Life :)

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Lack of problems can be a problem

November 14, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just got back from dinner in deepest darkest Dumbrăvița with Mark, the teacher at British School. It was the first time I’d met his girlfriend (or fiancée actually) since last Christmas. He’d made chicken curry and banana cake. All very nice. Then he showed me pictures of their various European travels.

Before that I played tennis. We played one set that needs a mention, or else I’ll forget about it. Playing with Adelin, the guy who could barely hold a racket a few weeks ago but has sporting talent in spades, we trailed 2-4 with my serve to come. I gave them a generous call on a wide ball after a long rally to give them 0-30, which then became 0-40, but we reeled off the next five points for the game. We led 5-4 and 6-5 but wound up in a tie-break in which we fell 6-2 down. Adelin hit a stone-dead net-cord to save set point number three, and we won both the next two points on my serve to bring up set point at 7-6. Alas, we lost the last three points, and that was finally that.

My new students. First, the twins. Two sets of them, aged seven and nearly nine. I got them to write some basic information about themselves. Name, age, favourite food, favourite colour, favourite school subject, and so on. Maybe not the best idea because the seven-year-olds struggled a bit to write even in their native language, although I obviously helped them as much as I could. How you’re supposed to deal with thirty of the little blighters who all want your attention at the same time I have no idea. Then it was “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and Simon Says. “Now sit down … but I didn’t say Simon Says!” Every time I do this I think it’s bloody hilarious that I worked in insurance in a previous life. Just how? Then, on the same day, I had my first session with Ana. Another Ana. This one in her mid-thirties. A total change of pace from the harum-scarum stuff with the four kids. We had a nice chat with some general grammar points thrown in. Tomorrow I’ve got my first lesson with a 16-year-old girl.

A word on my tricky lesson with Luca, aged ten, on Tuesday. He arrived in tears. He said he’d had a terrible day in which he’d been bullied for being short. I told him he really wasn’t that short, and that he’s a rather good English speaker for his age (true) who will end up with a better job, and will earn more money, than the idiots at his school. His tears dried up and we had a productive lesson, although I bet he was dreading the next day. (While I was writing that paragraph, someone messaged me to ask what “posh” meant. I said “upper-class or elevated”. I didn’t mention anything about the etymology.)

I don’t have central heating in this place and am relying on the city system to heat the radiators. So far it’s working. Last winter was a nightmare for those on the city system and I was worried my parents might freeze while they were here, even before we hit proper winter, but they were overly toasty if anything.

Mum. Perhaps her biggest problem is her lack of problems. Most of us have had to deal with a disability or some mental or physical health issue or a messy break-up or an addiction or a tragic loss or a financial setback, or most likely a concoction of some of the above. These traumas and negative experiences make one more introspective, to question oneself, to be more self-aware. It’s great, obviously, that Mum has dodged most of the bad stuff and is enjoying a prosperous and healthy retirement. But if she’d had a bit more crap to deal with, she might now have the self-awareness to view situations more objectively.

Family - Life :)

A lovely time with my parents, but…

November 12, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

A beautiful November day here. Not a cloud in the sky, and way warmer than it should be at this time of year. Weather-wise we’re now all far removed from “should be”, of course.

Mum and Dad left yesterday evening. They got a taxi in the middle of my online lesson, so it was a very quick and rather sad goodbye. It was a lovely moment to meet them at the airport on Saturday and to sit in the sun and wait for the bus to come. When they got to my place they quickly went to work on my main bedroom wardrobe whose doors weren’t shutting properly. They (and I) spent the best part of an hour opening and shutting doors and yanking them into or out of position. Then Dad and I went to the shop downstairs and quickly found ourselves grappling with unpredictable sliding cabinet doors. We found this very funny. “It’s like Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em,” Dad said. Dad liked that little shop, which sells (among other things) small bottles of gin, vodka, and other strong liquor. For dinner that evening we had sarmale and salată de boeuf that I’d made earlier, followed by some grapefruit-flavoured gin that they’d picked up at the duty-free shop.

