Life :)

Family - Life :)

The travel bug (squashed)

August 25, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents yesterday, shortly after they nearly set light to their fence and heaven knows what else. The ashes they’d disposed of were hotter than they thought, and soon their garden was in flames. Emergency over, we discussed their travel plans. Dad used to be keen to push off anywhere at the drop of a hat. Not now. Since he last left New Zealand, he’s had a major health scare and he’s been understandably spooked by the spectre of Covid. He also had a check on his heart recently; they found that his aortic arch was unusually wide, and they won’t know whether it’s expanding (which would be bad news) until he has another check-up next year. He should have been having regular checks ever since his aortic valve replacement way back in oh-five, but that was done in the UK and he slipped through the net in NZ. On top of that, he’s had a long run of splitting headaches. As for Mum, she now finds all the organisation and online booking (which inevitably she has the privilege of doing) a pain in the arse, and I can’t say I blame her. They have two kids in Europe and a grandchild coming fast, so they’re flying over, but I’m not putting any pressure on them to come and see me in Romania. They’re arriving in London on 12th October, when the new addition should be three weeks old.

Last Monday when I dismantled the massive wardrobe that was in my teaching room, I got a surprise. At the back of the top shelf, seven feet up, was a brown Gucci box which I fully expected to be empty. But no, it had a women’s Gucci bracelet watch inside. Worth a fortune? A fake? I googled Gucci watches and then went to the watch repairer next to Auchan in Iulius Mall. He put a battery in it and said that it probably is the real deal, but from Gucci’s “cheaper” collection, i.e. it would have been bought for hundreds, not thousands. It’s not the sort of watch that appreciates in value, so it might be worth £100 or maybe a tad more. Rather than selling it, I’ve decided to give it to my sister-in-law when I next see her, hopefully in October.

My big thing (by my standards) right now is doing up my teaching room. After tonight’s lesson in it, which will be almost entirely in Romanian, I’m going to set about painting it. I spoke to Dad about this yesterday. Paint it magnolia, he said. Too late, I’ve already bought a big tub of yellow paint. Real yellow. When I was growing up, my parents were always painting everything magnolia, a “colour” that I could never see the point of. It’s quite a departure for me to be painting or DIYing anything. I mean, this is the first time in my life I’ve really had my own place. My flat in Wellington was mine in name only. And here there’s extra motivation, because it’s a room I’ll be using for my business. The “teaching zone”, which I want to look distinct from the rest of my flat.

It’s late summer, so the fruit is great right now. On my last trip to the market, I bought some lovely crisp apples that reminded me of the Worcesters we had in England. There are peaches and nectarines and plums. Mountains of plums. I read somewhere that Romania is the world’s second-biggest exporter of plums, and yesterday I could see why. I went to Mehala, an older district of town where the streets have wide berms, many of which are lined with plum trees. I now have some accurate scales; I picked 5.9 kilos of plums, but I could have removed the decimal point from that and still wouldn’t have scratched the surface. Those trees were loaded; even the odd branch had collapsed under the weight of the fruit.

My teaching hours are, for the moment, way down. It gives me the chance to go for longish bike rides like I did this morning, work on my Romanian, and yes, attempt to do up my classroom before all the students (hopefully) come back.

Environment - Language learning - Life :)

Stay cool, everybody

July 18, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

When I had a short interview for my high school at age eleven, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. A weatherman, I said. “You’re the first person to say that.” My grandmother worked in the Met Office for the RAF, and she told me about weather balloons and anemometers and such like. I always liked the weather maps and fronts and isobars that appeared on TV and in the newspapers. The BBC forecasts always highlighted freezing temperatures (zero or below) in blue, while 25 degrees or above was coloured orange. That was where hot started. Anything much above that – which was rare – and the whole country would descend into a collective madness of buckling train tracks and heatstroke. So here’s this week’s forecast for Cambridge, where I was born:

Cambridge actually holds the UK’s current record (39), set just three years ago.

Today and tomorrow, the southern part of the UK (i.e. where most of the people are) will get extreme, and in some cases lethal, temperatures. The UK is hopelessly unprepared for this. They’ve got politicians telling people to wear sun cream and enjoy the sunshine. Oh yes, what fun. Others are saying, “I survived 1976, so I’ll be fine.” Well, this will be a much sharper, more intense heat than the neverending summer of ’76 which my mother often talks about, and if you remember ’76 (as Damon Albarn does in this song), you’re no spring chicken. This hellish heat will become more and more commonplace in the UK. Of the five who remain in the race to be the next prime minister, only one of them gives half a shit about climate change and the environment, and he’ll probably be eliminated today.

