Writing a book

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Poker - Writing a book

A major upset

January 13, 2023 by 0 Comments

Yesterday was a ridiculous day really. For the first time I ever, I made someone cry. I told the 12-year-old boy at the end of our online lesson that he was being a pain in the butt (do you understand that?), and look, I really don’t care about what you’re saying because it’s irrevelant and disruptive, then he burst into tears. His mother then came on the line and she was fine with me, but I might never see him again and if I do, the next few sessions are bound to be frosty. After that I had to dash off to see the ENT specialist. She was very nice and had a look a the results of my CT scan in 2019, then recommended me for an MRI scan (known as RMN in Romanian) which I’ll have on Monday in Giroc, a place that used to be a village to the south of Timișoara but has now been subsumed by it, just like Dumbrăvița to the north. The scan will use a contrasting dye, so I’ll first have to get an allergy test.

Later yesterday evening I had my first maths lesson with the 16-year-old girl who started English lessons with me in November. She’s been getting low maths grades, so wanted help there too. That was a tough session for me because I don’t know to talk about maths in Romanian. I was unsure how to say even simple stuff like “root two” or “a over b” or “x to the y“. I had great trouble articulating the “hundredth triangular number”. Even the alphabet posed a problem, because when spelling a word (say vatră), Romanians say the letters differently to how they pronounce them in an abbreviation (say TVR). The T, V, and R are pronounced differently in each case. So what do they do in maths? Buggered if I knew. I resorted to writing expressions and pointing to them. What does this mean? What does that equal? She showed me her intimidating textbook which was older than her. I only skimmed it, but found no shape or space or anything else to give relief from the unremitting algebra, and certainly nothing handy for everyday life such as compound interest. She showed me a test she’d had to do, all handwritten by the teacher. It all seemed very backward.

I’ve been working on my book. Forget about the 28th February deadline I gave for myself; this project will take a while. The important thing is to work on it daily, or almost, so I don’t lose momentum. I remember when my grandmother wrote her memoirs. In 2001 she began with great gusto, but then her enthusiasm drained away and then she started losing her mental sharpness. In 2008, when she was really losing it mentally – probably as a result of a stroke she’d had – she verbally attacked the publisher when he visited her house. In the end it only just got published at all, although it did, which was certainly something. I feel a bit more optimistic about my first book now – “the handy English hints for Romanians” book – after the elderly English lady showed interest. I asked her if she’d like to collaborate more fully.

There’s another book that seems to have captured Britain’s – and the world’s – imagination this week. My brother somehow managed to get hold of a free PDF version of it. If I read any of it, it will be to look at Harry’s (or whoever’s) writing style and see if I should incorporate or avoid it in my own writing. Apparently it’s staccato. Short sentences. Like this. The content itself doesn’t interest me at all.

Now that it’s 2023, Timișoara is officially the European Capital of Culture. Or one of them – three cities got the honour. My home town, as it now is, was supposed to be the capital in 2021, but Covid put that back two years. In the centre of town on New Year’s Eve there was a celebration of Timișoara’s status, with live bands. I wish I’d gone and seen that instead of what I ended up doing.

Last Saturday I made $96 in my online poker session. A surprising second place in triple draw, followed by a win in single draw. It’s a shame double draw isn’t also a thing. I won’t be playing much for the foreseeable future – I’m getting more than enough screen time as it is.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Writing a book

The boon of the book (so far)

January 8, 2023 by 0 Comments

The book based on my time with the guy in Auckland has been uppermost in my mind this week. Many hours spent on it. For my mental health it’s been a real boon. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going.

Fifty years ago my mother was on the ship from New Zealand to England; it left port on 1st January 1973: a six-week voyage (probably not an inaccurate term) via the Panama Canal. She paid $666 for a return ticket – a fraction of the cost of an airfare back then. When the return leg didn’t happen, she was able to recover half of what she’d paid.

My bathroom is done, or just about. I just need to get the bath painted. The work and materials cost about 12,000 lei (a bit over £2000, or around NZ$4000). My parents said you can just about pay that for a set of taps in New Zealand. As for them, they’re about to get the builders in for an altogether more ambitious renovation. They’ll probably need to vacate their house for a period. They’d been stressed because of delays in getting the builders to come. Soon they’ll take delivery of a new electric car. I often wish Mum and Dad could be content with cooking, eating, watching the flowers grow, and playing euchre with their friends, like my mother’s own parents did.

