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Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Travel: Romania

Keeping those tourist numbers down

May 20, 2024 by 0 Comments

Things are certainly much better – and calmer – than a week ago. Not fantastically wonderful or anything, but I no longer feel hopelessly overwhelmed. My hours are down a bit, so I’ve been able to spend some time on my novel, though I’m constantly having to rework sections so that it meshes together properly, and even then I have doubts. Is this bit simply too boring? Then I’ve got the meeting for the other book, which was supposed to be last Tuesday but I’m glad got put back because things were still pretty messy then.

The last few days have been nondescript, which is no bad thing. My most interesting lesson was probably on Thursday, when my student of 22 or 23 showed me her CV. I’d put her at a 5 on my 0-to-10 scale. Her CV began with three introductory paragraphs where she blew her own trumpet and the rest of the brass section along with it. In included such phrases as “I wield automation tools”, “technical prowess”, “foster strong team collaboration” and “peak performance and user delight”. I asked her what “wield”, “prowess” and “foster” meant; predictably she hadn’t a clue. Then I told her to stop using AI to write her CV. Anybody with half a brain could tell that those weren’t her words.

I’ve had the usual chats with my parents. Lately Dad has spent a lot of time talking about UK immigration, which to be fair is a massively important topic, but sometimes I want a break from all the negativity associated with it. Yesterday he sent me a 35-minute YouTube video of a speech on UK immigration by someone from a right-wing think tank. Oh no, I have to watch this. The speaker made some perfectly valid points and some which I saw as invalid.

Yesterday I played tennis with Florin, as usual on a Saturday. We were surrounded by six beach volleyball courts; a noisy competition was in full flow. When things had calmed down half an hour into our session, we started a game. I was up 6-3, 1-1 when we finished. The most pleasing thing was that I didn’t suffer from the wobbly feeling on my service games.

Today I visited the dendrological park (that fancy word means “trees”) at Bazoșu Nou, a short trip from here. I parked next to a man of about thirty; he was with his small son who rode the sort of bike that didn’t exist when I was little, and clearly enjoyed the interaction with him. (I always feel a tinge of sadness when I see that; being 50% older than many fathers doesn’t exactly make that feeling go away.) To my surprise there was a man at the gate collecting a 10 lei entrance fee. Not far from the entrance were a pair of wordy information boards, one in Romanian and one in French, plus a map with no scale that showed vaguely what you might see. An American zone with sequoias. A giant oak tree. But from there, information was nonexistent. Is the oak tree two minutes away or half an hour? Is this oak tree the giant one or not? Nothing was labelled. The park was pretty and a relaxing place to stroll in, but some sense of what and where wouldn’t have gone amiss. I’d been in the park an hour, sometimes using my birdsong recognition app and wishing I had an app for trees too, when I thought, how do I get out of here now? Luckily I guessed right – all you could do in that rather large, mazy park was guess – and I was spared the Blair Witch stuff. Romania gets few tourists and they’re doing a good job of keeping it that way.

A useful map of cycle tracks outside the park

After the park I ended up in Recaș for the second time in four days – I had my lunch there on Wednesday – then got pulled over by the police. Ugh. “Do you want to know what rule you’ve broken?” I guess so. I expected to get done for speeding; I often don’t quite know what the speed limits are. The rule I’d broken was “headlights on at all times” rule. Only my sidelights were on. Apparently this is quite a new law (and crazy if you ask me, unless you ride a motorbike). He asked me to open the boot to make sure I had a full emergency kit (I did), then I was free to go, with no fine or anything. He was pleasant enough. I then stopped for lunch in a village called Brestovăț followed by a smaller village called Teș where the roads were unsealed and none of them seemed to go through the village despite my 2009 map which said otherwise.

Brestovăț

Teș

I braved the car wash today. It worked by rechargeable card. You had to put at least 10 lei on the card, so I charged it up with the minimum. A 2½-minute blast with a high-pressure hose was supposed to eat up 5 lei, but when that was done the other 5 lei had mysteriously vanished too. I might try another one next time. I must say I’m enjoying the car. It’s my favourite of the five I’ve had so far. I know it’s a diesel, but I’m still blown away by the low fuel consumption. It gets roughly 50 miles to the gallon; my 1984 Nissan Bluebird got barely half that.

