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A wet Christmas

December 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Another Romanian Christmas has come and gone: it’s now Boxing Day morning.

On the 23rd I called my parents before my lesson, which was really only a chat, and then played – and won – a poker tournament. After that I went for a 20 km bike ride, or thereabouts – despite my thick socks, my feet were like ice blocks and I couldn’t wait to get back home. I had another tournament win on my return; I’ve been running well of late. Both my wins came in badugi (first pot-limit, then fixed-limit). I made $110 on the day.

Then came Christmas Eve, a much warmer day than the previous one. More poker, because when you’re winning, you want to keep playing. Run your wins and cut your losses. I joined three tournaments. I came fifth in five-card draw, bombed out of single draw, and then the pot-limit badugi (which I’d won the day before) just ran and ran. This was a problem, because I had Romanian food to make. The English couple had invited me over to their place, and I thought I really should give them a taste of traditional Romanian Christmas food, or my attempt at it. So I tried to play poker and do Christmas stuff at the same time. I wrapped both the presents I’d bought, then rolled all the meaty oniony mix (that I’d previously made) in pickled cabbage leaves to make sarmale, all while the tournament was reaching its latter stages. It was after 3pm when I got knocked out in third, and that was almost a relief. I’d made a more modest profit of $26 for my day’s efforts. I finished off the sarmale – they didn’t need long in the oven – and then moved on to the salată de boeuf. (Why the partly French name, and why call it that when it contains chicken?) It also contains a wide variety of vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, parsley root, olives, gherkins, and gogonele, which are pickled unripe tomatoes.

Then it was all done, and I could pack up and cycle out to the English couple’s place, which according to Google Maps is 8.3 km away. The last bit is always tricky because they live on a half-built estate with unsealed roads, and it turns into a mudbath. Despite my lights I couldn’t see what was what. When I arrived we had a good chat, and ate all the bits and pieces. He’d made a curry, which reminded me of my time in Birmingham. They seemed to quite like the sarmale and salad. I finally managed to empty an oversized can of beer that somebody gave me as a present ages ago. Their big dog took centre stage for large parts of the evening. I didn’t stay late. It started raining on my journey home. Rain is forecast every day until the new year.

So yesterday was a wet Christmas Day. Apart from eating and drinking, not a lot happened for me. My parents had spent the big day down in Moeraki. They have no internet down there, but in the morning (my time) they FaceTimed me from a phone box in Hampden that provides them with a hotspot. It was hit-and-miss: sometimes I couldn’t see them, other times I couldn’t hear them, and other times I could do both but it was all jerky and breaking up. The Christmas wishes were much appreciated nonetheless. Dad said how much he preferred the low-key Southern Hemisphere Christmas, as opposed to the max-stress UK variety. I read the start of A Woman in Berlin, a harrowing diary of an extraordinarily clever woman in a city utterly defeated at the end of World War Two. After a long walk and some more food, I had no luck calling my aunt, but then got through to my brother and his wife. They’d had a typical British Christmas Day, unlike last year when they were heavily restricted.

This morning I had a Skype chat with my friend in Auckland, and then I went to the supermarket; it was almost dead there. I’ve got tidying up to do, then I might go out on my bike again; the rain has eased off, but it’s nippy out there. I have a lesson, but not until 8pm.

I’ll have to think what to do about poker. Last December I deposited $40. I now have $1408. Should I keep doing what I’m doing, or try something more ambitious, whatever that would even be?

Family - Life :) - Photos - Poker

My brother and typical Timișoara

December 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I called my brother on Friday night. As usual, I found it easier to talk to his wife than him. He’s never really liked talking on the phone, and we live very different lives so it’s like he doesn’t know what questions to ask me about my life, or perhaps he just isn’t interested. Come to think of it, I don’t remember him ever asking me about the food I eat, or the people (big and small) that I teach, or how I communicate, or whether the city has trams or buses, or what the local beer is like and how much it costs, or how to pronounce the name of city, or anything. So even before Covid arrived, I never pressed him to come and see me here. I have an inkling that if he were to come here, he’d ask me what the hell I was doing in this shithole, and strongly suggest that I move to St Ives. My sister-in-law would probably like it, though. I shouldn’t be too hard on my brother. He probably thinks I don’t show much interest in his life either, because when it comes to his working life, I really don’t know what to ask. (With my sister-in-law it’s easier. She sorts people’s feet out.) My brother had been stuck in the Brecon Beacons – the same place as he did his SAS selection seven or eight years ago – so it was good to see them both at home.

