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Coronavirus - Environment - Life :) - Poker

Under the weather

July 2, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I picked up a cold at the beginning of the week, and that’s made things pretty shitty. This morning, after only sleeping a couple of hours (what a horrible night that was – it started with a big thunderstorm which set the tone) I’d lost my voice almost entirely. I had an online lesson at eight. I called my student, and planned to put on a video if she still wanted to have the lesson, but she was happy to call it off as soon as she heard me speak. So then the big question. It can’t be Covid, surely. I’m fully vaccinated, and there isn’t much virus swilling around at the moment. But then again. my symptoms aren’t far off what the Delta (Indian) variant gives you. I texted another of my students (who caught the virus last autumn) to ask her where she went for a test, and instead she came all the way over to my place and dropped off a self-testing kit. A Youtube video from the UK told me how to administer the test. Swab your tonsils four times on each side, then twizzle the swab around inside your nostril ten times. That was easier said that done – I wanted to sneeze at only the first twizzle. After the swabs, I was on tenterhooks for the next half-hour, to see if a second line showed up, next to the letter T. It didn’t; as expected I was negative. (Yes, I know these self tests are far from perfect, but I’ll trust it.)

How I picked up a cold I don’t know. The air con? I’ve hardly seen a soul. Mercifully the temperature has dropped off today, following the thunderstorm that lasted more than two hours last night. We’re now sitting at 29. There are second-round matches going on at Wimbledon, and I’ve got the TV on with the sound down in the background, but I can’t get into it, or anything else.

The searing heat (up to 48 degrees) and humidity in Canada have made for distressing reading. This planet is becoming less survivable by the year. All because, as far as I can tell, people want more shiny shit.

Yesterday I snapped a streak of 14 cashless tournaments by finishing second in a pot-limit badugi. This one player had been hounding me all morning in all three of the tourneys I played, and it was almost inevitable that he was the one to beat me when we got heads-up. I was very lucky to make it that far, but at one stage I was a significant favourite to run out the winner. My bankroll is $730.

Family - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Poker

Need to escape this slump

June 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve been feeling down the last couple of days. No mental energy. No drive to do anything. The crazily hot weather hasn’t helped – I’ve been struggling to sleep. The reduction in my hours hasn’t been much fun either – work gives me energy to do other things as well as somebody to talk to. People have been going away, to Turkey, to Bulgaria, to attend weddings and baptisms and whatever else – events that didn’t happen in 2020. I could really do with getting away too, and will try to escape in the second half of July. My plan is to stay in Romania (it’s plenty big enough, especially if you travel by train) and visit the northern Moldova region, or Bucovina. I’m feeling cabin fever now.

My parents now have a buyer for their place in Geraldine. Dad is already talking about extending and renovating and gutting the new place. I wonder where the energy to even think about that kind of stuff comes from. They got six figures, only just missing out on a seventh (again, the mind boggles here), although it hasn’t yet gone unconditional. This is all excellent news obviously because their place had been on the market a while and they can now hopefully get on with the rest of their lives. This morning my student gave me two contacts in the real estate business; I’ll hit them up next week and hopefully get the ball rolling. I’m clueless there at the best of times, and now I’m adding a foreign language and totally alien systems and processes into the mix. I’m really fumbling in the dark.

New Zealand are inaugural World Test champions, when it looked for all the world that the English rain would have the final say. That’s a pretty big deal. Way bigger than, say, the America’s Cup. It’s NZ’s finest moment in the game, that’s for sure. They’re a brilliant team of cricketers and a great bunch of guys to boot. Good on ’em, that’s all I can say. World beaters at Covid, and now cricket. I wonder what’s next?

No Simona Halep at Wimbledon. That’s a shame.

Mum has just sent me an email with a picture of her plus three other women (combined age close to 300) holding aloft a big silver plate. It’s obviously a golf trophy of some sort. I’ll probably get all the details of that at the weekend.

Unusually, my weekend will be completely free of lessons. Tomorrow’s temperatures are forecast to be tolerable – a max of “only” 31 – so I’ll pop to the market and if I’m lucky I might find a second-hand bike.

My student told me all about the nai, or Romanian pan flute. A famous of exponent of this instrument is Gheorghe Zamfir; this is him playing Păstorul Singuratic, or The Lonely Shepherd. It’s quite lovely.