On Thursday my brother had keyhole surgery to repair his knee ligament which had been shot to pieces from overuse in the army. He said he was under general anaesthetic for an hour, and described the experience as like something out of Red Dwarf – that hour was mysteriously deleted. He talked about the artificial intelligence revolution, embracing the concept much more than me. He said, “It’s all fast-evolving mathematics.” Fast-evolving mathematics, you say? (He got an F grade in his GCSE maths.) Are you just making shit up, I asked him. I said that fast-evolving mathematics has been responsible for a lot of misery, like the 2008 crash. To demonstrate I turned my camera around and scrawled a random formula on my whiteboard (making shit up), then added a fudge factor to it. He then said I looked like one of those Open University professors in the eighties, complete with beard. This was, I suppose, what you call banter.

This morning I gave my first maths lesson of 2023. Matei, who started at British School when it opened in 2019, said he now thinks in English, even when he’s alone in his thoughts. For me, a foreign language becoming dominant in my life like that is hard to imagine. He said he uses Romanian at home with his parents and his dog, but that’s about it. His Romanian lessons at school are relegated to minor importance. That verged on sad for me. On the way to our lesson I cycled on the cobblestones of Piața Traian, then had to negotiate a wobbly old yellow tricycle; the man sitting on it reminded me of Omar Sharif, though it must have been watching Doctor Zhivago recently that made me think that. That all lasted seconds and seemed perfectly normal, but before coming to Romania it would have been bizarre.

The darts. What a match the final was between the two Michaels, van Gerwen and Smith. In the second set, van Gerwen left 144 after six darts, but missed double 12 for a nine-darter. Nothing too crazy there, but Smith himself was on 141 after six darts and proceeded to check out on double 12 for a perfect leg. That had never happened before and the commentators couldn’t cope. Van Gerwen, the clear favourite, was just a notch below his best; Smith took advantage. I had a lesson in the morning and I couldn’t watch the end of it. When I went to bed, Smith was 5-3 up. Either there would be a big shock or a big comeback, and it was the former, Smith winning 7-4 after a tense finish.

Song of the last few days: Aimee Mann’s Save Me. It’s a masterpiece. It’s part of the soundtrack to Magnolia, a three-hour film that I saw once but can’t remember anything about except the boy who peed his pants on a quiz show.

The weather. It’s like April, with sunshine and temperatures rising into the teens. The mild conditions mean I can get to my lessons easily, but it does all feel weird. This time six years ago I was waking up to temperatures in the negative teens.

Language teaching - Other sports - Poker - Tennis - Writing a book

Fuq the World Qup

November 21, 2022 by 0 Comments

One of the benefits of teaching kids is that they sometimes teach you stuff. It was a cliché in the 80s and 90s that teachers would often ask one of their ten-year-old pupils how to operate a VCR. Last week one of my 15-year-old students (who wants to be an airline pilot) told me about an upcoming Istanbul–Timișoara route run by Turkish Airlines, which could be handy in getting me to and from New Zealand. I asked Turkish Airlines for some idea of a date; they told me it was “up their sleeves”. On Friday a 13-year-old boy told me all about the groups and teams and players in the World Cup which is about to start. “You’ll be my go-to man, then,” I told him, “because I won’t be watching any of it.”

Qatar. Even the word looks ridiculous. If a U-less Q was a criterion for hosting the event, they should have held it in Greenland. No end of possibilities there. I’d have been all over the games in Qaqortoq, Uummannaq and Ittoqqortoormiit. They could have kept it in summer; no air-conditioned stadiums required. I’d say they’ve missed a triq. (I remember Chelsea’s Cup Winners’ Cup match in the blizzard of Tromsø in northern Norway, back in 1997. It was a thing of beauty.) Seriously though, this World Cup stinks. Everything about it is jarringly wrong, right down to an anatomical-looking stadium, one of eight soon-to-be white elephants they’ve built in an area not much bigger than Wellington, at a cost of probably thousands of lives.