I zeroed the trip meter the last time I filled up. 969 km hardly seems possible.
Dreams - Life :) - Tennis

Bull in a china shop, but am I coming out of it?

May 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

On Saturday evening I played tennis with Florin. The way I was feeling I didn’t expect to play well, but to my surprise I raced to 6-0, 4-0, with three break points in the following game. He was far from his best, but I had vast amounts of pent-up energy, and that meant I played more aggressively than usual. He improved while I hit the speed wobbles, especially on serve where I was creaking. There were worlds in which I might even have lost the second set, but I eked it out 6-3 and led 4-3 in the third when we finished.

Soon after writing my last post I met Mark by the river. He’s now a married man – again – after an eight-minute wedding in Scotland. You have to reside in England to marry there, but Scotland has so such rule, so they got married in Gretna which is just over the border. Nearby Gretna Green was where elopers from England would marry 200-odd years ago; back then if you were under 21 you couldn’t marry in England without permission from your parents, but that rule didn’t apply in Scotland. Timotion was in full swing in town – that’s basically like Round the Bays which I sometimes did in Auckland or Wellington, but without the bays; there was also a half-marathon option. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being among a crowd of people emblazoned with company logos.

After seeing Mark I got in the car and stopped in the village of Dragșina. I got out because I wanted to take a photo of a stork nesting atop a lamp-post to show somebody, but I couldn’t do that because my phone had died. Fuzzy coloured lines jumped about on the screen. I’d planned to go further but my dead phone stopped me in my tracks, so I then went home via one of the several Kauflands dotted around the city. I felt disoriented in that supermarket, which I’d never been to before. It was simply too big. Then I managed to tip the trolley over in the car park, which isn’t an easy thing to do, giving myself a great big bruise on my shin. I was like a bull in a china shop there, with no control whatsoever. Luckily I hadn’t bought eggs or anything else that might break. I drove home, relieved to make it back before doing serious damage to me or anyone else.

I had to buy a new phone, and quick. I mean, I hate phones, but they’re a necessity of modern life. In the evening I cycled to Altex in the north of the city (the shop is open until 9pm, even on a Sunday) where I got another Samsung. Whether that was wise I don’t know. It cost 825 lei (roughly NZ$300 or £140). Today I’ll get a screen protector and a better charger. I was constantly plugging and unplugging my old phone – that can’t have done it much good – and charging it at all became an increasing struggle. Dropping it didn’t help either, of course. I lost a load of recent WhatsApp messages, but nothing important, and luckily I’d only just transferred a batch of photos to my laptop.

I’ve had two recent chats with my brother. All is well there. My nephew is coming on in giant leaps now. We discussed the northern lights that had been visible down to unusually low latitudes, though neither of us actually saw them. We also talked about WhatsApp groups and how they’re sucking the life out of us all. He said most of the other students on his university course where part of groups but he steered clear, and probably benefited as a result. Yesterday I spoke to my parents who had just had the carpet fitted in their living room at a cost of $4000. Everything there has become mindblowingly expensive.

Yesterday I had my Romanian lesson. I felt frustrated that I’m not improving. If anything I might be regressing. Then I had four English lessons of varying meaningfulness. After all that I put on the lovely Ommadawn, Mike Oldfield’s album, and for the first time in a month I was able to just be, albeit for half an hour. I’m about to have another lesson, after which I’ll go into town and hopefully pay my rates – I never receive a bill for that, so I don’t know how much it will be, nor what would happen if I didn’t pay at all.

I had a strange dream last night where I was with Dad in a seedy theme park. The rides were age-restricted; I was only just inside the upper age limit. There was some sort of key that we needed to exit the park, but ours didn’t work. What do we do now? Then I woke up.

Books - Life :) - Writing a book

Been here before, but what’s the way out this time?

May 12, 2024 by 0 Comments

Things have got pretty crappy, let’s be frank. It’s not like I haven’t been here before. I can’t enjoy things, can’t maintain interest in things, can’t take in new information, can’t concentrate, can’t prioritise (everything has become an obligation; a chore), my working memory is shot to shit, I’m clumsier, I’ve got 27 tabs open on my laptop, I can physically feel each instant message as if it’s a hammer blow to my brain (What the hell is it this time?) even though turning off sounds has helped, and so it goes on. What makes this particular episode worrying is that the reduction in meaningful lessons and increase in pointless ones means I don’t have my teaching to fall back on like I used to. The maths has been the only real plus (ha ha) of late.

