Buying property

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.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Maths teaching

Maths and the reality of Covid

December 12, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had my first maths lesson with Matei this morning, and also my first face-to-face lesson of any sort since September. The back tyre on my bike had a slow leak, and I arrived with only a minute to spare. It was good to see Matei, who now has a mop of long hair, rather like me. That’s pretty unusual for a 13-year-old in a fairly conservative country like Romania. We sat down – I had a comfortable but very impractical chair for teaching – and did some geometry problems. These were only 2-D, and no trig, so it didn’t matter that my maths was a bit rusty. Matei understood it all fine, but his weakness, I feel, is a lack of mathematical sense (or reasoning), and that’s difficult to teach. For instance, there was one question where he had to calculate how many 20-centimetre-square tiles you need to cover a floor measuring 20 by 5 metres. A simple problem, and he understood how to get the answer, but he couldn’t instinctively tell that it was a big floor, the tiles weren’t much bigger than his hands, and you’d therefore need lots of them. He also did what many not-great-but-not-terrible maths students did even back in my day, which was to reach for his calculator at the first opportunity. (I mean, 84 divided by 4, c’mon!) He goes to British School which follows the British system – all his lessons, except for Romanian and Spanish, are in English – so there were no language issues to worry about for either of us. It’s quite different from the Romanian system, and that’s the whole reason they contacted me instead of a Romanian.

In the middle of our lesson, Matei told me all about his father, who nearly died in autumn of 2020. The three of them – Matei and his parents – all came down with the disease; his father was the worst by far. He spent at least three weeks in hospital, requiring oxygen, and still needed an oxygen supply when he came home. At the worst point, he only had use of 30% of his lungs. Matei told me the common story of someone who gets a bit sick, then improves, only to find a day or two later that he can hardly breathe. The awful part was that his family couldn’t see him of course; they relied on FaceTime. Thankfully he made a full recovery – it sounded like it was touch-and-go. He’s in his early fifties and is carrying quite a bit of extra weight. Matei expressed his anger at anti-vaxers; I completely agreed with him (obviously, if you’ve been reading my blog).

When we got to the end of my lesson, I panicked. Where’s my phone? I couldn’t see it anywhere. I had a long and painful trip back on (and off) my bike, not knowing if my phone would be there when I got home. But it was. Phew. For some reason (being in a rush, mostly) I never took it off the charger. As for my bike, I hope it’s a puncture and not the valve, because taking off the back wheel on that thing is a complete nightmare – the gear hub and the brakes are in there, and it has a chain case. If it’s a puncture I can repair it without taking the wheel off at all.

This October was Romania’s deadliest month since World War Two, according to the official figures that have just been published. That includes March 1977, when there was that massive earthquake, and December 1989, when the revolution took place.

On Thursday I read this piece on Stuff (a New Zealand news site) about the plight of earthquake-prone building owners in Wellington, and thought how good it is to be out of that. Just think of all the meetings and emails and body corporate politics. I don’t get my rent anymore, but I don’t get any of that drip-drip-drip of unremitting powerlessness and desperation either. I was extremely lucky to come out of it as well as I did. The comments (there aren’t many) on the article aren’t too sympathetic to building owners. The only comment I agree with is (currently) the last one, saying that earthquake strength testing, and the rules around it, are a complete sham. (The NZ property market is a sham too. That’s half the reason so many people buy crappy properties in the first place, because that’s all they can afford. It would be better for the country in the long run if the whole thing would burn. Any party that proposes policies to at least singe it would get my vote.)

Yesterday morning I spoke to Dad, whose eye was running at the time. He had his other eye operated on in the UK in the mid-nineties, so that it wouldn’t run, but since the other one started running he’s just lived with it.

I’m still full of cold, though much better than a week ago. (These things never pass quickly for me.) I was going to join Mark (the teacher) on a road trip tomorrow, but the forecast is for rain and maybe snow, so we’ll probably meet up for a drink in town.