I played four poker tournaments last night. After bombing out of the first, I had thumping big stacks – simultaneously – in all the next three. The session was shaping up to be something big, but I ran into some choppy waters, and in the end I only doubled my total buy-ins of $15, taking my bankroll to $1277. (My best run came in Omaha hi-lo where I finished 14th out of nearly 700 entries.) It was a long session, and I couldn’t face playing again today as I’d planned, so I went off to Flavia market for the first time in ages. Half a decade ago I went there a lot; it was a good place to pick up some much-needed winter clothes. Then I always took the tram, but this time I cycled. It was a few degrees warmer than in that harsh first winter. Today I didn’t buy anything except a pack of Hungarian playing cards (I’ve no idea how to play with them) and two langoși, which are also Hungarian imports. Langoș is deep-fried flatbread. I bought mine at a stall where they were rolled, fried and served by three women; I had one with cheese and the other with jam. There was quite a queue for them. As I ate them, a man relieved himself in the open. There was a loo nearby, but I guess he wanted to avoid the one-leu charge. The market, just like the one in Mehala, is a fascinating microcosm of Romania. The mici, the beer, the langoși, the second-hand (and fake designer) clothes, the bits of machinery, the people shouting. And today, even a goat. I don’t know why they call it a goat because it doesn’t look anything like one, but it’s a Christmas tradition of grown men dressed in a colourful costume, dancing and drumming and whistling. It isn’t music, it’s a din, but they still expect money.

The inside of a place I looked at last week
If I owned this car, I’d call it Delilah
Anti-communism signs on the 32nd anniversary of the end of communism in Romania
Buying property - Coronavirus - Language teaching - Poker

Merry and bright

December 17, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just had a very long phone conversation with my friends in St Ives – the couple who came to Romania in 2017 – as the Omicron variant rips through the country just in time for Christmas.

An interesting day today. After two early-morning lessons, I had another look at an apartment. Fortunately the bike shop was on the way, so I took it in to have a new inner tube fitted. (It was the valve after all, not a puncture, so I didn’t risk changing it myself and buggering everything up. I’ll pick my bike back up tomorrow.) The apartment was right next to a pizza place. It was on the fourth floor of another liftless block, and that basically made it a non-starter. I took off my shoes when I went in, and the diminutive man who owned the place gave me some size-six slippers to wear. In the living room was a bar which was stacked with top-shelf liquor. For guests only, he said. The apartment was fine, as was the area with its pleasant little grocery shops and shoe repairer, but without a lift it just isn’t an option.

I had two more lessons when I got back. One was with a twelve-year-old boy; at one point I explained to him what Brexit was. He didn’t seem a fan. “But why would they do that?” That’s a very good question, I said. He’s learning French as well as English, and he got full marks on a recent French test. I explained that he’ll still be able to live and work in France. In one of my morning lessons I explained the meaning of “merry”. It’s a fun word, and it’s a shame we don’t use it more, outside the set phrases “Merry Christmas” and “the more the merrier”, and the odd occasion when we might say that someone got a bit merry last night. That made me think of the origin of Merryland, the name of a narrow street in St Ives with a pub on it. Cool name, and something I’d like to have in my address, but where did it come from?

Three poker tournaments yesterday. I felt all at sea in my first tournament – Omaha hi-lo – and it made me think that the win I had in that discipline last week must have been a tiny flash in an enormous pan. I never have the slightest clue what anyone else has, and in poker that’s obviously a problem. Then came single draw, in which I ran hot at the beginning and amassed a hefty stack, only to finish ninth for a small profit. Finally, I played pot-limit badugi, where I rode my luck at one point to rocket into the chip lead. With three remaining I was in second place, ahead of a short stack, but I was dealt a pat 98 and had no choice but to get all my chips in against the leader with a 66% chance of winning. I lost and I was out in third. Still, not a bad morning, and after a slightly barren patch, my bankroll is back up to $1260.