The bath “fix” didn’t fix a damn thing – last night I had my first shower since the “repair” and there was soon a lake on the floor. He is going to have to smash the tiling and temporarily remove the basin after all. Apart from the cost, that means I’ll have to be here all the time, making it harder for me to visit the market or do any other life admin tasks that require going outside.

Some potential good news. (That depression survey question. Do you continue to feel down even when good things happen? Yes.) Dorothy has made contact with a Timișoara publisher, and there’s a chance that my English “tips, tricks and traps” dictionary (that could be a good name for it, come to think of it) could find its way into print. Dorothy and I might be meeting the publisher on Tuesday.

I’ve just bought some more ink cartridges (why are they so expensive?) and ordered five books in English: White Fang by Jack London (it is extremely popular in Romania under the title Colț Alb, so I thought my younger students would like to see the English version); Charlotte’s Web, another popular children’s book; and both Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, together with Christopher Robin Milne’s autobiography. Those last ones are really for my benefit; I loved the Pooh books when I was a kid, as well as Milne’s poems, and I thought they might cheer me up. I doubt I’ll get the books for several weeks, though, and who knows what state I’ll be in by then.

As for my Vinted purchases, I’m pretty sure that one of the sellers scammed me. I buy a £30 item, the seller sees that I’m using a forwarder, he/she knows that I have to OK the item before I even see it, so they send me a £5 item and pocket the rest. Caveat emptor and all that. Getting anything delivered to Romania from outside its borders is fraught with difficulty and risk.

Soon I’m meeting Mark in town – I won’t drink anything – then I’ll go for a drive.

Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Positive plumbing and my latest trip

May 9, 2024 by 0 Comments

Good plumbing news. It turned out that the previous guy did a botched job of the seal around the bath, so we won’t need to smash the tilework after all. Or at least I don’t think so. The plumber put some silicon around the edge which the other guy didn’t bother with. I also got him to fix the loo in the small bathroom. I went with him to Dedeman in my car; we picked up a cistern and some other bits and pieces. He told me to go a completely different way there to what I would have done – he clearly knew better than me. He should finish the job tomorrow.

I had my first maths lesson last night with a 15-year-old girl who goes to British School. She’s struggling a bit with the subject; her almost nonexistent mental arithmetic isn’t doing her any favours. But I found her very personable and that makes her very teachable. I’m glad to suddenly have her as a student, right when my proportion of pointless lessons (which don’t help my mood) is at an all-time high. Teaching her will be far from pointless, and quite a challenge.

Monday was a warm one. I went for another long drive – about 250 km, skirting the borders of both Hungary and Serbia. My first stop was Periam, a town (or large village) of about 4000 people; a lot of our local stone fruit comes from there. Being a public holiday, it was extremely quiet there. I called my parents from a café: though it was closed I could still sit at one of the tables in the shady outside area. I then made a short stop at Sânnicolau Mare, a bigger town, before going back to Dumbrăvița via Jimbolia which is a fun name to say. At 4:30 I had maths with Matei on the eve of his final maths exam; we went through a bastard of a past paper from 2021.

The snooker is over. After a tournament in which the big guns didn’t really show up, Kyren Wilson is the champion, beating Jak Jones 18-14 in the final. He made a blistering start, going 7-0 up, but in the end he flopped over the line. Wilson won a drama-packed frame on a respotted black to put him one away, but Jones – the pressure off him – started reeling off frames. Jones was having fun and the crowd warmed to him, while for Wilson it wasn’t far off becoming his worst nightmare. Finally he got there. His reaction to winning was worth watching in itself, as was the very cute bit when his two sons joined him on the stage.