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.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - New Zealand - Other sports - Tennis

The benefits (perhaps) of big sport

November 20, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve got tennis this afternoon, straight after my lesson with the young couple. It’ll probably be singles again with that super-fit guy. We chatted after last weekend’s game, and he attributed his fitness in part to growing up (and going to school) under communism in the Nadia Comăneci era. Sport was a top priority then, as it simply wasn’t when I grew up in the UK, and isn’t now in 21st-century Romania. Sure, we all did gymnastics and swimming and team sports, but unless you were one of the best at football or cricket, we were pretty much going through the motions. I know I was. We certainly didn’t have scouts visiting schools to eye up the best young talent, as they did in Romania. I was, however, exposed to a higher-priority regime when I spent those six months in New Zealand as a nine-year-old. There were inter-school tennis competitions, inter-school athletics competitions, and cross-country runs. I participated in all of that and hated the lot, even tennis, a sport that I otherwise liked.

I saw two more flats yesterday, both in the same block in the Fabric area, which is to the east of where I live now. The block was designated U4, as in “U4 me”, but I don’t think those places were quite for me. In Romanian, U4 is pronounced “ooh patru“. They weren’t bad apartments at all, but do I know what I’m taking on here? I left feeling more confused than anything.

After my Moderna booster, I felt fine for the rest of the day, but at night I got the shivers and slept no more than three or four hours. The next day I felt a bit tired and groggy, but soon I was back to normal. Some short-term grogginess seemed a small price to pay for the level of protection that the extra jab should give me, especially seeing that I’m in Romania where getting a severe case of Covid is a riskier proposition than it would be in New Zealand, for instance.

Mum and Dad missed out on seeing their one-in-800-year near-total eclipse of a blood-red moon. It clouded over at just the wrong time. I had a chat to them this morning. All is well there, although they have taken on a pretty big project with their new house. I also spoke to my brother, who was on his own – my sister-in-law was attending a conference in Liverpool.

Buying property - Coronavirus - New Zealand

Step inside (and back in time)

November 14, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Well on Friday morning I had a look at a house in the picturesque Mehala district. An actual house this time, not an apartment, and on 860 m² of land (just over a fifth of an acre). A man in his mid-fifties (maybe; in Romania it’s often hard to tell) with no more than half a dozen teeth and a small yappy dog showed me around. It was going for €135,000 (NZ$220,000), which is right at the limit for me. He told me the place was built in 1968; I would have guessed earlier. An old lady had lived there, perhaps since ’68. The furniture certainly didn’t look any newer than that. I had a short but fascinating tour of a traditional simple Romanian house with all its religious artwork and flowery embroidered decorations. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked, expecting a simple “It’s just here”, but instead I got “There isn’t one.” In fact there was no running water inside at all. He then showed me outside, where there was a tap, a shed which I think contained a long drop, a lot of grapevines and plenty of overgrown grass. The place was beautiful in its own way but getting it plumbed and generally into shape would have needed time and money beyond anything I could face. I thanked the man, explaining that I was an English teacher, and apologising for my rudimentary Romanian. I’m probably better off with an apartment, but the modern ones tend to have an all-in-one kitchen and living room, which is a non-starter for me. I have to keep persevering. Here are some photos that I took of the place.

I had a low-level argument with Mum this morning. (My parents are fine, by the way.) She said that the vaccination rate in and around Geraldine was poor, because of all the weed smokers and what have you. No it isn’t, Mum. I’ve seen the map with the figures, so stop making false assumptions that suit your Jacinda-is-bad agenda! You’re at 90% first dose and 80% second dose, which is pretty damn impressive when you consider that there’s currently no virus on the whole of the South Island. Sure, when you explore the map, there are pockets of Northland and the West Coast where take-up isn’t great, but even then the disparities aren’t as stark as in the US.

In the early hours of Thursday morning two people were killed in a fire at a Covid hospital, Romania’s fourth of the pandemic. This country, which still has no functioning government as far as I know, is a disaster zone right now. Thankfully, case numbers are coming down fast, and (anecdotally) I’m not hearing as many ambulances as I was a month ago. By Christmas the pressure on hospitals should have eased, but with such low vaccination rates I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a new spike in early 2022.

Last Sunday there was a protest outside the City Hall. A lot of noise for only a hundred or so people. There was a large banner saying that vaccines, masks and social distancing were against God’s law. Please, make it stop. (Religion is to blame for many thousands of Romanian deaths.)

