Writing a book

Life :) - Politics - Writing a book

I can’t breathe

June 3, 2020 by 0 Comments

There was a whole load of Spandau Ballet on Radio Timișoara’s Musicorama show this evening. I’m not a big fan, but my brother is, and it all reminded me of his Spandau Ballet-tinged wedding, two years ago now.

When I spoke to Mum on Sunday, she said she wished New Zealand was still under lockdown. She cherished the peace and quiet. So did I. Here it’s back to queues of traffic and honking horns. I miss being able to hear birds in the park, and trains clattering by in the distance.

If things weren’t bad enough, America has taken yet another upsetting turn in the last week. The brutal crushing to death of George Floyd, captured in a harrowing nine-minute video – how many more George Floyds were never caught on camera? – has led to mass protests and riots, all in the middle of a pandemic. There are endless video clips of police violence. The disease will have spread in these protests and people will die. This strong backlash to police brutality feels like a tipping point, something that transcends America’s dreadful partisanship. Trump has been appallingly inactive and silent, outside of Twitter. If the election were held tomorrow, I would be confident in predicting the end of that vile creature, but it’s five months away, which in these extraordinary times is an eternity. Thanks to the vagaries of the electoral college, he could easily still win.

Britain can’t quite compete with the US, but they’re giving it a jolly good go. For the UK it’s been a perfect storm. After the immature 3½-year faff with Brexit, anyone with an ounce of common sense and humility got elbowed out of power in December’s election if they hadn’t been already, and now you’ve got a government who’d be out of their depth even under normal circumstances. Then coronavirus came along. Now they’ve ditched the remote parliament – the only good political thing to come out of this crisis – and today there were farcical scenes of a ridiculously long queue to vote.

I’ve spent most of the last two days working on a dictionary for problematic words for the book. I’m still near the beginning of the Cs – almost the whole alphabet still to do.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Writing a book

Possessions

June 1, 2020 by 0 Comments

This morning’s service at the cathedral took place outside, but tomorrow will see another easing of the lockdown. Although other parts of Romania are still suffering, we now have very few active cases in Timiș, after being hit quite hard early on because of our proximity to the border. Let’s hope it stays that way. Yesterday I visited a bike shop – masks were mandatory, my temperature was checked on the way in, and at the checkout we all stood on blue circles two metres apart from each other. These measures will remain in force.

Last week the Romanian teacher gave me the encouragement to press on with my book, of which I’ve now written about 90 pages. After all the angst with the flat in Wellington, that put a much-needed spring in my step.

I’ve confirmed that I will sign the sale agreement, but I let the committee know that I wasn’t a massive fan of the way they’ve handled the process. They’ve been deliberately opaque about the number of signatures they’ve received, making each non-signer feel like they’re the only one, then putting a gun to their head by imposing a tight, and totally bogus, deadline. What tipped me into signing is that I just wanted out of the whole thing. I never want to hear of body corporates again. If I was still living there and had been exposed all this time to three-hour meetings and endless officialese and the chair’s oh-so-rounded vowels, I’d have gone round the bend.

Mum and Dad talked this morning about how materialistic the world has become. Dad said it’s horrifying how obsessed with stuff we’ve become since the sixties and seventies. Although I wasn’t around then, I really despise materialism, and living in Romania has allowed me to live an unashamedly simple life with few material possessions. And it’s not like I have the money to splash around anyway. This isn’t 2007.

The bike shop and back was a 9 km walk. All I needed was a new inner tube. But then I thought, I really could do with a new bike. The cheapest ones were 500 lei, but the one I really liked was 1200, or about NZ$440. It was a Dutch-style bike, with baskets on the front and back, and white tyres. Just what I would need to get to my lessons and the markets. I saw it was made in Portugal rather than Asia. That isn’t a ton of money to spend on a bike, though it feels like it. I should probably just damn well buy it.