Earlier today I spoke to my friend’s girlfriend in Birmingham. She gave me some pointers on getting my work translated; the dictionary might be a bridge too far because of the sheer cost. She also put me in touch with a woman in Romania who knows something on the matter. The translation business is much bigger than I ever imagined; there are vast numbers of people online touting their services, even in relatively uncommon languages like Romanian.

After our chat, I played some online poker. Specifically, it was a triple draw tournament. I don’t particularly like triple draw, but I gave it a whirl and ended up finishing fifth for a modest profit of around $9. Once that was over, I read an article about a woman who had developed a tennis gambling addiction during the pandemic. Poor her. Her wagers included betting on the winner of the next point, which is asinine, but if you need the rush… She lost £40,000. I count myself lucky that I don’t have an addictive personality, or at least I don’t think I do. Also, it helps that I’m not well blessed in the ego department. In poker, if I think my opponents are better than me or the stakes make me feel uncomfortable (mainly because my opponents are likely to be better at higher stakes), I simply won’t play.

The incessant rain put paid to tennis today. Yesterday I got out there though, straight after finishing my three lessons. I enjoyed the session more than usual because we just rallied instead of playing a game.

Now I’ll do my usual Sunday night thing of rallying the troops (contacting my newer or less reliable students) before the week’s lessons start.

Family - The UK - Writing a book

The book, and a lack of pommy pride

November 19, 2022 by 0 Comments

I made some progress today. First, I got my passport notarised and sent of a load of bumph to Barclays which might mean I can get my money back. Second, the chance that the plumber comes over to look at my bathroom went up. Third, I had a video call with my friend from Birmingham. At the end of a long chat, I mentioned my book idea and my need of a English–Romanian translator. His girlfriend works as a translator, and although she certainly can’t translate anything into or out of Romanian, she might know someone who can, so I’m going to have a video call with her on Sunday morning.

Yesterday I spoke to Dad who for various reasons was on his own at my brother’s place. “It’s bloody cold,” he said. Meaning inside. My brother and sister-in-law are very sparing with the heating because it’s got so expensive. Two people with decent incomes. And a baby. Crazy shit. My parents had gone down on the train. Return tickets were over £100 each. What are you even paying for? Dad used the word “grim”, just like Mum had done, to describe the current state of the UK. He said that if I were to leave Romania, moving back to New Zealand (rather than the UK) would be a no-brainer. I look back to my early days of working in NZ, around 2004-2006. I’d get all the jokes about “you poms”, but I could tell there was really a grudging respect for Brits and all our rich history and culture and music and comedy and pragmatism. I was proud to be a pom. But not now. It’s going to take a long time to turn the oil tanker around. Turfing out the current lot at the next election would be a good start.

I watched the Artemis I launch on Wednesday morning (weirdly, it took off in the middle of the night in Florida). The will-it-or-won’t-it-actually-go added to the drama. I missed out on the thrill of the space race that my parents lived through, so to see a new space age dawn in real time was an exciting moment. The first human moon landing since 1972 is planned for 2025.

Family - Photos - Politics - Tennis - Writing a book

A flappy board and some grounds for optimism

November 15, 2022 by 0 Comments

Above is the popular split-flap departure board at Timișoara Airport (5/11/22) showing that my parents’ flight had landed. These clicky clacky things used to be ubiquitous, but they’re now few and far between. Even this bad boy won’t be long for this world, sadly.

I don’t often get emails from Mum, but she sent me a newsy one on Saturday, perhaps from the local library as they don’t have internet access in their flat in St Ives. Yesterday they were going to the Remembrance Day parade. As Mum pointed out, all those years ago when there was still a small band of First World War veterans (!) we all had to wrap up warm. Not so now. They’re going down to my brother’s place on Wednesday, for four days. They’re taking the train which will be expensive. She talked about New Zealand’s dramatic win over England in the women’s rugby World Cup final, and how some New Zealanders are finding the women’s game a better spectacle than the more stop-start men’s version. I’d like emails to and from Mum to become a more regular thing. (I then got a message from Dad saying he really wasn’t feeling well.)

Another Mum thing. When they were here I played tennis; when I got back I saw Mum was following the Paris Masters final between Djokovic and the Danish 19-year-old Holger Rune on her phone. Djokovic had won the first set but was losing in the second. I found a stream for her, and the three of us watched the remainder of the match. What a finish it was, as Rune staved off six break points in a marathon last game (18 minutes?) to pull off a logic-defying 3-6 6-3 7-5 win. Mum was disappointed but I was happy the plucky teenager got the win in the biggest moment of his short career to date.