On Sunday we walked down the river and into town. Dad took numerous photos of the marvellous architecture. My parents remarked on all the renovation that had been carried out in the previous 4½ years, especially in the central squares. In the afternoon I played tennis. A new guy, Sebi, was there. He’s more of a footballer than a tennis player, although he can certainly hold a racket. I played against him (in doubles) the whole time, and from my perspective we finished up 6-4, 6-2, 6-6, following a high prevalence of deuce games. We didn’t have time for a tie-break at the end. On Monday my lessons didn’t start until the afternoon, so we took a long tram trip across the city from east to west, to arrive at Dedeman, one of the big hardware stores. My parents were impressed by the variety of products available. Better than Mitre 10, they said. We looked at everything bathroom-related. Mum was also taken aback by the size of Timișoara. You get to see quite a cross-section of the city on the number 2 tram, rather like line 2 on the Paris Métro. That evening we went out for a takeaway pizza.

On Tuesday we went to the other of Timișoara’s two Dedeman stores, this time on foot. Mum often commented on the state of Timișoara relative to Geraldine. The rubbish strewn everywhere, the uneven surfaces, the lack of pavements. One time we disposed of bagfuls of rubbish, only to find it had been well and truly rifled through an hour later. I had an argument with Mum in Dedeman – luckily for me it blew over – as she insisted I ask a staff member about something even though I knew they would direct me to the front desk. Mum made a tasty meal with bacon and various vegetables from my fridge.

Wednesday was a big work day for me, and Mum spent most of the day tidying up and putting item X into cupboard Y so I won’t find it until year Z. There’s almost too much storage space here. Nice problem to have, I suppose, but in the old place I could always find things because there was literally only one option. After my lessons we went to the restaurant next to the beer factory just around the corner from here. It was hidden away (there’s something typically Romanian about that) and I had to ask a security guard where the entrance was. When we finally got inside, we found ourselves in a spectacular and cavernous room. We ordered beer, I had a substantial salad, and my parents both had cheesy pasta dishes which were much bigger than first appeared. After that we all had different desserts – papanași, cremeș and tiramisu – which we shared. Yum yum. The whole lot came to 206 lei (£37 or NZ$72) including a tip. That seemed a lot to me, but it would be cheap as chips in either the UK or NZ, not that chips are cheap anymore there either.

Yesterday I moved my afternoon lesson online so that they could get a taxi from my place at a non-ridiculously-early time. They had done a lot for me in their few days here. Mum is, and always has been, enormously helpful from a practical standpoint. Even if at times I wish she’d get her grubby mitts off whatever she happens to be intervening with, I can certainly cope with her involvement. And then it was time to say goodbye. I had a very quick Skype call from Mum at Timișoara airport, then this morning they called me again from their hotel room in Luton.

I had another argument with Mum on the phone this morning. While Dad wasn’t in the room, she said that Dad hadn’t been able to cope with the stress of travelling, while she’d been in control the whole time. You know you’re talking bollocks, don’t you? Or do you really, seriously think that’s true? Do you really lack self-awareness to that extent? I didn’t exactly say that, but I made it clear that I wouldn’t stand for her total disregard for the truth. She comes out with this steaming bullshit, which normally involves insulting Dad behind his back, so often. “He’s like a child.” Umm, hello! Anyone there? It’s tough for me because she’s so helpful and generous and loving to me, and she’s my mum, but I can’t help being appalled by this.

My brother, who is unaware that my parents have had a stressful trip, really wants them to make another journey down south before they fly back to NZ in a fortnight. If they don’t hire a car, it’s six hours each way on the bus. Dad’s had a cold for the last few days, and would prefer not to go, especially when they have a two-month-old baby. Mum probably has the beginnings of a cold too, but she feels obliged to make the trip. Ugh.

This morning I called the plumber that one of my students recommended to me; he should come early next week to look at the main bathroom. Then I got through to Barclays – amazingly they put me in the priority queue and I soon spoke to a real person based in Manchester with the accent to boot. He told me what I need to do to (hopefully) get my money back on my closed account.

A long one today. I’ve had (and will have) some new students, whom I’ll probably write about tomorrow.