Coronavirus - Writing a book

Inadequacy and bleakness

April 11, 2020 by 0 Comments

It’s been a hopelessly unproductive day. In fact it’s been pretty shitty all round. I felt an enormous (and familiar) sense of inferiority when I met very briefly with the Romanian teacher. I couldn’t figure out how Zoom, this new thing, worked, and I could sense her exasperation when we resorted to using Skype instead. “Skype?! That’s fifteen years out of date.” Well, bugger you. I don’t live in your world of giving lectures and presentations to hundreds of people at a time, and going to Prague and Milan and wherever the hell else. I lead a basic life. She was very tired and I was glad when we ended the conversation. All those hours I’d spent working on that book had pretty much been a waste of time.

The UK death toll increased by nearly a thousand today, but the headlines were Boris, Boris and more Boris. Countries with very advanced healthcare systems all over Europe have been floored by this. Mass graves are being dug in New York. Worldwide, deaths are now officially in six figures, although in reality they have been there for some time. There is grimness almost everywhere you look.

We’re still getting amazing weather and the trees have burst into life with vivid green foliage. It’s Good Friday, or Big Friday as they call it here, except that Orthodox Easter, the one most people celebrate in Romania, is next weekend. No Easter market of course this year. Hopefully there will be a Christmas market. Will this be over in eight months? Today is also my parents’ 44th wedding anniversary. Just imagine being stuck with someone for that length of time. It sounds impossible. And now they really are stuck with each other.

Here is the latest graph:

Romania coronavirus 10-4-20
Coronavirus - Writing a book

Should stick to my own language

April 4, 2020 by 0 Comments

The Romanian teacher from the university phoned me a little earlier. She’d been so busy with lessons, she said. Lucky bugger. She’d skimmed the first few pages of chapter one, and I got a slight inkling that she was unimpressed. I’ve been trying to write directly in Romanian, and I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of spontaneity that way. Maybe I should be writing my explanations, anecdotes, what have you, in English and then translating.

Dad is worried about me getting coronavirus. According to him, if my brother gets it, he’s guaranteed to spring back in no time, but if I get it, what with my history of pneumonia, I’ll be hooked up to a ventilator if I’m lucky. And I’m in Romania so I’d obviously be screwed. (As for Dad, he has risk factors out the wazoo. Or up the ying-yang, if you prefer.)

The list of Romania’s coronavirus deaths makes for sobering reading. Amongst today’s victims is a 27-year-old man from Sibiu county who died at home. At least here, the tallies are (for now) small enough that the deceased are listed individually, each one leaving behind friends and family, in some cases parents. In the UK, the latest daily figure of nearly 700 deaths just feels like a statistic, a data point.

Romania coronavirus 3-4-20
Coronavirus - Writing a book

It’s awful everywhere

April 3, 2020 by 0 Comments

No lessons at all today, so I made some headway with my book. I really need a check-up with the Romanian teacher before I plough on too much further. I got a frustrated text from one of my students, who said she is putting herself in danger by showing up to work at her Italian-headquartered (!) coffee machine company. The more privileged employees are able to work from home, but for some reason they still have to deliver machines to Guatemala and Mexico. That’s bloody stupid. “C’est la fucking vie,” she texted me.

Everywhere you look on the map, coronavirus is various levels of awful. Things continue to look absolutely terrible in the US, with outbreaks springing up seemingly all over the country amid frankly dangerous leadership. The UK saw 569 new deaths in the latest daily update, a similarly tragic figure to yesterday. Italy might finally be getting on top of their unbelievably dreadful situation, and hopefully Spain won’t be far behind, although their numbers today were shocking. Globally, confirmed cases are at one million, a meaningless number really, while deaths (a much more meaningful figure, sadly) have passed 50,000.

Heaven help Africa when it spreads there. I read today that the Central African Republic, a country I know next to nothing about, has three ventilators for the entire population, which is similar to that of New Zealand. (As for the CAR’s area, it is about the size of France.)

Of the 23 deaths announced today in Romania (so far), 16 were men, including a 34-year-old man who was hospitalised in Suceava. Just awful. The fatality rate from COVID-19 is something like twice as high in men as in women. Perhaps it’s due to all the comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes that are more prevalent in men. (Originally they thought it was to do with smoking – about half of Chinese men smoke but very few women do, but the same gender imbalance has been seen in Italy and the UK too, even though smoking rates are much more even in both those countries.)