The newly renovated buildings, including the Lloyd “Palace”, in Piața Victoriei this sunny afternoon

The US midterms. Two years ago the gradual drip-feed of results added to the drama. What’s happening in Washoe or Clark or Pima or Maricopa? When will we get the latest dump? All these obscure-sounding counties that are actually not that obscure because they’re heavily populated. It’s been much the same this time around. The phenomenon of Trump has focused more international eyes on the minutiae of American politics than ever before. And rightly so – it’s all very consequential. I always go back to the 2000 election and the Florida recounts. A little over two years later, my brother was in sodding Basra and we were scared shitless. What if Gore, who (don’t forget) won more votes than Bush overall, had become president instead? The 9/11 attacks may still have happened, but I imagine the world in general would have gone down a less destructive path. Now there’s a chink of light with the Democrats holding the Senate (it would be nice if they could gain a 51st seat in next month’s Georgia run-off) and the Republicans probably gaining just a bare majority in the House. With what happened in war-ravaged Kherson on Friday as well, there is something to be cheerful about at last.

The impulsive and slightly repulsive Elon Musk recently bought Twitter for a barely imaginable sum of $44 billion, and it’s now it’s in some kind of malaise, freefall, meltdown, I don’t know what. A few years ago I joined Mastodon because I liked the name, but never really posted anything, so in the last few days I’ve been on there, trying to understand how it works, in the hope that I can find a social media platform that doesn’t totally creep me out.

My early new year’s resolution for 2023 is to get two books published. One on common mistakes that Romanians make in English (most of the donkey work for that is done) and another about a guy I used to play tennis with. How to make this all happen I’m as yet unsure about, but writing my resolution here won’t do the chances of it any harm.

Life :) - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

When I get back…

July 20, 2021 by 0 Comments

My last day before I go away is a soggy one. We had yet another thunderstorm overnight. I had a lesson with a UK-based guy on Friday night, and he was even more adamant than my previous student that I should have booked a flight instead of spending an eternity on painful Romanian trains. Why would you do that to yourself?

Right now, instead of thinking about my trip, I’m contemplating everything I need to do when I get back.

I’ve written 400 pages of my “tricky English words and phrases for Romanians” book (it needs a better name!), but I’ve hit the wall in the middle of the S section. The Romanian teacher from the university was helping me but gave up on me late last year, and it’s hard to keep motivated when you get unspoken feedback that what you’re doing is pointless. But heck, I’m on the S section. Three-quarters of the way through. It would be crazy not to finish it now. Once I’ve finally dealt with the word zone, it’ll still need a lot of tidying up. Have I repeated myself? Have I put in adequate cross-references? Can I make my example sentences a bit more fun and enticing? And so on, and so forth. Z won’t be the end of it. And I won’t have anybody else to help me. As is almost always the case no matter what I do, I’m on my own. I’ve promised myself to work on the book for a minimum of 15 hours a week.

Then there’s moving. Scary stuff, but if I want to move on with my teaching business, I’ve got to do it. I need to view houses and apartments and see what’s really out there. On Friday I met an ex-student who now lives in Austria but was back in Timișoara for a few days. She told me to avoid the trendy new apartment blocks because they’re overpriced and the build quality is lacking. That was my instinct too. However, she said she didn’t trust the vaccines, particularly the messenger RNA ones, and although she’ll be visiting several countries in the next few weeks including Sweden, some others have been scrubbed off her list because they require vaccination. As we were drinking our coffees, a man walked by wearing a T-shirt covered in handwritten Romanian text: “I’m unvaccinated and proud of it. I will not be controlled! Covid is a big lie!” And there was more. I asked my ex-student if he was one of her mates. Anyway, I’ll draw up a comprehensive checklist and get the ball rolling on the house stuff.