Films - Life :) - Politics

Sorting me out

November 9, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

Mum and Dad have just gone for a walk, so I’ll write a quick post now, just before my next lesson. I met them at the airport on Saturday, and since then they’ve been sorting me out. Most of their focus has been on my flat, which I’ve been unmotivated to do much with until now, with the exception of my office which is the only room that anyone else really sees. So we’ve been clearing this place out of much of the lime-green dross that the previous owner left behind, and Mum has been busy recupboarding (if that’s a word) – this place has enough cupboard space for a small army, and I’ve struggled to decide (and remember) what should go where. I knew that my eighties bathroom needed replacing, and my parents have helped me decide on the how and the why. I’ll probably get a plumber in here next week.

In the meantime, we’ve been visiting the markets (as well as the big hardware stores) and I’ve had lessons. This afternoon I’ll be breaking new ground: four siblings – two sets of twins – at the same time. I’ll have to cycle over to the west of the city to see them; in future perhaps they could come to me. Then later I’ve got another new student – a woman – who will have a 90-minute session with me. Four lessons in total today.

My parents fly back to the UK tomorrow evening; they’ll have two weeks in the country before heading back home. My brother wants them to pay him another visit before they leave; Mum is keen to go down there but Dad less so.

When the whole world seems to be going to the dogs, I try to find crumbs of comfort. Bolsonaro’s narrow defeat last week was most welcome. Victory, we can only hope, for actually giving a shit. Overnight the Republicans fell short of expectations in the midterm elections. They’ll probably take the House but maaaybe the Democrats will cling on to the Senate. That would be a result considering the 40-year-high inflation rate and near-record gas prices, and Republicans’ structural advantages in all branches of American politics. In particular, Trumpy Republicans did worse than less Trumpy ones. A rough night for the orange turd.

All in all, it’s been great having my parents here. I’ll write again at the weekend.

Life :) - The UK

A flashback to nineties dickdom in the UK

November 2, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m not into cars at all – I don’t even have one at the moment – but I’ve just watched a 1993 documentary about company cars, and oh boy. Depressing, fascinating, and hilarious, all at the same time. It’s part of a series called From A to B, and I remember watching bits of it when it aired nearly 30 years ago, but not this particular episode. It features men – only men – and they’re all weapons-grade dickheads practically jerking off over their company cars that are so incredibly mundane. It’s got to have the right trim and the right badge in the right conspicuous place because I deserve it. It was all about the letter i, which meant fuel injection – a billboard at the start of the programme punningly proclaims “The i’s have it.” And coat hangers, for fuck’s sake, so everyone can see that you’re the man in the suit. Imagine if this was my dad, I kept thinking. In the whole 48 minutes, there’s not a tinge of irony to be seen, and no one moment stands out. All the drivers are equally odious, and there’s line after line of unintentional comedy gold. I often think of the first half of the nineties as some golden age for Britain – optimism, freedom of expression, but most of all sanity, and it’s easy to forget that there was some mindnumbingly shallow shit too. I’m guessing they didn’t even have to hunt that far to find the protagonists.

After watching that window into nineties Dismaland, the 2022 version of Britain that I fleetingly visited last week doesn’t seem that bad. The owl to-whooing outside my brother’s place at night, the rich autumn colours, the fish and chips followed by sticky date pudding – there were moments to like. But so much of everyday life seemed grim. I arrived back in Romania to a feeling of comfort and relief. (By the way, actual Dismaland, Banksy’s theme park which popped up in south-west England in 2015, is something I would have loved to visit. I was in New Zealand at the time, and at any rate tickets were dismally difficult to obtain.)

I’ve had a sore throat and other cold symptoms since Sunday, and yesterday I took a Covid test which was negative. (I really wouldn’t want my parents catching Covid from me when they arrive here on Saturday.) I’m also in a bit of a bind because my antidepressant is no longer available. Thankfully I’ve got some stashed away, but it looks like I’ll need to switch from citalopram to the similar escitalopram very soon. (Discontinuing a drug at the drop of a hat like this is bloody dangerous, but this is Romania.)