Forty years ago, snooker was massively popular in Britain and had a serious following elsewhere. Steve Davis, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor, a young Jimmy White – they were all household names. British football was in the doldrums – attending matches in crumbling stadiums was dangerous, the government of the day treated fans as animals, and very few games were televised. Snooker filled the gap. It was perfect for colour television – still pretty new – and back then there were only four channels, with few of the endless entertainment options we have now, not to mention social media which is a disaster zone. If snooker was on the telly, with its colourful characters, there’s a good chance you’d watch it and get hooked in. Nobody cared if a match took several hours; what was the rush? How the world has changed. Football is now a global gazillion-pound machine, while snooker is down to just one and a half household names in Ronnie O’Sullivan and maybe Judd Trump. Both sports are in grave danger of being Saudified.

Trains still stop at Periam

The Orthodox church in Periam…
…and the Catholic church

Romanian trees are often dați cu var, or whitewashed with lime, to prevent their trunks from cracking as a result of the extreme temperature variations between summer and winter.

Plenty of Serbian in Sânpetru Mare
Miloje Polić
Life :) - Other sports - Photos - Travel: Romania

Church, flowers and balls

May 6, 2024 by 0 Comments

This morning I went to Dorothy’s church, a 25-minute bike ride from here. Church has the potential for all sorts of awkwardness. Just like the Orthodox adherents, Romanian Baptists say Hristos a înviat, or “Christ has risen”, in place of “Hello”. Any reply from me, even the “correct” one, would instantly mark me as an outsider. I was surprised that they also celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. The service lasted two hours – even longer than the Christmas one – and was capped off by an extremely wordy sermon. In between were hymns accompanied by a guitar, a violin, and drums. All the way through were churchy Romanian words I didn’t know and have already forgotten – it’s not like I could look them up or note them down very easily. The congregation was half the size of the one at Christmas, but included kids who were all called on to read the odd verse or two. Communion, which I didn’t partake in, consisted of normal red wine and scraps of pita bread, not the special communion wine and wafers that we got at the Catholic church many moons ago when I did church. We had coffee and biscuits outside – once again I met that bubbly Australian woman who had sung vigorously.

When I got home the lady above me gave me some Easter food: drob (usually this contains lamb offal, but the one I got has chicken instead; it tastes good), sarmale (filled cabbage rolls), several slices of cozonac (a traditional bready cake), and another cake whose name I don’t know. She might have actually made all of that herself, so I have no reasonable way of returning the favour. Then I got in the car and went north to Fibiș (which is on the way to Lipova), then west to Orțișoara where I stopped for just a few minutes – there was a lovely hailstorm – before returning home.

Snooker. Some long scrappy frames last night. Stuart Bingham seemed to mentally check out at the end, allowing Jak Jones to win 17-12 when a very long night had looked in store. In the 27th frame Bingham laid a fiendish snooker behind the green. Jones’s first escape attempt clattered into the pink, sending reds flying. The referee and his assistant spent several minutes replacing the balls. Remarkably Jones hit a red on his second try, sparing everybody a repeat. Bingham won that frame in the end, but that was his last hurrah against a dogged opponent. It’s not going quite to well for Jones in the final – he took a pummelling in the first session against Kyren Wilson; at least he won the final frame to trail “only” 7-1 in the first-to-18 match. (Update: I’ve just watched a brilliant second session of high quality. There was a dramatic twist in the last frame in which Wilson got the snooker that he needed on the yellow, and then won after a 15-shot back-and-forth on the black. Wilson now leads 11-6.)

Painstakingly putting the balls back. At least they have a top-down camera now.

Palm Sunday in town last weekend

By the river at 8pm yesterday. It now gets dark at 8:45.

Orțișoara: a not-that-old sign for a closed-down ABC, the equivalent of a dairy in NZ

A typical flower arrangement using old tyres

Orțișoara’s volunteer fire department, right next to those flower beds

The war memorial in Orțișoara. Almost all the names here are German; the town was settled by Germans in the late 18th century.
Family - Life :) - Other sports

Down time

May 5, 2024 by 0 Comments

Birmingham City have just been relegated to the third tier of English football, euphemistically known as League One. They put up a great fight against Norwich – and won! – but all the other teams down there were also victorious. They finished on 50 points, which is normally plenty, but this time was one point shy. You can thank Sheffield Wednesday’s manager for that – he performed miracles in dragging the team out of a seemingly impossible hole. Blues’ season on the other hand was a car crash of chaos, right from the appointment of Wayne Rooney in October. Then Tony Mowbray fell ill – that was extremely bad luck. The last time they were out of the top two divisions was in 1995. I do remember that 1994-95 season when they were managed by Barry Fry – a total headcase – and won the league amid the madness. A whole lot of fun for the fans. Hopefully the trips to Lincoln and Shrewsbury and Burton Albion will be as enjoyable this time around. So Plymouth Argyle (cool name) stay up in all their greenness, while Ipswich have made it to the Premier League after two barnstorming seasons. Good to see them back in the big time. It’s been fun to follow football for a short while, and I’ve realised that all the intrigue and excitement lies outside the Champions League and the top handful of teams. The Championship (the second English tier) is about as good as it gets.