I also want to improve my language skills. Ten hours a week of that is the goal. Romanian, Serbian, Italian, French. So much is in one ear and out the other, because I don’t keep it up. Obviously I do keep my Romanian up by actually speaking it, but I’m improving slowly if at all. Languages are definitely a case of little and often, and that’s part of the plan. In the case of Romanian, the next item on the list would help…

Finding somebody. If only that involved just a checklist and x hours a week. Any tips from my many long-term readers would be much appreciated.

What I won’t do until September is advertise for lessons. A relative lack of work will help me kick-start the other stuff in August, and it’s pretty rare that anybody wants to start lessons in August anyway. I’m better off not wasting money on online ads, and instead waiting until the start of the new academic year.

Poker. I’ll still play on a Sunday morning and the occasional evening if I happen to free of work, but that’ll be it until I get the other stuff sorted. I haven’t played much lately anyway, and my few attempts haven’t been particularly fruitful. My bankroll is $704.

And one more thing. I must buy a bike. I had a look at some at Mehala Market. There was a modern racing bike I particularly liked, but at 1500 lei it was out of my price range. Now, thinking back, I probably should have just bitten the bullet and bought it.

That was going to be just about it, but this morning I had a “lesson” with a woman who was depressed and will be flying to Bucharest tomorrow to see a doctor. The whole session was devoted to that. Like many people who suffer from depression (especially women?), she goes round in circles when she talks, going over and over and over things that happened years ago. I was worried she’d do this with the doctor tomorrow, so I wrote down a list of bullet points (in Romanian, in an English class) so she could just present them to her.

After my lesson I called my parents. Dad had received an email from my cousin (his niece). She’s 50 and got married last year. They’ll soon be going on their honeymoon (it was delayed by the pandemic) and she asked Dad to contribute to the cost of it. She and her husband, who had been married before, aren’t short of money. Dad said he’ll ignore the request which is utterly outrageous. I mean, seriously.

Before I forget, I mentioned spelling bees in my last post. The documentary Spellbound, which charts the progress of eight youngsters from radically different backgrounds in the 1999 national bee, is a must-watch. It’s hard not to get emotionally worked up by it.

It’ll be an early start in the morning. My train will take me to Oradea and Cluj, before heading through the mountains on the way to Suceava and finally to Iași. The mountainous stretch should be very picturesque, and I’ll certainly post some photos of that and the rest of my trip. The city of Iași, the monasteries near Suceava, the mocăniță, and plenty more I hope. I don’t know if I’ll post while I’m away because it’s so cumbersome on my phone. We’ll see.

Books - Life :) - Poker - Romania - Writing a book

Hristos a înviat

May 3, 2021 by 0 Comments

The vagaries of the Julian calendar, the spring equinox and phases of the moon mean that today is Orthodox Easter Sunday. Sometimes it falls on the same day as what they call Catholic Easter (and what I would call “normal Easter”), sometimes it’s a week later, and sometimes (like this year) it’s a whole month later. Easter is big in Romania; I’d call it a tie between Easter and Christmas for which is most important here. Last night the tennis-playing couple (who live next door but one) gave me some salată de boeuf which, despite its partially French name, contains chicken rather than beef. They also gave me an egg painted the traditional reddish-brown using red cabbage, and invited me to “knock” it with another of their painted eggs. The “knocker” said Hristos a înviat (“Christ has risen”), then the knockee became the knocker and said Adevărat (“really”). Although I was unaware that it was a game, apparently I won because my egg remained almost unscathed through all the knocking.

At quarter past midnight I was woken up by the Easter vigil service at the cathedral. A huge throng of people with candles spilled out in front of the cathedral as a sermon played over the loudspeaker, much of which I actually understood. I wonder how many of those “vigilantes” picked up Covid. There have been services and processions and bells ringing out all this long weekend. I missed my first two Romanian Easters because I went to the UK. Then last year the restrictions meant that everything was far more muted. That leaves 2019, and I think I must have slept through the vigil service that year because I don’t remember seeing it. My blog posts from two years ago aren’t helping me. Just like last year, the Easter market has gone by the board, but they’ve Easterised the end of the square where I live, as in a normal virus-free year.