After tennis last Sunday, my sister-in-law sent me a message, asking if I could help with her sister’s boyfriend’s maths problem. It was more of a civil engineering or surveying problem, with co-ordinates and degrees. I spent a chunk of Monday on it, and sent her back five scanned pages of pencil. I actually quite enjoyed doing some maths for change. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to calculate a sin or a cos.

Next time I’ll post some pictures of abandoned Timișoara.

Buying property - Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Making the news for all the wrong reasons

October 25, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Romania’s Covid woes – excavators being brought to cemeteries to cope with the sheer weight of mortality – have made the news in New Zealand, which is saying something because Romania hardly ever makes the news anywhere. Covid is now killing one Romanian every three and a half minutes. Romanians are now getting vaccinated in much larger numbers, because of the increasingly severe restrictions that they face if they don’t. Far too late for this wave, but it will help in 2022. My parents are worried about me. They fear that all lines of communication could be cut in the event that I get whisked off to some Covid ward. Or corridor. Or car park.

I played tennis this afternoon. First I played singles with the guy of 60-ish, whom I’ve had close battles with until now, but this time I was up 6-0 5-0 when we were joined by a third player; we then played what they call American doubles. The singles match was bizarre because the score was more down to him than me. I really didn’t play that well in the first set. My forehand wasn’t doing what it was supposed to, though in the second set that started to click. I sometimes wonder about etiquette in such situations. Is it poor form not to let someone win at least one game? (To my mind, absolutely not, but I know others see things differently.) After the first set he was marvelling at the colours of the leaves on the big maple tree that overhangs the court, so I’m guessing he had no problem with me.

House hunting has taken a back seat. It involves meeting unknown people which isn’t particularly safe right now. That agent has stopped contacting me. Today I had a look at a place in Mehala, but only from the outside.

Living on the edge of a time zone has its oddities. We’re still on summer time until next Sunday morning, so right now it’s dark in the mornings until eight. There has been serious talk of EU countries ending their twice-yearly clock changes, though that has stalled, probably because of the Covid crisis. If Romania were to observe permanent summer time, it wouldn’t get light until 9:15 am in December in Timișoara. I like the long summer evenings here, so clock switching gives us the best of both worlds. I imagine it’s a minority position, but I’d choose to keep the time shifts.

Last night I had a marathon poker session, and a deep run in Omaha hi-lo, but only made a tiny profit from the four tournaments I played. My bankroll is in four figures for the first time, at $1001.

The two pictures above are from Parcul Regina Maria.

The last three pictures are from Mehala. The sign on the power pole is telling dog owners to clean up after their “quadrupeds”, or four-legged friends.

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

Walls and doors are good

October 17, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buying property - Coronavirus

(Not) always the sun

October 7, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Always the Sun is a mid-eighties hit from the Stranglers. Good song, but could really have done with an extra verse or two.

I had a look at another place on Monday. It was in a new, Mediterranean-looking block (finished in 2015) in the much older Mehala area. Between the annoying real-estate patter both before and after, and the initial intimidation of being one of five people in the place (there were two agents and the couple who currently live there), I got to see a damn good apartment. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a biggish living area, all fully furnished, and more mod cons than I could shake a stick at. Too good for me was my immediate thought. It was priced at €123,000 (NZ$205,000). There was one snag, however, which will stop me from considering it. The place got no sun. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. When I got back home, the sun was beginning to stream through my west-facing living room window. I look back at the places I’ve been in over the years, and sun, or lack of it, has mattered a lot. In 2003 I flatted in Peterborough – a dive, honestly – but I certainly got the sun. So I’ll keep looking.

The virus in Romania has spun out of any semblance of control. That’s what happens when you give up even trying and people won’t take the sodding vaccine. (Please, New Zealand, approach your “containment” strategy with extreme caution.) Many thousands of old, and not so old, Romanians will die before the year is out. It wouldn’t shock me if we are soon averaging 500 deaths per day. During the daytime at least, people are behaving as if everything is normal. Heads are buried deep into the sand. (Right now – 10:15 pm – it’s pretty quiet. If you’re unvaxed, you face an 8pm curfew.)

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

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

October 3, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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