Life :) - Poker

Under the weather

December 9, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Just a quick update from me. It’s been a tough old week so far, as I’ve been battling a cold and all the sinus pain that has come with it. Monday was particularly bad; the last thing I wanted to do was teach. We’ve had grim weather too. I suppose it is December.

The only bright spot has been poker. I’ve had five top-five finishes since the weekend, including a win in a Omaha hi-lo tournament that came out of the blue – I’ve struggled in that game, so much that I still have a negative return despite that exciting victory. Two of my other high finishes (a third and a fifth) came in five-card draw, which is a new game for me. My bankroll now stands at $1258.

I can’t wait to get rid of this cold which has left me sapped of energy.

Language teaching - Life :) - Poker

Not fit for much

December 6, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve got a cold, again, though this one is worse. My left sinuses are killing me, causing my eye to puff up slightly, and I’m inhaling steam to relieve the pain. It’s about time I got myself a neti pot. The only good news is that I slept very well last night – when was the last time I got nine hours? – so I felt more refreshed this morning. Today is a lazy day – add the rain to the pain, and I’m not fit for much other than online poker. I played three tournaments this morning, making two final tables in which I finished fourth and fifth. My bankroll is $1208.

I had a funny week of work. My brand new student, whose Skype name was something like (but not quite) “madi96”, didn’t show up. I don’t want be generationist, but those young people, dammit. Millennium Man, who started with me a few weeks ago, has given up on me too, without saying anything. On Thursday I started with the eleven-year-old twins, and the boy never showed his face for the whole 90 minutes. He said his camera wasn’t working, but I wasn’t too sure. I asked him to sit next to his sister (whose English was impressive), but he didn’t want to. On Friday I had a bad lesson with the seven-year-old girl in Germany. We normally have two half-hour sessions (on Mondays and Fridays), but last week she started swimming lessons on Mondays, so we had a full hour session on Friday. Bad idea. She was bored in no time. How many more minutes? Um, forty. She was clearly expecting a number like three. When I asked her a question, she didn’t even say yes or no, I just got grunts. Hunhnuh. So what do you want to do? I don’t know. Are you bored? Hunhnuh. Please make it stop.

I’ve been getting messages and phone calls from the father of Matei, the boy I taught for two and a half years. “Don’t forget about us,” he texted me this morning. Now he wants me to give Matei (aged 13½) maths lessons. The only time I ever taught maths was in Auckland in 2010. He wants lessons to be face-to-face, not online. (He and his family are all vaccinated.) I can do it I suppose – probably on a Saturday, and I won’t be playing tennis on that day until the spring – but it’ll takes me half an hour to get over there on my bike, so they’ll have to pay for it.

Mark, the guy who teaches at British School, invited me to join him on a road trip, but I simply couldn’t take him up on that offer. I’ll poke my head out the door now, despite the grim weather. That’s as far as I’m going.

Buying property - Language teaching - Music - Poker

We all need a lift

November 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had a new and interesting discussion topic in this morning’s lesson: golf. My student lived and worked in the UK and still does a lot of business with corporate Brits. Football is their biggest small-talk topic; golf is number two. It’s amazing quite how much jargon there is in the golf world, and how many normal everyday English words take on a different, specific meaning on the course: club, drive, rough, bunker, eagle, and so on. Oh, and bogey. The sport is almost non-existent in Romania, and his knowledge of the game was unsurprisingly similar. We happened to talk about this as Mum was coming to the end of a four-round golf marathon. I suspect she’ll tell me how it all finished up when we talk tomorrow.

I had a look at another flat on Monday. It was in the same block – the delightfully named U4 – as the two apartments I viewed last Friday, but you access it via a different entrance. Just like the place I owned in New Zealand, this flat is on two floors – but unlike the Wellington flat which took up the bottom two storeys, this place is on the fourth and fifth floors, and the lack of a lift is a deal-breaker for me. Not for me exactly – I’d manage – but when you’re trying to run a business, liftlessness is a serious minus. What a shame, because this spacious apartment otherwise had a lot to recommend it. There were balconies on both floors. Everything looked much sturdier than I’d seen in previous viewings. The build quality seemed to be there. I’ll have to keep looking.