Snooker. The corner pockets really are drum tight this year. Jak Jones, who has been unflappable throughout, now leads Stuart Bingham 13-10 with one session to play. Kyren Wilson and Dave Gilbert are now back for their final session; Wilson looks to be edging closer to the final. (Update: Wilson won 17-11 to book his place in the final.) On Thursday I watched a session on some site called Kick which had a chat facility off to the side. One of the viewers was Finnish, and people were talking about Karelian bear dogs. I didn’t know that Karelia was a region that straddles the current countries of Russia and Finland. Watching snooker is relaxing – I’ve struggled with that in recent weeks – but following any kind of sport is such a time sink. Not long now until it’s all over.

Mum was in a good mood last night. She’s had a decent run of late on the golf course. She’d been reading The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a book about the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős – I bought it at university and she must have picked it off the shelf. He was a right nutter, she said. I didn’t expect her to read a book like that, and it’s given us something extra to talk about.

I had maths with Matei this morning. His first exam on Thursday seemed to go pretty well; I’ll see him again on Monday, the day before he tackles the second (longer) paper. His mother gave me a crème brûlée during today’s lesson; I sometimes get these unexpected freebies.

Yesterday I met Dorothy and Sanda for coffee in town. I hadn’t seen Sanda for months. We met at a place called Wise, very close to where I used to live. We talked about education systems and the Epoca de Aur, the last years of communism. Sanda mentioned her 82-year-old father’s pacemaker fitting which was done at the drop of a hat and took half an hour. Mindblowingly fast if you ask me. The walls were full of slogans in English; I normally avoid places like that because you know you’ll have to pay 50% more. I pointed out to Dorothy that there was a preposition error in one of the slogans – “bring her at Wise”, when it should have been “… to Wise”. It took an age for the staff to even notice us so we could pay our bill, despite vigorous arm waving and the fact that we were almost the only customers there. If you ever come to Romania, crappy or non-existent service is something you have to get used to. Sanda then told the (young) staff about the error on the sign; they were surprisingly good about it. (I wouldn’t have mentioned it myself, one because I don’t like to go there, and two because a slogan is just like wallpaper – it doesn’t provide information.)

I’m enjoying the quiet of the Orthodox Easter weekend (which has merged with the 1st May public holiday) and hearing the birds outside instead of the constant rumble of trucks. It reminds me of lockdown. On Wednesday I went down to the deserted riverside and bumped into the lady who lives opposite me. I enjoyed our chat on a day in which I’d been struggling. Tonight will be the Easter vigil with huge crowds, but I won’t be attending. Instead I’ll be going to the service tomorrow morning at Dorothy’s Baptist church.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

A sound decision

May 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve been teetering for the last two and half weeks. Yesterday I turned off my WhatsApp alerts because they’d become so bloody exhausting. I can’t concentrate on anything or appreciate anything or properly do anything while I’ve got my phone and laptop beeping and pinging away. I’m already feeling the benefits of pinglessness. It should also mean I’m less likely to drop my phone, although that horse has bolted.

I got the plumber in on Tuesday. To get at the leak he’ll have to smash the tilework in front of the bath, and also temporarily remove the sink. Luckily I have a stack of spare tiles left over (they’re in the small “junk” room next to my office, which needs clearing out), and I have a second bathroom, but what a pain. My package did arrive, but not as hoped. I was supposed to get some bedding, a second-hand backpack costing £30 or so, and a few items of clothing, but I somehow ended up with a cheap fleece instead of the backpack, and one of the other items was missing entirely. Because I live in an off-the-map country, I got everything delivered to France and then forwarded on to me. I’d done this before without too many problems, but it’s risky, mainly because you’re forced to say that everything is fine when the items are still 1000 miles from your doorstep. I’ve contacted the forwarder but I imagine there’s not a lot they can do.