I still watch John Campbell’s informative Youtube videos on coronavirus, but I’m less dedicated than I was. After I watched one of his videos last week, Youtube suggested that I watch a different one from a American medical doctor and religious nutcase, called “Why I’m not taking the vaccine”. It had three times as many views and likes as Campbell gets (and he gets a fair few), and it attracted a long stream of comments saying that the deep state are trying to force us to take the vaccine and I’m not having any of it. I’m defiant! Six hundred thumbs up. Many commenters referenced the Bible. No Covid vaccine! Matthew 7:25 says so! I really doubt that the Gospel of Matthew said anything about vaccination or herd immunity. (I picked that verse at random; it happens to be about floods and storms, not a pandemic, but I’m sure you could find a connection there if you really wanted to.) Covid has been an eye-opener. I knew we had fake news and echo chambers, but here we have millions of people, some in positions of authority and influence, willing to dispense with the truth even when it comes to matters of life and death. I’ve even seen this in my own brother. A supporter of Brexit and the Tories, he’s happy to divorce himself from the reality that the British government have done a breathtakingly shitty job that has cost many thousands of lives unnecessarily, just because it’s his team. It’s become just like football.

I’m two-thirds of the way through Inocenții, a Romanian book that one of my students bought me for Christmas. It took me a while to get going, mainly because the language is hard. But I’ve made some headway finally. It’s all about a woman’s childhood in Brașov in the sixties, the early Communist period. The book is full of humour, though it certainly has its dark moments too. I’ve been jotting down words I don’t know, including some that I’ve come across before but forgotten, so I can look them up later. I think it’s the sixth Romanian book I’ve read.

Poker. Lately I’ve been playing tournaments exclusively. I’m at a bit of a standstill, with a run of tournaments in which I’ve either just missed out on or just made the money. I’ve been persevering with Omaha hi-lo, with little joy. Unlike the other games I regularly play, I can’t hand-read in Omaha hi-lo. That’s partly because the tournament buy-ins are tiny and people play any old junk, even hands that are real disasters like the 9993 that someone raised pre-flop with this morning. My bankroll is $661, although I expect that to drop a few dollars when I play the fixed badugi this evening. Pessimistic I know, but that tournament with its eight-minute levels plays like a turbo, especially in the early stages, and most of the time you’ll fail to make the money no matter what you do.
Update: As expected, that tournament was a waste of time. The game is played with three draws, but if I’d had ten I still wouldn’t have hit anything. Bankroll now $655. (I don’t exactly risk much of my bankroll in these tournaments.)

I’ve gone back to the dictionary part of the book I was writing, after losing heart when that Romanian teacher decided she had better things to do than help me. I’m now on the letter R, and I hope I can make some more progress this week.

The cathedral at 12:15 last night
Just after 4pm today
Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Politics - Tennis - Writing a book

Another dark day for Romania

November 16, 2020 by 0 Comments

Tragedy struck Romania last night. Ten people died in a fire in the Covid wing of a hospital in Piatra Neamț, in the north-east of the country. I’m looking at the gruesome pictures on TV now. They still don’t know what caused it. Perhaps the fire was fuelled by the supplementary oxygen, or maybe it was a short circuit. To Romanians it brings back dreadful memories of the Colectiv nightclub fire that took place five years ago, killing 64 people. Did we learn nothing, they are saying today.

In brighter news I’ve played a decent amount of tennis this weekend, every point of it partnering the same woman. Yesterday there was a new woman on the other side of the net – a good player whose kick serve made it clear that she’d been coached – and we went down 6-3 6-4 3-2, though we led 3-1 in the first set and were unlucky not to at least make it close. Then today I had my work cut out once again, with two men across the net. I had to run everything down. We played 3½ sets, and from our point of view we finished up at 6-3 6-2 3-6 1-4. I played well but it was taxing physically and mentally, and I tired towards the end. My partner brought along some homemade apple pie.

The highlight of my work week was pretty clear. Half-way through my Google Meet lesson with an eleven-year-old girl, the “share screen” function stopped working. What do I do now? I asked her about music. Do you play an instrument? Do you like any singers or bands? I don’t want to say it, but I’ll write it, she said. The words “Sex Pistols” suddenly appeared on my screen, followed by “God Save the Queen”. Wow. Why do you like the Sex Pistols? How do you even know about them? Do you know they were British? She said her parents often played their songs.