Poker. Another tournament win yesterday, my third in eleven days. It’s been feast or famine this month, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Three wins and little else besides, and you’ll do much better than a string of 7ths and 11ths and 16ths, which is more the norm for me. This latest win came in no-limit single draw, and I was extremely lucky to reach the final table, let alone run out the winner. I played four tournaments in all yesterday, including an attempt at pot-limit five-card draw (high), which came to a screeching halt when I ran my pat queen-high straight into a pat threes full. I spent some time on Tuesday working out an equivalence between very strong hands in badugi, five-card draw and deuce-to-seven lowball; in big-bet draw games, it’s vital to know just how strong – probabilistically – your hand actually is. I made $62 overall yesterday; my bankroll is now up to $1194.

My favourite album right now is the one Romanian folk-rock band Celelalte Cuvinte (which means “the other words”) put out in 1987. Listen to it here.

New Zealand - Poker - Tennis

Tennis at various levels

November 22, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a beautiful cloudless Sunday in Timișoara. I met the British teacher guy in town, where it was packed. The police were trying to enforce mask wearing. We sat outside at a restaurant in Piața Unirii. I only had a beer – I’d already eaten – while he had a sizeable beef salad.

Yesterday I played tennis with that same guy. This time the games and sets came thick and fast, even though we had some long rallies, and from my perspective we finished up at 2-6 6-2 6-2 2-2. In the first set I really struggled on my serve and didn’t come close to winning any of my service games. When your serve isn’t functioning, the rest of your game can often fall apart too, and that’s sort of what happened. Also my opponent was playing well; when he’s in the zone there isn’t an awful lot I can do, serve or no serve. I just have to try and weather the storm. I did bounce back and he started to make more mistakes. An interesting moment came on my opponent’s serve at 0-4 and 15-30 in the third set. He whammed down an ace out of nowhere, and that gave him a visible confidence boost. I did however take out the set on my fourth opportunity – a real bruiser of a final point to conclude the longest game of the day.

A world away from Parcul Rozelor where we played yesterday, there have been two good developments in professional tennis. First, Chinese player Peng Shuai. Her disappearance, after she accused the ex-vice-premier of sexually assaulting her, has been deeply troubling. In a breath of fresh air, players (current and former) and the tennis organisations have spoken out against China. The ATP and WTA have threatened to pull their (highly lucrative) tournaments out of China. The second item of good tennis news came when the Australian Open organisers said in no uncertain terms that it’s no jab, no play, no matter what your ranking is or how many titles you own. Things might get interesting then for Djoković who holds nine Australian Open titles – he’s unvaxed as yet, as far as I know.

When I spoke to my brother yesterday he had a cold. That’s such a rarity for him (unlike me), but there are so many bugs going round in the UK at the moment.

I had four of the most uninspiring poker tournaments I could imagine last night. Got absolutely nowhere in any of them. I shouldn’t complain too much after my two recent wins. My bankroll is $1132. Tennis will soon pack up for the winter and I’ll have less work over Christmas, so I’ll probably get to increase my volume a bit.

Yesterday I read an article about Wellington’s many chairlifts that carry people up hillsides to their (often very expensive) homes. The lifts themselves cost a bomb to install and maintain. They’re a visible part of the landscape around Oriental Bay. Just seeing an article about Wellington did make me slightly homesick (or something-sick; nowhere counts as home for me).

Coronavirus - Poker

Moderna man

November 18, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I was up bright and early yesterday for my 8am booster dose. I got it done in some nearby businessy building on the other side of the railway tracks which goes by the rather obscene-sounding name of Incuboxx. The nice lady at the desk asked me if I took any medication. I told her about the pills I take for depression, and then she asked me if I was anxious about getting the injection. Oh no, I said. Everything is în regulă. I got the Moderna jab. I expected it would be the half-sized booster dose, but no, I got the full shot because I’d previously had Astra Zeneca instead of an mRNA vaccine. This surprised me, and googling tells me nothing about different-sized third-dose Moderna shots depending on what you got for your previous two doses, so it’s possible it was a mistake and I got twice as much vaccine as I should have. I felt fine the rest of the day, but last night I had chills combined with a (probably unrelated) headache, and I slept for only three hours or so. I had to drag myself out of bed in time for my 8am lesson.