I spoke to my brother last night. Whenever I speak to them, either he or his wife or their son has a cold. There are bugs going around all over the show, and people’s immunity levels are still shot to pieces after the Covid isolation. He tried to dissuade me from coming over again in July, though not in as many words. He said they’ll be too busy in the lead-up to their trip to New Zealand in early August. Why not come over at Christmas? No thanks. I might still go over anyway, even if I don’t see my brother, to get out of the searing Romanian heat.

Yesterday Matei had his first IGCSE maths paper. I got this message from Octavian who also sat the exam: I did excellent at maths, I even added bonus questions that I have solved because I was bored. You don’t need the present perfect there, mate, but much more importantly you’re nearly 17 and it might be time to ease back on the conceit dial just a tad.

I’ve made some socată – elderflower champagne – and it’s now fizzing away in three 3-litre jars which I bought from Dedeman in Lugoj last weekend. Heaven knows what it will end up like.

Snooker. The semis are Dave Gilbert against Kyren Wilson, and Stuart Bingham versus Jak Jones. Both matches are locked at 4-4 after the first of four sessions; the semis are the first to 17 frames, so we’re talking proper marathons here. (Update: Both matches are tied at 8-8 after two sessions. The 16th frame of Bingham and Jones was quite ludicrous. Update 2: Wilson now leads Gilbert 14-10 after their third session.) It’s a final four that nobody expected; no members of the much-vaunted class of ’92 (no Ronnie O’Sullivan in particular), no Judd Trump, and no Luca Brecel who won it last year. Three of the four (all except Wilson) were unseeded and had to qualify. The rather portly Bingham (champion in 2015) was on the verge of defeat in the qualifiers, but after making it has done brilliantly. He held his nerve to beat Jack Lisowski 13-11, then barely put a foot wrong in the last few frames against O’Sullivan as he won 13-10. I missed the match of the tournament so far, however – John Higgins’ 13-12 win over Mark Allen in round two. Higgins won a dramatic penultimate frame before completing a remarkable clearance in the decider. The double he took on to start the break, knowing that he’d be out if he missed it, was something else.

Football. Tomorrow is judgement day for Blues. Don’t win against Norwich and they’re gone. Do win and they might still be gone. I put their chances of staying up at between 25 and 30%. If they do survive, the most likely team to go down are Plymouth. My brother got married there. The Plymouth fans seem a nice bunch, and it benefits the Championship to have a team in that part of the country. If I hadn’t studied in Birmingham and seen Blues play a few times 25 years ago, I’d probably want Plymouth to stay up instead.

When the snooker finishes on Monday, it’ll be no more sport for me for a while. I expect I’ll dip into Romania’s matches in Euro 2024 but that’ll be it. Fantastic.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Music - Other sports

Trying not to sweat the small stuff

April 30, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’m struggling a bit. Not at the level of last January or February, but struggling nonetheless. So many small things that add up to a big mess, with no resilience and nobody to share the load with. For instance, I made an online order and got a message to say it would be delivered today, but because I knew I’d be out for lessons I called their number and asked them to deliver it tomorrow instead. But now I’ve just had an email saying (in Romanian) “Great! Your package has been delivered! Mission completed! Give us a review.” So now what, apart from maybe zero stars? Perhaps I’ll still get it tomorrow (the last day before a public holiday) but who knows? Last night at eleven my doorbell rang. It was Domnul Pascu, the man of nearly 80 who lives directly below me. Water was leaking from my bathroom, through his ceiling, and in danger of electrocuting him. A plumber is coming tomorrow morning.

As I cycled to my maths lesson with Matei today I realised I hadn’t yet washed my car. There are car washes all over the city in beyond; they make me think of Sheryl Crow’s mid-nineties song about Santa Monica Boulevard and Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy and a giant car wash where people scrub the best they can in skirts and suits during their lunch breaks. On this sunny afternoon I had five spare minutes so I dropped into Car Wash Point, one of many car washes on the same stroad, just to see how these things work. There was a wash bit and a hoover bit and a blacken-your-tyres bit. There seemed to be a central machine where you obtain and then charge a card which you insert at the various stations. Just the wash bit had six buttons: pre-wash (what does that involve, I wonder?), normal wash, extra foam, wax, something else, and STOP. I wish I could wash the damn thing myself like I used to, back when life was simpler.