Yesterday was Halloween, and today was Day of the Dead, where people visit graveyards. Yesterday, therefore, the markets were full of pumpkins and chrysanthemums.

Family - Life :) - The UK

Four years and a magical piece of life — Part 1

October 31, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

So I flew into Luton on Thursday night. No problems whatsoever with the flight, but I had to wait ages for my tiny suitcase to come off the carousel. (Unlike when I flew with Ryanair in July, I couldn’t just take it on the plane with me without paying extra extra on top of the extra I’d already paid to have the bag in the first place.) And there they were. Mum and Dad. After almost four years. A lovely moment. Then they told me about all the fun and games they’d had getting to and from their accommodation. Mum had been phoning and texting and emailing me to go to this place, no that place, no, stay where you are, not realising that in post-Brexit Britain my phone was only good for playing whatever the 2022 equivalent of Sudoku is. (I guess that would be Wordle, but as that requires the internet, it couldn’t even do that.) We stayed in a nice new eighth-floor apartment in a block called Calibra, after a Vauxhall car that came out when I was ten. (There is or was a Vauxhall plant nearby.) When I lived in New Zealand it always felt great to see my parents again after a period of a few months, so you can imagine how it felt after that long. Late that evening I ate a small pork pie; it had been years since my last one.

I slept well. Mum was keen to make an early start the next morning, but somebody had commandeered the only working lift. When we were finally ready to get away in the hire car (Dad was driving), we noticed something stuck to the windscreen. A parking ticket, with a time stamp of around half-six that morning. A hundred quid, reduced to sixty if you paid early enough. Public services, like for instance the NHS, are buckling under the weight of Brexit and Covid and too many bloody people in the damn country and not enough people running the country who actually care, but they make sure parking wardens are out in force early in the morning. Mum wasn’t a happy camper. They didn’t know not to park there, and it looks like they’ll get out of having to pay. It took at least four hours to reach my brother’s place near Poole. At one point there was torrential rain. The GPS directions were often unclear. For Dad it was hard work. We all agreed that we wouldn’t want to live in the UK again.

It was quite something for my parents to see their other son and daughter-in-law after all this time, and of course, their grandson. Six weeks old. It was hard to prise him away from Mum’s arms. She’s always been in her element with small children – it was her job for forty years after all – and she was in heaven with a child of her own flesh and blood. He got passed around to all of us, and I must say I enjoyed holding him too; it was a new experience for me. Most of the time he just slept, except of course when my brother and sister-in-law would have really liked him to be asleep. I think they will be very good parents to him.

I brought my laptop with me, and liked being able to hole myself up in the study and give online lessons. Outside my teaching, it was hard to do very much there. The TV or the radio was on most of the time, usually both, so even reading a book wasn’t that easy, not when it was in a foreign language. TV is, bizarrely to me, still of huge importance to British society. Game shows and cookery programmes and people actually caring who gets voted off. Bake Off. Strictly. Celebs I’ve never heard of doing shit I don’t care about. It seemed endless. We also got a fair dousing of good old British rain. On Saturday, when I was working, Dad and my brother went to a car boot sale and picked up a second-hand 1000-piece jigsaw of military planes in the sky, which we painstakingly tackled but got nowhere near finishing. We spent didn’t even know if the puzzle was complete. (A few years ago I started to liken my life to a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with about 300 pieces missing. Forget even trying to make an approximation of what’s on the lid of the box. It’s time I made something else.) Twice we went to the upmarket nearby town of Wimborne. Mum bought me a checked fleecy jacket from a shop there, saying it was a Christmas present. It was reduced, but still well above my usual budget. The food was great, pretty much universally. One night we ordered curry. Another time we had Stilton sausages. Yummy. On my last night there, we had fish and chips. Apart from the food, one of the highlights was the beautiful autumn colours.

Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Tourists

October 3, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

As we hit October and the leaves turn, I miss the view I had from my city-centre window even more. This morning I spoke to Mum and Dad. Only 18 days till I see them in the UK. They’ve now booked their flights to and from Romania; they’ll be here from 5th to 10th November. I wish they could have come for longer. We discussed the war in Ukraine, the stampede at a football match in Indonesia that killed 125 people, and how the UK seems to have slammed into reverse.