Here is the latest chart:

Romania coronavirus 2-4-20
Coronavirus - Writing a book

What’s what

March 27, 2020 by 0 Comments

It’s getting hard to know what’s what with these restrictions. Now that we’ve hit Level 3 Lockdown or whatever they’re calling it, going anywhere requires printing off and filling in forms with CNP (national ID) numbers and whatnot. It’s hard to get sufficient exercise. My best bet is probably to walk up and down the stairs a few times.

Today I had no lessons at all. I did get to the surgery, having first filled in that form, of course. There a young receptionist took my temperature – it was fine – before she gave me my prescription. I was unable to find a mask at a non-exorbitant price, but tomorrow one of my students will give me three of them.

The rest of the day I followed the news, wished I hadn’t, and worked on the book. I’ve so far written around 3000 words, so I’ve really just scratched the surface. (It’s mostly in Romanian! It’s hard!)

On the day that confirmed cases broke half a million worldwide, Romania’s official count of cases reached four figures, while 22 people have now died here. The youngest, a 45-year-old man, died here in Timișoara. A hotspot is Suceava, in the north-east, where the virus has been spreading rapidly through the medical staff.

Coronavirus Romania cases 26-3-20
Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Writing a book

Is it time to panic yet?

February 28, 2020 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

Politics - Writing a book

Could I write a book?

November 1, 2019 by 0 Comments

Lately I’ve been considering writing a book to help Romanians (specifically) improve their English. Three years and 90-odd students have given me a pretty clear idea of what pitfalls they face, and why. I’d divide the book up into chapters (confusing words, avoiding word-for-word translations, pronunciation, prepositions, verb tenses, and so on). There are plenty of similar books on the market here, but none of them are produced by native speakers as far as I can see, and most of them are brimming with misinformation. My Romanian is nowhere near good enough to write a book in that language, but maybe that wouldn’t matter, as long as I pitch it at people at intermediate level or above. It’s worth thinking about.

Yes, Britain will be having a general election on 12th December, the third in less than five years (the length of each parliament is supposed to be five years). The UK political system stopped being fit for purpose ages ago, long before the Brexit sham. It functions (if you can use that term) by making compromise almost a dirty word, and when dealing with something as divisive as Brexit it totally fails. I’ve watched snippets of Westminster in the last year, and with a few notable exceptions (Ken Clarke? Jess Phillips?) it’s been deeply depressing stuff from all the parties. The Tories (or at least those who remain in the party) have been the worst, though. So many complete and utter arseholes. And they now have double-figure leads in most of the polls. I honestly think any outcome would be better for Britain than a sizeable Tory majority, even the giant mess that a hung parliament would create, but that’s where we’re heading.

I put it to my dad a couple of weeks ago that all the time he lived in the ultra-safe Tory constituency of Huntingdon, he never really had a vote. What? Of course I had a vote. You did, but in name only. You physically marked an X on a piece of paper, but it didn’t matter. But I had one vote, just like everybody else. No! Some people’s votes in different parts of the country were dozens, hundreds of times more important than yours. But there was no point going on. I then mentioned (which I basically never do) that I have a maths degree and also passed a bunch of actuarial exams, so I really do get this stuff. He got a grade 9, which is the equivalent of an F, in his maths O-level. (They’ve recently changed the system once again, so that a 9 is the top grade.) Anyway, first-past-the-post is complete garbage, but maaaybe it’s garbage you can get away with if the (two!) major parties themselves are broad churches, but certainly not in the highly polarised environment we see today.

There are two recent election results that illustrate some of the problems with FPTP. In Canada, where they also have that insane system, Justin Trudeau was re-elected despite his Liberal party losing the popular vote to the Conservatives. Luckily, the Liberals would likely also have formed the government under a sensible proportional system, because they have a natural left-wing partner that got 16% of the vote (but not many seats). So it was really a case of two wrongs making a (sort of) right. Then in Wellington they had the mayoral election, which doesn’t use FPTP, but preferential voting instead. The incumbent Justin Lester was leading until the final count, when Andy Foster took the majority of the votes from the third-place candidate to win by just 62 votes, although Lester has requested a recount. Whichever way that goes, it seems totally fair.

It’s the second half of the week, and that means kids. Two of them coming up.