Matei has his first of two IGCSE maths papers this Thursday; the second paper (which accounts for 130 of the 200 marks) is next Wednesday. He’s fine with anything that involves a tried and trusted method, but his problem solving (a hard skill to teach) isn’t quite there. I felt powerless today as the sands of our two-hour lesson ran out. We’ll have two more lessons between his two papers. The I of IGCSE stands for International, and interestingly there are three versions of each paper; you get a different one depending on your time zone, so those in later zones can’t gain knowledge of the exam a few hours beforehand.

Yesterday I visited Lugoj, a large town 70 km from here. The river Timiș, and small island between two branches of it, makes for a picturesque setting. In the island there was, as always, an abandoned swimming pool. I could make a niche YouTube channel in which I travel around Romania showing nothing but abandoned swimming pools. The temperature was in the high 20s, hotter than forecast. Had it been 1984 I would have had a dip in that pool. My car heated up spectacularly and I was glad to get home. I should mention that I recently got my old winter tyres replaced with all-season ones. The old ones were nine years old and cracked, and only good for the gunoi (rubbish) according to the mechanic.

Yesterday morning I had my first chat for ages with my cousin in Wellington. Though I spoke to her after her cancer diagnosis and operation, I hadn’t seen her like this with her drooped jaw. Her bilabial plosives – Bs and Ps – became Vs and Fs respectively. As expected, there was no mention of her health. She doesn’t even broach the subject with her three younger sisters. I wasn’t sure how much she really wanted the chat, and we were done in twenty minutes. It was good to see her youngest boy who wants to be a policeman. Then I had a long chat with her husband who was far more, well, chatty than her. We talked about his business plans (the bottom has dropped out of the manuka honey market, he said) and driving in Romania.

On Saturday I watched the relegation battle between Huddersfield and Birmingham. Not a whole ton of quality, but Blues took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Koji Miyoshi. I don’t know what the Huddersfield team talk was during the break, but it worked. They equalised immediately and for a few minutes were rampant. Blues weathered the storm though, and the game rather petered out. One apiece. The draw sent Huddersfield down, while Blues themselves are in the mire. Realistically they now must beat Norwich in the last game of a zany season, and hope that either Plymouth fail to win, or one of Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn actually lose. There’s all kinds of football vocab now that didn’t exist when I followed the sport more closely. In the nineties, wild goal celebrations in the crowd with arms and legs flailing weren’t known as limbs, and teams with nothing to play for weren’t on the beach. I saw that UB40’s Food for Thought (heck of a song, with the saxophone) is now a Birmingham City anthem of sorts. The song is supposedly about the genocide in Cambodia. In a similar vein, the Cranberries’ brilliant Zombie, which references IRA violence in Northern Ireland, was a favourite of Irish supporters during the last rugby World Cup.

When the football was on, I had one eye on the snooker. The corner pockets are noticeably tighter than last year, and century breaks have been at a premium. I particularly enjoyed the match between Jak Jones and Si Jiahui, which the Welshman won 13-9. Every other frame went down to the wire. In a week’s time both the football and the snooker will be over, and I won’t mind that one bit.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Dreary and weary

April 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

I watched my brother’s graduation ceremony this lunchtime – they had a live stream from Lincoln Cathedral, an incredible setting for it. After they got through many dozens of postgraduates who almost all originated in Africa, finally it was his turn. A huge achievement, and not something I could have done. I mean, business management, c’mon. I would have lasted ten minutes on that course. Where his motivation came from is beyond me.

My brother is now staying in St Ives and he asked me what I did with the parking permit. Sorry, what? The parking permit I gave to you and asked to leave in the flat after picking you up from Luton. I had zero recollection of that until he mentioned it, and even then my memory of it was pretty vague. I’m talking a level of memory loss I often had at work. I really should have made a note; without notes my life would be an unholy mess of forgettory. Sure enough I’ve found the permit, right here in my flat in Timișoara. So I guess that means he can’t park there legally and I’m in the shit. Looking back, that trip was a real struggle for me. It was too short and I had nowhere near enough time to myself.