It’s been an interesting day. Yesterday I bumped into Mark (the guy who teaches at British School) as he was getting winter tyres put on his car. We agreed to catch up today. He heard about a guided tour of the Fabric area of Timișoara, where I happen to live now, taking place this afternoon. We had to sign up; I gave the tour people my phone number and said there’d be two people coming. Mark trekked over to my neck of the woods, and some other teachers from British School also made the trip. Not for the tour, but just for drinks. All nice people, from what I could tell. One of them, a smoker, had run a marathon – 42-point-something kilometres – in under four hours that morning. Mind-boggling for me. Mark then decided he’d rather stay at the bar than bother with the tour that was scheduled to take 2½ hours in a language he knew about a dozen words of. Then my phone rang. It was the tour guide. Why aren’t you here? Sorry mate, we’ve kind of got to do this. So the two of us joined the group. The guide could speak English, but conducted the tour in Romanian, so I interpreted for Mark, probably pretty badly because I got lost at times myself. We learnt about the large Jewish contingent that lived in the area, and how nationalities weren’t really a thing 200-odd years ago in Timișoara – your religion basically was your nationality. The guide stopped at buildings along the way – the CEO of the wool factory lived in this one, an internationally renowned violinist lived in that one – sometimes pointing out architectural details that I had missed. Then Mark had had enough so we paid the guide and left.

By that point it was just about time for me to go to tennis anyway. There was a new guy this evening – a teenager who had just taken up the game. Although his forehand was good considering his lack of experience, he was struggling to get any sort of serve into play. We increased his number of serves allowed per point from two to infinity, and still he struggled. Hardly surprising, really. You either need a coach or to practise yourself with a bucketload of balls. A game situation with everyone watching, even if it’s a casual game, is the worst of all.

Hopefully this week I can finalise my new-look teaching room, or close to it. I may even put some pictures of it on here.

I played in four poker tournaments last night. I cashed in three despite making bad starts to all of them, in one case losing 97% of my initial stack (!), but couldn’t convert my big comebacks into big finishes and only made a modest profit. My bankroll is $1015.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

A blank canvas

September 22, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

Not an awful lot to say, except that I spoke to my brother on Friday. His wife was holding their son on the fifth day of his life. Fifth day, with a whole world of possibilities stretching out before him, quite possibly until the end of this century. Everything is still on the table. There’s something amazing, almost thrilling, about that. There’s so much we don’t know, however, about the world he will experience. The signs don’t look good. In my nephew’s first few days on the planet, Putin has stepped up the threat of nuclear war. Will my nephew have anything like the opportunities his parents and (even more so) grandparents had? His own place to live? Readily available jobs? Any jobs? Will jobs as we know them even exist in 2045? Presumably we’ll still need builders and plumbers and electricians. Hopefully teachers, too. But perhaps not taxi drivers or paralegals or actuaries. Or even surgeons. The really good news for my nephew is that he has eminently sensible and financially secure parents. That will give him a huge advantage.

This morning I went to the fruit and vege market that sells local produce and is open just twice a week. On the way back I saw a old woman with a walking stick picking figs from an overhanging tree. I hadn’t realised that fig tree – or any fig tree – was there, but then I haven’t been to that market and come back that way very often since I moved to my new place. I asked her if she wanted some help but she preferred my money instead. I then picked a juicy fig.

This evening I had my first lesson with a ten-year-old boy. We had a conversation, read a few pages of George’s Marvellous Medicine, then did a matching exercise of opposite adjectives. He said he was happy to come back. (His mother told me he was apprehensive before tonight’s lesson.)

I didn’t mention that ten days ago I watched the men’s final of the US Open, between Carlos Alcaraz and Casper Ruud. The new generation. A great match, and 19-year-old Alcaraz (the winner in four sets) looks like being a superstar in the making, if he hasn’t already got there. I was hoping Ruud would win, as looked likely when he twice held set point in a long 12th game at the end of the third set. The match really hinged on those moments. Alcaraz had played a succession of marathon matches to reach the final and looked tired, but when he escaped and dominated the tie-break, he could make a dash to the finish line.