I’ve blanked my last nine poker tournaments; my bankroll has dipped to $718.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

A dizzyingly hot week in store

June 21, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s hot, and in the coming week we’re forecast to hit dizzying, hellish 37s, 38s and 39s. If you deal in Fahrenheit, that means we’ll be heading into triple digits. In California and Nevada they know all about triple digits at the moment. It sounds horrendous there. (When I lived in the UK it was common to talk in Fahrenheit when things got a bit balmy. Eighty-something just sounded hot. I don’t know if they still do that.) Here are some of the two dozen pungent lime trees outside my block of flats.

My aunt called me yesterday. It was the first time we’d spoken in a while: she’d been through a depressive spell of not picking up the phone. We chatted for half an hour; I have more in common with her than I realised. Her world has continued to shrink, sadly. I later spoke to my brother who said she never ventures beyond Earith and St Ives these days, not even to Cambridge which is 12 miles away. (She used to go there regularly, to shop until she dropped.) She was amazed to learn that the majority of Romanians are, and are likely to remain, unjabbed.

I had more anti-vax crap yesterday. I don’t mention vaccines anymore, but my student did, saying that they’re basically useless but his work had pretty much forced him to have them. He seemed a sensible guy.

Tennis was a bit awkward last night. I waited for my near-neighbour to appear, so we could walk to the courts, but he never did. When I got there alone, there were only the staunch anti-vax guy and his daughter. We played a set of two-on-one, then he made me play a set of singles with his daughter so he could spend the whole time on his phone. I then played singles with him, and was up 6-1 5-1 when we ran out of time. He had paid for the courts, and at the end I realised I didn’t have enough money to pay him back (because there were unexpectedly only three of us, I had to pay more), so I gave him what I had, promising to give him the remaining few lei tonight. He then went into a spiel: “we’re just here to enjoy ourselves”, as if I’d done something to prevent that. Something to do with the money? I’m guessing it was that. Or maybe it was our one-sided game? It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me, but this time his daughter also joined in. Sometimes I don’t get people.

Some Romanians, like the woman who stopped lessons with me three weeks ago, are straight out of the series of books I read about Naples. Everything is about their emotions, how this or that utterance makes a person feel, and everyone is entangled in a cruel and exhausting game where they’re trying to outwit each other with their feelings. Practical considerations, like whether to protect yourself and others against a deadly virus, go out the window in that world.

No luck at the poker tables today. Not much skill either, perhaps. I made a particularly bad fold this morning in a single draw tournament against a maniacal player; I didn’t realise quite how maniacal. That game is extremely player-dependent. My bankroll sits at $737.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Poker

Their first shots

June 18, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I was delighted to hear yesterday that my parents had just received their first dose of Pfizer. They didn’t expect it until the end of July, but Dad had to see the doctor in Timaru for something, and they offered both of them their jabs on the spot. That was great news. (I’m lucky to have parents who are so sensible and practical.)

This week Dominic Cummings leaked a bunch of Covid-related text messages from spring 2020, written by him, the prime minister and Matt Hancock. You’re not exactly innocent here either, Dom, but what a joke it would be if it wasn’t so deadly serious. They were worse than clueless. Those damn whiteboard brainstorms reminded me of that blue-sky 360 vision bullshit which might have been OK in the business-as-usual running of an insurance company but not when you’re a running a country in the grip of a deadly disease. It was all “how do we sell this”, as if they were tweaking income tax bands, and 15 months later they still haven’t moved on from that. The political system in the UK (and the US) is hopeless in a situation like this, because it provides all the wrong incentives. Massively restricting travel into the UK was so obviously the right thing to do, but no, it might frighten the horses for a few days.

At this time of year, Timișoara smells. The air is filled with the sweet scent of lime trees in full bloom, the markets are pungent with the smell of strawberries, and the sheer heat provides a certain aroma, even late at night. We’re forecast to reach 32 this afternoon; in the middle of next week we could hit an oppressive 37.

Poker. I tried to make a video of a tournament last night, with limited success. I’ve had some small cashes since I last wrote, and my bankroll is now $746.

Family - Life :) - Other sports - Poker - Tennis

Birthday, culture shock, and some games

June 14, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s Mum’s 72nd birthday. If we used base 12, which we probably would if we had extra fingers and toes, a 72nd birthday would be a milestone, like a 50th birthday is for us in base-10 world. (As a kid, I would sometimes accompany my grandmother as she visited the record office to do family history. One time she looked through a book of baptisms from 1850-odd, and two babies were recorded – prominently – as having an extra finger, or perhaps two, on each hand. I found this hilarious.) Sometimes I’ve been critical of Mum, even on this blog, but these days we get on very well. The pandemic has helped, funnily enough. We’re in total agreement on just about everything Covid-related. Mum is a young 72. She’s managed to keep remarkably fit and healthy.