It hasn’t been a great few days because I also managed to drop my phone while on my bike and crack the glass. I often wondered how people ended up with spider-web-looking cracked screens, and now I know. I went into the shop to ask if they could swap out the glass without an expensive replacement of the whole display – it’s still fully functional – but I got a pretty firm “no can do”.

A combination of all this and the weather – now dull and dismal, or mohorât as they say here – means I now feel a million miles from where I did four weeks ago when I drove to Recaș on that beautiful day and just sat in the park.

Last year I watched the final qualifiers of the world snooker, and all the drama that involved, but this year my work schedule has made that impossible and I’m not sure I’d have bothered anyway. I hope I can watch some of the real tournament because it’s a nice relaxing thing to do. There’s also the football. Can Blues stay up? They have three games left. First up is a trip to Rotherham, the worst team in the division by some distance, on Saturday. A win would be massive, but it’s far from guaranteed – Blues’ away record is atrocious.

I feel tired. I can’t wait for the Orthodox Easter weekend, now two weeks away, and a general lack of having to see or communicate with people. The curse of instant messaging means those blissful spells are fewer and farther between.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Photos

The warmest everything ever, everywhere

March 8, 2024 by 0 Comments

After a six-week winter we had the warmest February on record (warmest X on record is something we’ve been hearing a lot lately, right?), and now spring has well and truly sprung. Saying that, it’s tipped it down all day today.

A funny week of lessons, and it’s far from over. On Monday I had the 17-year-old mall rat again, though this time she seemed actually human. We had something approaching a chat, mostly about the Ukraine war. After two years, people here have become dangerously blasé about it all, but she was rightly concerned. One oddity was that she’d never heard of the September 11th attacks. I say oddity – for me it’s the where-were-you moment when the world changed at a stroke – but in Romania it had a much smaller impact on the collective psyche than in the English-speaking world or western Europe. And of course she wasn’t even born then. On the same day I had an online session with the senior manager (a 35-year-old woman) who lives somewhere near Bucharest. Saying these sessions are like talking to a brick wall would do a disservice to the responsiveness of masonry. Just an utter waste of time. The good news is that pointless work makes up just 20% of my hours; 15 years ago it was up near 90%.

A student from 18 months ago has also rejoined the fray. He goes by Italian-sounding name of Marco. I don’t know how you get that out of Dumitru, his real name. I’ve had three online “lessons” with him already this week. One of them he spent lying in bed; during another he smoked the whole time. (I recently had a guy vape during a face-to-face session at home; things suddenly got very strawberry-ish.) The sessions with Marco aren’t pointless exactly, but he’s on a different frequency to me somehow, and I struggle to pick up a signal.

It was 10pm when I finished with Marco on Tuesday. With no lessons the next morning, I put on the game between Hull and Birmingham. Hull, predictably, took the lead just after I tuned in – a goal that should have been disallowed for handball. Hull were dominant and it had all the makings of a stonking win for them, but Blues clung on and in the 82nd minute conjured up an equaliser as Lukas Jutkiewicz who had just come on as a substitute headed the ball home. A good point for Blues but they’re still very much in a relegation scrap. (Today I saw a simulation model that gave Blues a 15% chance of being relegated. Having seen a few of their performances, that feels low, even if they do still have a game in hand. They go to Millwall on Saturday, a huge game for them.) When the Blues game was over, I switched over to Ipswich – the Tractor Boys, as they’re affectionately known – at home to Bristol City. It was 2-2 with ten minutes left and the place was rocking. Ipswich were awarded a penalty, and a shocking kick was easily saved, but not to matter. They scored the winner a couple of minutes later, and it’s a wonder they didn’t add to their tally in stoppage time. That was fun to watch.

Not much other news. In my next post I’ll give a run-down of all the vinyl I bought recently. In the meantime, here’s a video from CityNerd on the world’s top ten music cities (by the metric he uses). Very interesting.

I’m extremely proud of my brother for getting his first-class degree. His graduation takes place on 18th April, a couple of weeks after I go to the UK. It’s a shame he won’t have family there for it. My graduation ceremony in 2002, which my parents and grandmother attended, was quite lovely really.