I haven’t mentioned my book much recently. With my higher teaching volumes, I haven’t done as much. I’m now on the P section of the dictionary, which is taking ages. Dad, however, is now helping out with illustrations. So far he’s come out with a nifty cartoonish style, and he’ll use the same cartoon character in each picture, adding “extras” when necessary. The tricky bit (well, to me it’s all tricky, but the tricky bit even for a talented artist like my father) is to convey the relevant language point in each picture. That’s absolutely crucial. I have three lessons tomorrow – a light day – so I hope I can make more progress with the dictionary.

Covid. There are tentative signs that it’s getting better in Timișoara. The numbers of new cases have dropped off slightly. I still hear far more ambulance sirens than normal, but fewer than two or three weeks ago when they seemed incessant. Tentative signs, as I said, and with winter almost upon us. I’ve been trying to get a flu jab, with no luck. The pharmacies don’t have any available. To get me through the long, dark winter I’m now taking a cocktail of vitamin D, zinc and selenium. It would be nice to think that one of the vaccines – hopefully not the Russian Sputnik V vaccine – will be with us by the spring.

As soon as I got back from this afternoon’s exertions on the tennis court, I had a long chat with my cousin who lives in New York state. I spoke to both him and his Italian wife. The virus is tearing through the entire country now, making the first two waves seem like mere ripples. Of course we talked about the election. Just imagine if Trump had won re-election. Just. Imagine. And he wasn’t far off. People have been too quick to justify, or normalise, what we’ve seen from Trump since election day and the four years before. None of it is justifiable or normal.

My brother and his wife have moved into their new house. I’ll talk to them when they get their internet sorted. My brother quite likes fiddling with this or painting that, so I think he’ll enjoy having something extra to do over the winter while Covid otherwise restricts his options. As for my parents, they’ve put themselves on a list for a section of land in Geraldine, so they can build on it. It’s about 750 square metres, less than a tenth of what they currently have. Mum won’t want to be mowing that lawn much longer. I was hoping they’d abandon Geraldine, which has become rather geriatric, and buy something with a house already on it. If they don’t sell one of places in the meantime, they’ll – temporarily at least – own five properties. To me, owning five properties is about as realistic as owning three arms.

Coronavirus - Family - Politics - Tennis - Writing a book

A tyring week, and the latest on the book

October 5, 2020 by 0 Comments

Last week I had a stuffy nose and a bit of a cough and I wondered what was causing it. Then I figured it out. I’d replaced my bike tyre with a new white-rimmed one, and the fumes from the glue on the tyre were getting into my respiratory system. This has happened to me before. When I moved into my Wellington flat, the previous tenants had left an old umbrella which had a glue lining the spokes. And once I bought a glue-drenched pair of shoes that I had no choice but to chuck out. I’ve now tied my bike up in the lobby rather than keeping it in my flat.

This morning I had a Skype chat with my aunt and uncle who visited me in Timișoara after my brother’s wedding. That all feels like a lifetime ago now. My aunt is about to have a hip replacement. (My uncle has so far had hip, knee and ankle replacements, so now it’s her turn.) They’re also trying to get a refund of the $20,000 they spent on this year’s holiday that never happened. Apart for that, they seemed good, and busy as ever. It was a great pleasure for me to see them here, and I wonder if and when I’ll see them again.

Covid. With rapid increases in cases and hospitalisations, and winter around the corner, the situation is in danger of spiralling out of control. (It’s worse than it was when we locked down, and now we aren’t anything close to being locked down.) Maskless in-person lessons are now a no-go for me. They’re marginal even with masks. The markets, while they’re in the open, are jam-packed with elderly people, and I’ve decided to give them a miss too. One trip to the supermarket each week, in and out as fast as possible, and that’s my lot for the foreseeable future.

I was surprised how many people thought that Trump’s Covid diagnosis was fake. I mean, it’s possible, but given how breathtakingly irresponsible he’s been, it’s almost a wonder he’s stayed Covid-free for so long. I hope he survives and is humiliated in next month’s election. (Following his diagnosis, he gave a four-minute speech – edited I’m sure – in which he briefly seemed like a human being who vaguely cared about other human beings.) When I heard that Trump was positive, I emailed my university friend who in March placed a bet on Mike Pence to be the next president.