Family - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Tiresome talk

September 19, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I played tennis tonight. We’d booked the court till eight, and it was getting pretty dark by then. Seeing the crows fly overhead made me miss living in that part of town. Where I am now is fine, but being in the centre was quite magical, especially at the beginning.

Yesterday morning I had a Skype conversation with my parents before cycling to Dumbrăvița for my lessons. What started out as a pleasant chat about the little one morphed into anti-woke diatribe by Dad. I find the whole thing, on both sides, extremely tiresome. I’m not woke in the slightest and I find some of the newfangled linguistic innovations jarring to say the least, but it isn’t something I can get worked up about. Sure, it all seems a little odd to me, and I imagine it seems a great deal odder to someone 30 years older than me, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Dad was likening the woke movement to flat-earth or anti-vax, which is a false equivalence because those fly in the face of well-established facts. Being requested to call someone “they” instead of “he” or “she” might annoy you; being opposed to vaccines actively kills people. What I find interesting is the most vehemently anti-woke people are those least affected. It’s like my parents’ regular complaints about all the Maori words on the TV and radio. Perhaps it has gone too far – I don’t live in NZ anymore so I don’t really know – but Mum doesn’t meet a Maori from one year to the next, and the last time I checked she didn’t even know what a koha was.

Something Mum complained of yesterday was the majority having to “kowtow” to minorities. Well Mum, being in the majority does give you significant inbuilt advantages which you’ve probably never even taken the time to consider, and giving some of that back once in a while to those less fortunate seems pretty reasonable to me. These sorts of discussions aren’t easy for me – although I get on well with my parents, we don’t really inhabit the same world. (My brother’s world is closer, so he probably doesn’t have the same issues.) My parents are about to buy a brand new electric car. Dad recently sold a painting for something close to what I’ll spend on my next car if I buy one. We’re orders of magnitude apart. (On the subject of advantages, as an immigrant to Romania from a richer country, I have certain privileges here. It’s important to be aware of them.)

I hope I can get back to baby talk in my next conversation with Mum and Dad. Covid was great for my relationship with them, when I look back. It affected everybody, and we were in agreement on masks, vaccines, the lot.

I took second place in a poker tournament earlier today. I was lucky to get that far, but having reached the heads-up stage it’s a bit of a mystery how I didn’t win. I’m still down a little for September, which has been a torrid month. I got absolutely nowhere in any of the three WCOOP tournaments I played.

Family - Life :) - Poker - Tennis - The UK

What’s in a name?

September 5, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

Any day now I’ll be an uncle. They’re keeping everything a surprise. Even on the subject of names, I’ve heard nary a whisper. That strikes me as a little odd, because names matter. They’re part of one’s identity. Take, for instance, Nina Nannar, one of the reporters on the local news when I was at university. She was teased mercilessly at school over her name (what were her parents thinking?) but when she got married she found that her identity was so wrapped up in her name that she kept the Nannar! My brother also has alliterative names, and though they don’t make it to anything like Nina’s level, they give his name a don’t-mess-with-me simplicity. As for my name, I lack double initials, but my first and last names are close alphabetically, so I know my place (so to speak) even when the sorting is done by first name, as seemed to be common in my employee days. My full first name has a high letter count. When I was little I thought it was great (Look! I can write my whole name!), but later all those letters just became a pain. In Romania, middle names garner a bit more attention, so all my ID cards and bank cards and various bits of paper have my (much shorter) middle name on them too. Sometimes I wish that could have been my first name instead. But in truth my name is fine; my parents chose well.

I had a chat to my brother last night. He was pretty peeved by our parents’ lack of enthusiasm at their upcoming trip. “If they’re only going to spend a few days with us, what’s the point? It’s been four years. I don’t think they give a shit, honestly.” I’m more inclined than him to give them the benefit of the doubt. They aren’t young anymore, and Dad has been spooked by Covid. My brother is still bitter about my parents emigrating to New Zealand in the first place, and that’s something I don’t really get. We were grown men (23 and 22) by that stage. My brother had even been to Iraq. They could do what they liked. And Mum’s teaching at that same school was making her stressed and unhappy. Another ten years of that and I’d dread to think.