I didn’t know much about Moderna, but there’s a lot to like about it. For a third dose, it probably offers you more protection against severe disease than Pfizer, and almost certainly does better than Astra Zeneca or Johnson & Johnson. (All four of these vaccines are available in Romania. In New Zealand, you can get whatever you like as long as it’s Pfizer.) The Moderna company is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I spent a fantastic day six years ago, and it’s a lot smaller than Pfizer; vaccines are literally all Moderna does. Dolly Parton partly funded the Moderna vaccine, and here’s the video of her singing “vaccine” to the tune of Jolene and then getting the jab. Seriously, who doesn’t love Dolly Parton? The name of Moderna’s vaccine is also way cooler than Pfizer’s. The Pfizer jab goes under the brand name Comirnaty, and what sort of name is that for something that can literally save your life? It starts off fine (Com…) but then turns into total mneh. It’s not even obvious how to pronounce Comirnaty – the –aty ending (as opposed to the extremely common –ity) just isn’t a thing in English, outside words where the a is part of a vowel combination, as in meaty or throaty. Moderna’s vaccine, on the other hand, is called Spikevax, a proper badass name. Finally, when so many people have had Pfizer (if they’ve been jabbed at all), getting something different is a talking point.

Of course all of the above, with the exception of the first point (and even that is debatable), is basically a joke. Get whatever goddamn vaccine you can.

Because my jab was nice and early, I was able to call my parents and still be in time to play three tournaments. And guess what, I had another win, this time in the no-limit single draw. Apart from the speed wobbles I suffered in the middle of the tournament, which could easily have led to my elimination, I thought I played good, aggressive poker, and made more moves than I normally do. I didn’t play with fear, and best of all I had fun. I made $52 on the morning; my bankroll is now $1147.

Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Music - New Zealand - Poker - Tennis

Trying to keep up

November 15, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had seven lessons scheduled for Thursday. That would have been a record, but by the Romanian law of low averages it was pretty unlikely that they’d all actually happen. In the end, only four did. The guy who probably didn’t have Covid cancelled, then the new woman cancelled because she’d had a fight with her boyfriend, then I got a message from the twelve-year-old girl’s mum to say that she was ill. In the final case I had no complaints.

Saturday morning was cold, with thick fog. I went to the market in Mehala, which isn’t a million miles from that house I’d looked at the previous day, but didn’t buy anything. When I came back I had my lesson with the young couple, which went fine. I then watched an episode of Black Mirror. Hang the DJ, season four, episode four. I nearly didn’t watch it because I knew it was all about relationships, something I find ever so slightly triggering, but it was great episode and I’m glad I watched it.

After Black Mirror it was time for some poker. A fixed-limit badugi tournament with a $5.50 buy-in and 96 entries. I haven’t run well in that tournament in general, and on multiple occasions I had one foot out of the exit door. But I kept surviving, and when we got down to six players, all my Christmases came at once. I amassed a big stack which I never relinquished, and although we had a protracted short-handed battle, I was able to run out the winner for a profit of $90 in a little under four hours. What a surprise that was. It was my first win in 90 tournaments – that sounds bad, but in the intervening period I had four second places and two thirds. Yesterday, normal service resumed – three tournaments in which I got precisely nowhere. My bankroll is now $1096.

I’ve been listening to End of the Line by the Traveling Wilburys. (When I was younger, I imagined it was Wilberries, a kind of fruit. It’s only one letter away from those wimberries that I picked over the summer.) It’s a great song, and one that reminds me of the simple Twizel house we lived in on Princes Street in Temuka in the winter of ’89, before moving to a place on Richard Pearse Drive. We had no TV, and made do with the radio that was tuned to either 93 Gold or Radio Caroline. We always got the results from races eight, nine and ten. The scratchings and quinellas and trifectas. Racing seemed a big part of Kiwi life back then. I’m pretty sure one of the bedrooms had a waterbed, which were all the rage in the late eighties over there. There was always the pungent smell of chimney smoke, which we never had in the UK.

I played tennis again yesterday. Once again it was singles with the guy of nearly sixty who is like the Duracell bunny. How does he never get tired? I won the first two games, then he won the next three. I edged back in front, and on his serve at 4-5 down, he led 30-0 but I levelled the game at 30-all. The next point was an exhausting long rally, which I won to bring up set point, but I hit long on both the next two points and he dominated the rest of the set. I think that long point ultimately cost me. I was soon in a deep hole at 5-7, 1-4, having lost seven games out of eight. I was struggling physically while he was as fresh as a daisy. I also couldn’t win the important points. He had a killer shot to my backhand corner that I found hard to combat, and he saved plenty of game points with it. Despite the fatigue and sweat, I clung on, and reached 4-4. At 30-all in the next game, I had him pinned to both sidelines before eventually winning the point ten shots after I thought I’d won it. But he played the next three points as if nothing had happened, winning them all. Quite extraordinary. He led 30-0 in game ten to move within two points from victory, but I won the next four points to break him. At 5-5 I held serve from 15-40, but then he held to love to force a tie-break. I won the shoot-out 7-4 and we finished all square, but I was left wondering how somebody of that age could be so fit. I saw that sometimes with the trip leaders on the day tramps I did around Wellington. Is it all in the genes?

Here are some pictures of abandoned Timișoara. There are ex-swimming pools dotted around the city. If you look closely you can see the name of Morărit CILT, an old flour mill.

A sunny afternoon along by the Bega
Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Rooted to the spot

November 7, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just booked my booster dose of the vaccine, which I’ll get in ten days’ time, precisely 182 days after I had my second dose. (You have to wait at least 180.) I clearly remember the sunny March morning when I got my first jab. It was Astra Zeneca, concocted by the good, not-profit-making guys from Oxford. I came out of there brimming with optimism. A shaft of light at the end of the tunnel. We’ll get over this, and soon. At that stage there was Alpha but not the super-transmissible Delta, and little did I know that my position – taking the sodding jab – was a minority one in the country I happened to be living in. By May, when I got my second dose, the picture was far darker. Last week I had three lessons with a girl who had just turned twelve and become eligible for the vaccine. On Monday she proudly displayed her arm to me over Skype. Any side effects? No, just a slightly sore arm, like the vast majority of people. That was great to see.

Yesterday I met up with the English couple in Dumbrăvița. I took my old bike – the one that had been nicked – and it was painfully slow going. The area they live in is only half-built and the roads are still unsealed (I use the Kiwi word there), so it was all muddy after the heavy rain we’d had. After being practically attacked by their large one-year-old mongrel dog with gangly legs, we chatted for a bit, and the guy played me some of Gnossienne on his fancy touch-sensitive keyboard with full-sized keys. He followed that up with a few bars of Genesis’s utterly mad über-prog-rock tune Firth of Fifth. On paper, it looked like a chaotic mess of key and time signature changes. He said he’d passed all eight piano grades as an adult. Then we went to a restaurant called La Ioji (the first letter of Ioji is an i, not an l) where we sat outside and talked. I had ciorbă, a thick soup, and a beer.

From there I went home (a struggle) and almost immediately went to tennis. It was singles against that same guy, and it didn’t go well for me at all, for the simple reason that my footwear was totally inadequate for the slippery surface, so I could hardly move without slipping and sliding all over the place. We’d booked the court for two hours. To begin with we just rallied, and I was content to do this for as long as possible. Then, the inevitable. “Let’s play a game.” But you know I can’t move, right? I eked out the first set 6-4 on my fifth set point, and extended my winning run to five games as I went 2-0 up in the second. From 3-1 though, I lost seven games on the spin, including a long game which gave him the second set. I was paralysed out there. When you’re almost rooted to the spot, the rest of your game suffers too. When time ran out, I was one game from defeat, at 6-4 3-6 2-5.

Then it was online poker time. I played five low buy-in tournaments with very little joy, although the mix of different games made life interesting. My bankroll is currently $1008. Two more tourneys in store for later today.