The Romanian teacher has found time in her busy schedule to work on translating my book, and it looks like this thing might actually happen. Still lots to do. Some exercises and quizzes. A slimmed down version of the dictionary. Dad’s illustrations, if he’s on board with that. But it would be quite something to have my work – a useful, practical work – in print. Crucially, the teacher has experience of publishing in Romania, and her own mother is semi-famous in her home of Alba Iulia for the books she has written.

I had my first Zoom lesson with a ten-year-old boy who lives in Bucharest. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also my last. It was like pulling teeth. Not his fault; Zoom with kids of that age is hard. The “highlight” was when I asked him to guess my age, and he said 55. It reminded me of the boy who wanted to know how much I weighed. Um, I actually don’t know. Then out came the scales. Thirty-odd kilos. Now it’s your turn. Oh, alright then. Seventy-eight! That’s even more than my dad! My English teacher’s a fatty! Ha ha!

Roland-Garros. I’ve just watched Simona Halep be overwhelmed 6-1 6-2 in the fourth round by Iga Świątek (pronounced something like “shfyon-tek”), a 19-year-old from Poland. Świątek was in the zone, rarely put a foot wrong, and Simona was out of ideas. Halep has always been vulnerable to zoning power-hitters. I also saw the final game of Martina Trevisan’s victory over fifth-seed Kiki Bertens, another big upset. Trevisan is a diminutive left-hander from Italy, and I earlier enjoyed her dramatic second-round win over Cori Gauff, which she eked out 7-5 in the third set. In round three she had match points against her. Ranked 159th in the world, she’s come all the way from qualifying to reach the quarter-finals. Seven matches in a row. Whatever happens, it’ll be like hitting Powerball for her.

We’re getting warm, windy, weird weather. Yesterday I sat in Central Park and read my book. The wind sprayed the water from the fountain onto me. Somebody put a piano in the nearby bandstand a few months ago, and this time there was someone who could actually play it, rather than a small kid hammering away at random. A woman was pushing a man with no legs in a wheelchair. They made three visits to my bench for money. I gave them 7 lei in total. I found a small yellow stylised wooden elephant, and realising it could land in six positions when you throw it, with vastly different probabilities (Pass the Pigs style), I took it home. It could feature in a kids’ game, when kids’ games become a feature again.

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

Steady progress with the book

August 11, 2020 by 0 Comments

I spoke to my aunt this morning. We both had an almost total lack of news. It was hot in Earith where she lives, just like here, so at least this time she couldn’t contradict me on the weather front.

My work volumes are relatively low so I’ve been working on the book. I’m now up to letter I of the dictionary part. My Romanian teacher is now tackling the first (most important) part which contains all the big-ticket items, in other words the mistakes that even good speakers make over and over. She’s made a good start at correcting my Romanian, which as I’ve said before, isn’t up to this kind of task.

I only had one lesson today, with the eleven-year-old boy who lives with his grandmother. I beat him in the Formula One game for the fourth time running. He’s a mild-mannered kid but I think he was ever so slightly pissed off today. In the first couple of games he didn’t exactly apply optimal strategy, but now it’s pretty much dumb luck. Today he drew a card that sent him into the pit stop on the last lap, and I was able to overtake him.

Last week we had that awful explosion in Beirut. At first I thought it was a terrorist attack, but it was a terrible accident. The warehouse was on the waterfront, right next to a grain silo, so the blast took out much of the city’s food supply. As well as the hundreds who have died, about 300,000 people have been displaced. Lebanon was in a deep enough crisis already, exacerbated by Covid-19, so this is an utter tragedy. It was impressive to see Emmanuel Macron make a hasty visit to Beirut, appearing in a packed crowd and risking getting Covid-19; I could hardly imagine Boris Johnson doing something similar. I’ve just read that the Lebanese government have quit.

Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump shows signs of narrowing. His average lead looks to be seven points, or perhaps half a point more. There are under three months to go, and early voting starts soon in some states. I see this election as a giant IQ test, but even if the country passes it (i.e. significantly more people vote for Biden than for Trump), will their sham of an electoral system hold up enough to be rid of the bastard?

Coronavirus. Romania is in what looks like a plateau, but it has spread to just about all parts of the country. My panic level has dropped just a tad, but I don’t know how justified that is.

Mum and Dad got their birthday cards from me yesterday. Their birthdays were six and eight weeks ago.