My teaching room now has yellow walls. There is no Resene in Romania which is just as well. That must be one of the biggest rip-offs in NZ. Their stores have play areas to encourage customers to browse even longer at vastly overpriced tins of paint on shelves where they pretty much spam you with eleven near-identical hues of ochre called Omaha Sands or some other crap. And several hundred dollars later, you’re out the door, ready to paint the dream. Anyway, there were two only yellows available to me, an insipid one and a bright one. I went for the bright one, fearing it would be sort of tennis-ball shade, but it’s about what I was aiming for, so that’s nice. It took a while, though.

Tennis. Only one session this weekend because the courts were soaking on Saturday following a heavy downpour. We started a bit earlier though, so we got two hours in before the light faded. Last weekend was interesting; there was a woman who lives in Sydney with her boyfriend and was back for a short time in her native Romania. I played with her against Domnul Sfâra, who isn’t far off ninety (!), and a teenage girl. My partner hadn’t played much. In a slightly comedic set we got to 4-4, at which point Domnul Sfâra asked if we could play a tie-break. We did, and when we reached 8-8 the old man asked to come off the court. We persuaded him to stay for what might have only been two more points, and we eventually lost the tie-break 11-9. Another funny thing (in a different set): that teenage girl managed to a serve four aces in a single 16-point game.

I’m going away the day after tomorrow. It’ll be somewhere near Brad. I’ve had to cancel and rearrange lessons, which is always a pain, but seeing some new scenery and getting to speak Romanian for three days straight will make up for that.

Poker. I played some tournaments on Friday and Saturday and got absolutely nowhere. Tomorrow I’ll have a go at the $11 WCOOP single draw. The structure could be better, but I’ll try my best in what probably won’t be a star-studded field.

In the UK, I’ve just heard that Liz Truss will be the new prime minister. Man the lifeboats.

Language teaching - Life :) - Poker

See you later, summer

September 1, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is the last day of a very hot summer and the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, which Mum and I heard about over the PA on a Malaysia Airlines flight just before we landed in Kuala Lumpur. We were on the way home to England after spending four weeks in New Zealand. For the next week at least – Diana Week – it was as if nothing else mattered; millions must have descended on London on the day of the funeral. I also remember the black humour. What’s the difference between a Skoda and a Mercedes? Diana wouldn’t be seen dead in a Skoda.

I’ve now started the process of zhoozhing up (“zhoozh” is one of those not-really-spellable words) my teaching room. I put the primer on today, and tomorrow I’ll lather on the first coat of yellow, with the second following on Friday. It might end up being a dayglo disaster, for all I know. At least the huge mirror, that takes up almost an entire wall, will break up the block of colour somewhat, and then there will be bookshelves and eventually all kinds of maps and posters covering the walls. My current paucity of face-to-face lessons enables me to do this. I have picked up some new students, but others have dropped off. Tomorrow I do have four lessons scheduled, but three of them are online with the other in Dumbrăvița.

I had a good poker session at the weekend, cashing in all three tournaments I played, giving me a $43 profit. Easily my biggest score came in single draw where I was lucky enough to win a couple of flips against a player who went all in constantly, knocking him out in third place, and I then came through a long heads-up session to win the tournament. The WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) is coming up, and I hope to play at least three events in that. When that is done and dusted, maybe I’ll knock the whole thing on the head like I did ten years ago.

One of the 15-year-old boys I teach has just got back from his family trip to Zanzibar. It’s part of Tanzania, which is extremely poor. His mother has sent me some of the more incredible holiday photos I’ve ever seen, with such beauty and poverty at the same time. She managed to somehow get inside a dirt-floored classroom, which accommodates nearly 100 pupils at a time; she sent me a picture of the blackboard from this class filled with all the types of the English conditional.

I was glad that the Artemis 1 launch got postponed because I’d lost track of time and would have missed it. It’s now scheduled for 9:17 pm (my time) on Saturday.

I don’t do Wordle very much now, but this was my stripy attempt at yesterday’s: