fell four places short of the money. I’ve made a couple of hundred this month; my bankroll is $353.

We were supposed to restart tennis today, but someone decided to call it off because it was too windy. Too windy?! You gotta be joking. In Wellington, that would have been a joke.

I no longer own a property. I do however own a meaningful sum of money, finally.

Life :) - New Zealand - Tennis

Real estate, but it feels fake

December 7, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I flew off the handle yesterday when Dad suggested I max myself out by buying a place in the UK. Spend that much?! I don’t want to go back there again. Real estate is a sore point for me, and it doesn’t help that my parents have four properties and might be buying a fifth. I’m perfectly fine with the idea of buying a home – I’d like to have my own place in Timișoara – but the property market itself leaves me stone cold. My own experiences don’t help here. When I bought my flat in Wellington, people asked me if I was excited. What sort of question is that? I’ve just spent a ton of money, most of which I don’t have, and to pay off all that debt I’m using the income from my job which I probably won’t have in a few months either. (As it turned out, I didn’t have it in a few weeks. My salary almost halved at that point. Then a few months later my apartment block was basically condemned. Plus I was suffering from depression. All very exciting, right? Like riding the crest of a high and beautiful bloody wave.) No, buying that place felt like an obligation and nothing more. Done, ticked the box, phew. I was happy to oblige because I thought it would be the best move for me financially, even if paying off the mortgage might soon become a challenge. Renting it out was a good move certainly – my rental income in the last four years has helped me take giant hunks out of my mortgage – and to escape with the sort of money that can buy me something is a better result that I dared to imagine, but it’s perhaps understandable that I’m hesitant about diving straight back in.

But it’s not just that. To give yourself the best chance of avoiding poverty in New Zealand (or Australia or the UK, for that matter), you need to get on the property ladder. That’s becoming a harder proposition all the time, mainly because both Labour and National governments have done nothing to change the insane tax legislation that makes property investment more attractive than other (productive!) forms. Immigration policy and lack of cheaper housing haven’t helped either. As time goes on, you’re forced to enter the market later (unless you have wealthy parents), mortgage yourself even further beyond your eyeballs, and the profits you make will shrink as you spend less time in the market. But you still have to do it. It’s reality, but a very shitty reality. It beats me why anyone would be excited about any of that.

When I went anywhere with my parents in New Zealand, they always took detours to look at houses. If we happened to be in a town centre, they’d be peering in through real estate agent windows. It drove me nuts. And they were pretty low on the scale compared to others. They didn’t attend open homes as a hobby, for instance. As for my aunt who would come round and gossip about what places in Geraldine had sold and for how much – seven sodding sixty for whatever place up on the Downs – I’d just about lose it. Yes, always up on the Downs.

What a tennis match I got involved in yesterday. Singles. I hadn’t done that for ages. My opponent was 58 and super-fit. Much fitter than me. He plays other sports like football and possibly handball and volleyball too. I started well, moving out to a 4-1 lead. He won the next two games but I then served for the set at 5-3 and had two set points at 40-15. They came and went, and it was soon 5-5. His unforced errors were a big help to me as I got my nose in front again, and then came the 12th game. A ridiculous game. Lobs that he was able to retrieve, somehow. A gut-buster of a rally on my third set point that I lost. I was gasping for air after that. He had five chances to force a tie-break. On my fourth set point we had another crazy rally, and eventually he hit wide. After escaping with the set I was buoyed and he had a slight let-down. I led 3-0 in the second set. But then he came roaring back. I was up 4-2, but he levelled at 4-4, after I’d had points to win both those games. I then led 5-4 and 0-30 on his serve, and had a match point. I couldn’t put him away. He held on and broke me easily in game 11. Then we ran out of time; we’d booked the court for 90 minutes. He was an extremely tricky customer. Controlled aggression throughout, and solid on both sides. I needed to take big risks to hit winners against him. I hit uncharacteristic unforced errors which dented my confidence, and meant I got bogged down. My biggest failing was an inability to take the ball earlier; I felt I was giving him too much time. But his fitness, at his age, was remarkable, and it made me think I need to do something. Buying a better bike would be a start.

St Andrew’s Day (30th November), Romania’s national day (1st December) and Moș Nicolae (St Nicholas Day, yesterday) have gone by without a whimper. No market stalls outside. No slănină or mămăligă or mulled wine. None of those inescapable smells. It’s all very weird. Soon I’ll be having my third Christmas alone in five years, so that won’t feel weird at all.