Yesterday morning I had a discussion with my student about our university experiences, hers rather more recent than mine. I said that I felt a bigger culture shock when I started uni than I did on my arrival in Romania. In truth it was way bigger. Constantly being surrounded by the same people, never being able to hide or escape, it’s a wonder I survived that first year.

A thrilling finish to the French Open. Djoković (boo!) came from two sets down to beat Tsitsipas in the final. I only saw the first three sets before I played tennis myself. I wanted Tsitsipas, who had played so well, to win. He also has a badass name. Tsitsipas, swarming the net like a tsunami of tsetse flies. (The French sometimes say tagada tsoin-tsoin and I don’t really know what it means, if indeed it means anything.) I wonder if Djoković is the first player ever to win a grand slam coming from two sets down in two separate matches. And by the way, the third set of his semi-final against Nadal was mad mad mad stuff for 95 minutes. Way out there, off the planet, it was that good. As for the women, Krejcikova won a tense final against Pavlyuchenkova, then topped it off by winning the doubles too, partnering Siniakova. The men’s doubles final was a cracker, with the local lads (Mahut of stupidly-long-match fame, alongside Herbert) making an improbable fightback to win.

Euro 2020, or 2021, has started. Last night one of the Danish players had a heart attack in the middle of a match with Finland and was resuscitated on the pitch. It must have been nightmarish for everybody. I was amazed that they later restarted the game. The incident reminded me of Fabrice Muamba, who played for Birmingham for a time, then suffered (and survived) a heart attack during a game.

Poker. I had a go at a bounty PLO8 tournament last night and went pretty far but only made a tiny profit. This morning I tried a non-bounty PLO8 but didn’t make the money. Then in the single draw I made a deep run, getting pretty lucky when my opponent made 65432 for a straight against my pat nine, and eventually finishing fourth. I also made the final table in the pot-limit badugi, and my luck quickly ran out when my seven ran into a better seven; I was out in eighth place, but not before scoring some nice bounties. My bankroll is up to $735.

Poker - Tennis

A match to get excited about

June 11, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Tonight I played my usual Thursday night fixed-limit badugi tournament. These are a question of how and when, not if, I fail to make the money. Tonight I got pretty damn close – 22nd place, with the top 20 paying – but the eventual result was the same as it always is. Please excuse the cynicism.

Then I sat back and watched the semi-final between Krejcikova and Sakkari which I’d had one eye on during the poker. As the match entered the deciding set, Sakkari, all muscles, looked the stronger player and more likely winner. She had a match point at 5-3. When Krejcikova hung on to her serve, and then broke in the next game, the drama dial turned way up. Krejcikova then had three match points of her own, but Sakkari swatted them all aside, somehow, and it was 7-7. In the 16th game, after 3¼ hours, Krejcikova was the victim of a brutal, incorrect overrule on her fourth match point, but regrouped impressively to stagger over the line into the final where she’ll meet Pavlyuchenkova. Just imagine if she hadn’t. They really need Hawk-Eye.

Marion Bartoli, one of my favourite players, interviewed Krejcikova on court. The attitude of the eventual winner, who I knew next to nothing about, was excellent; I warmed to her greatly. I also learned that she’d been helped in her development by Jana Novotna, another of my favourites, who died very young of cancer a few years ago.

For me, it made a change to get excited about tennis, or any sport, again. Bugger the Olympics, by the way.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Poker - Tennis

Anti-vax: just don’t go there

June 10, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

At 2pm on Monday I felt awful. I Skyped the boy whose anti-vax mother had given up lessons with me, but no reply. I tried again. Still nothing. Oh god, she’s pulled him out of lessons with me too, without even telling me. What a shame. He’s a nice kid, his English never ceases to impress me, and we’ve now had 70-odd very productive lessons. Then at 2:10 he came on the line. His school lessons are all over the place as a result of the pandemic, so he was a bit late. What a relief. Yesterday I had a first – I’ve done plenty of interview practice, but I hadn’t had a student give a phone interview in English during a lesson. It was a short but tough interview, with unexpected questions, mostly about her experience with the English language. The interviewer didn’t do a great job, honestly. When my student asked her to repeat a question, she repeated it at the same speed. The icebreaker – “Tell me about yourself” – came almost at the end. I hope my student doesn’t lose confidence after that.

At tennis on Saturday I met a guy who was convinced that the vaccines were useless and didn’t believe that mass vaccination was our way out of this mess. Me, my wife, my two daughters, we ain’t gettin’ no stinkin’ jabs. (They happily involve their kids in this lunacy too.) Last night I had a lesson with a woman who is getting married later this summer. She’s had both doses. The government’s policy is to severely limit attendance at weddings and baptisms unless guests have been vaccinated. Sounds great to me. But she’s having to uninvite dozens of her relatives and so-called friends who would prefer to miss her wedding than get the jabs. So I don’t go mad, I’ll avoid the subject from now on, unless the other person brings it up. It just isn’t worth it. Plus I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. If someone’s anti, I’d rather not know.

So why is Romania awash with these buggers? The UK’s initial response to the pandemic was lamentable, but the vaccine rollout and take-up have been impressive. Demand is continuing to outstrip supply. New Zealand is struggling to get hold of the vaccines, but I’m confident that over 85% of the population, perhaps over 90%, will get jabbed when they can. That should be enough for herd immunity. Western European countries made a slow start (mainly because the EU did such a crappy job at the beginning) but they’re getting their act together now. But in Romania we’re currently at about 25% and stalling. It comes down to education (or the anti-education that platforms like Facebook give you), wealth (poorer people travel less, so have less personal incentive to get vaccinated), and civil duty. In the UK, to refuse the vaccine is to opt out of being a decent citizen. In NZ it will be the same, I’m sure. But not so here. If anything, the social pressure in Romania goes the other way, especially outside the main cities. Get jabbed and you’re seen as someone who can’t think for yourself. Easily taken in by government propaganda. Naive. A sheep. Romania’s low turnouts in general elections – usually around 40% – again demonstrate a lack of civil duty.

When I’ve had a the chance (not very often) I’ve been keeping an eye on the French Open. There have been some wonderful women’s matches in the last couple of days. I managed to catch most of Barbora Krejcikova’s topsy-turvy win over 17-year-old Coco Gauff after my trip to the market, and now Iga Świątek has her hands full against Maria Sakkari. I expected her to steamroll to victory, but she trails 4-6, 0-2 and is taking a medical time-out.

At the local produce market this morning I bought strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and goat’s cheese.

Poker. Not much has happened since I last wrote. I had a weird badugi tournament last weekend in which I clung on for more than two hours without ever making better than a ten badugi. My bankroll is $714.

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.

Family - Life :) - Poker

The green light, and a familiar scare

May 27, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I got my immigration card, so I’m now free to stay in Romania until 2026 under the provisions of Article 50. It’s a relief to get that out of the way. Now that I probably won’t be turfed out of the country, my next stop is to put down some roots here using the proceeds of the apartment I had in Wellington. But I don’t know where to start. A house or a flat? A new build or something more established? (The new blocks, and new areas, depress me.) Where I am now is perfect in many ways, but a huge rent hike is on the horizon, and I could do with being able to teach in a different place to where I eat. Plus I’d really like to have my own set of wheels.

My uncle Graeme, who turned 80 last month, had a major scare at the end of last week. He collapsed and vomited, and was quickly rushed off to hospital. There he had his aortic valve replaced, just like my father did at age 55. Graeme won’t be coming out of hospital for a while. This all reminds me of how Dad almost died following his operation. It really was touch and go. He had his valve replaced in the UK, while I was in Auckland. (Mum also stayed in New Zealand – we all make baffling decisions at some points in our lives, and this was her turn.) I spoke to him after the operation and everything seemed to have gone off without a hitch. But as he was on the verge of leaving hospital he couldn’t get out of bed. He had fluid in his lungs. My grandmother overheard one of the staff say that the fluid had probably coagulated and he was a lost cause. I remember when Mum called me, telling me to say a prayer for Dad because he might not make it. That was 16 years ago, around the time of the terrorist attack in London. I was studying for actuarial exams while also trying to devise a word-based version of Sudoku, the new craze.

When I spoke to my brother at the weekend it dawned on us. Mum and Dad might never come back to this part of the world again. I’d put the chance of that at 30%. We spent some time discussing the when and how of making a trip over to see them. As it stands, my sister-in-law isn’t allowed to set foot in the country.

Summer is almost upon us, and for the next four months I’ll be making regular trips to the outdoor markets. The strawberries have just started, as have the cherries, although they’re still rather pricy. The tomatoes are on their way. Soon we’ll have the watermelons and the stone fruit. All the lovely fruit and vegetables we get here are hard to beat.

Not much joy at the poker tables since I last wrote. I need to run better, basically. My bankroll is $690. Why am I doing this? Not for the money, clearly. I’m doing it for the mental workout. Can I at least get some way to mastering this game?