I played tennis twice – singles with the older guy – at the weekend. Not so hot, in more ways than one. On Saturday I won the first set 6-2, but even at the end of that set I was starting to tire. I really had to dig deep to win the second 7-5. In the third I was 5-1 down, and struggling physically, when time ran out. A similar story last night when I won the opening set 6-3. Then Domnul Sfâra, aged 87, made a guest appearance. We hit with him for a while; I was mostly in awe of him being on the court at all. He shuffled off and left us to it. I won the second set 6-1, but then he attacked relentlessly in the third, which he won 6-3.

I’m trying to learn some Italian before I go away. I won’t have many opportunities to use it immediately, but I hope I can go back to Italy for a longer time next year.

Life :) - Photos - The UK

Games, trip plans, and some pictures

July 14, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m getting plenty of work in the run-up to my trip away. Six lessons yesterday, four today. I finished off the New York version of my skyscraper board game with both the teenage boys today. Both games finished with identical 21-15 scores (a loss and a win for me). They were both a bit more clear-cut than the time we played the Chicago version. The different buildings – some bigger and harder to build than others – appear in a random order in the game, and in both these latest games the big guns like the One World Trade Center and Central Park Tower came out towards the end, when it would have more fun if they’d come out at the start when you have more time to complete them.

Not long now until my holiday, which could still be marred by the latest Covid wave, a record heat wave, and a veritable tsunami of flight delays and cancellations. My brother and sister-in-law said they’d be happy to meet me off the plane at Stansted on Thursday the 28th, then they’ll take me down to their newish place in Poole. I expect I’ll spend the weekend with them. After that I’d like to see my friend in Birmingham where the Commonwealth Games will be in full swing – since I was in New Zealand for the successful Auckland games of 1990, this event has become a bit of an anachronism, but it’s probably the only chance I’ll get to see (for instance) live weightlifting. Or we might end up meeting in London instead if getting to Birmingham from my brother’s place all gets too hard or too expensive or both. Then I plan to spend the rest of my British break at my parents’ flat in St Ives. I’m pretty excited about the Italy bit before and after my stay in the UK.

A maddeningly common sight, near where I get my water. I still have my old mattress.
The roof of umbrellas on Strada Alba Iulia today. And as if by magic, the US dollar and euro exchange rates have essentially converged.
The Chicago edition of my board game…
… and here’s the New York edition.

Language teaching - Life :) - Poker - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Shame one of them has to win

July 11, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s about time I wrote again, but what’s actually happened? I’ve booked some accommodation in Bergamo, so that’s something to look forward to. Vespas and Bambinas, or should I say Vespe e Bambine. I need to brush up my Italian. I still haven’t planned my stay in the UK. Where and when will I see my brother? And what about my friend in Birmingham?

I’ve got two new students. One of them is at a low level – not a problem, but as far as I can tell, he’s never learned how to learn. He reminds me of the Burmese refugee I taught in Wellington before coming over here. That guy left school at twelve to work on fishing boats; my current student probably stayed in the education system a bit longer, but he doesn’t have a handle on what to learn in what order. Sometimes he comes out with stuff like “Him tomorrow say me,” and he’ll keep repeating the same garbled phrase over and over, seemingly thinking that if he says it enough times it’ll magically become correct. Then he’ll ask me how to say something complex that requires a range of tenses. He’s a roofer and wants to work in Scandinavia. I’m pleased that he has the motivation and enthusiasm to have lessons with me, and I hope I can get him to learn more systematically. The other new student is a very pleasant woman in her mid-thirties who lives in Bucharest. She’s about to start a new job which requires a lot more English.

There’s a lot of talk and WhatsApping in this apartment block about gas installation and central heating. We should soon get a gas pipe fitted that will heat the whole block from top to bottom, like I had in the other place. I rarely needed central heating there. Somebody from the gas company came in and took some measurements, and he’s come back with a quote for NZ$5000 (£2500) to put gas central heating in my flat. My worry is that when we get to winter, the price of gas will be so high that I won’t dare use it.

When I moved in, I only got one set of keys. At least one more set is out there, somewhere, but I’ve never seen them. (The vendor has been massively unhelpful here.) On Friday, the old lady who lives on the first floor took me to the key shop on Piața Traian, a very Romanian outfit which you got to via a courtyard. The key lady had two dogs, including a female Rottweiler – I think – who was happily sleeping on the floor. She cut both my front door keys and made a replacement intercom swipe thingy, but when I got home one of the front door keys didn’t fit and the swipe thing didn’t work either. Two trips later and I got the other front door key to fit but still no luck with the intercom doohickey, so next week I’ll go somewhere else and see if I can get that sorted.

The men’s final at Wimbledon is almost upon us. I’m playing singles tennis later, so if the match goes beyond three sets I won’t see the end of it. What a line-up. An anti-vax super-spreader against an egomaniac. A bully. There were kids like Kyrgios when I was at school. Both finalists are extraordinary talents, however, and you can’t take your eyes off Kyrgios when he plays. You never know what’s coming next. Djokovic is the clear favourite, but it wouldn’t be massive shock if Kyrgios was to win. He’ll be insufferable if he does. There was quite a turnaround in yesterday’s women’s final where Rybakina grabbed the match by the scruff of the neck in set two; her hold from 0-40 in 3-2 in the third was the key to her victory over Ons Jabeur, who I hoped would win. Yesterday’s men’s doubles final was a belter of a match. A slow burner you might say, not because of the tennis but because the players were largely unknown and the crowd didn’t fully get into it until the later stages. I was hoping the super tie-break could be avoided, but no such luck. The Australian pairing, who had saved five match points in their semi-final, won the shoot-out 10-2 – a procession in the end, after an encounter that had been on a knife-edge throughout.

Poker. I haven’t mentioned that for ages because it’s way down my priority list. I had one win at the end of May, and since then I’ve had a torrid time, playing 35 tournaments without making the top three once. It should be easier to snag a podium position now that the fields are smaller because the Russians are gone – they were rightly kicked out shortly after the war started – but things just haven’t happened for me. I just need to be patient.

The temperature has dropped from the high 30s to something bearable. I might write again tomorrow and talk about the crazy business with Boris.

International travel - Life :) - Politics

Getting away

June 30, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just booked some flights. Four of them, in fact. It wasn’t a simple process. “Oops, something went wrong.” Important yellow buttons disappeared from my screen at will. There were endless pop-ups asking me to tack on this or that, and I wasn’t allowed to just ignore them. Sometimes a circle just went round and round and round and never did anything. After booking Ryanair flights from Timișoara to Bergamo and then on to Stansted, I’d planned to return directly to Romania with Wizz Air, but it was cheaper to go back via Italy with Ryanair. If I’d realised that, I’d have booked two return flights rather than four one-way ones and cut out some hassle, even if there’s no price difference. So I’ve got northern Italy to look forward to, not just the UK (where I’m likely to get caught up in airport hell). I’m flying out on 26th July and coming back on 9th August. My brother will have some time off work then, and hopefully I can also see my friend in Birmingham.

Ferdinand Marcos Junior has been elected as president of the Philippines, replacing the tyrant Rodrigo Duterte. How could the son of a dictator, who was removed in a revolution, get elected in a landslide? As the reporter explained on the news this morning, it’s a combination of endless horseshit being pumped out on social media, and the country’s shockingly low education level. A deadly concoction, literally.

There was a time when I’d grab the old small TV with the bunny-ears aerial from my room and take it downstairs so I could watch Wimbledon on two channels at the same time. It was the most important thing going on in my life, and I wasn’t even involved. Now it’s just there, going on in the background. There have been some great matches already, but for whatever reason I can’t quite get into it.

My two teenage students had just got the results of their “national evaluation” Romanian and maths exams when I saw them yesterday. One of them got an average of 9.4 out of 10. The other got 9.95 in maths, but seemed almost dumbstruck to only get 8.3 in Romanian, and has already lodged an official appeal. They’re the “haves” of the Romanian education system, and are under pressure to succeed, to go to the best liceu, from their parents and the society in which they live. It would be interesting to meet some of the have-nots.

One of my new adult students has just started a job at Ikea, after a long stint with Renault. Last time he read out Ikea’s mission statement to me. “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” Sorry, what? For the many people? Is that supposed to be English? How did that ever get past the first round? Type “for the many people” into Google, and all I get is Ikea.

I’m trying not to melt today.

Language teaching - Life :)

Game time

June 30, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I don’t think I’ve totally lost my marbles yet, although many of the Romanians I meet think I already have for deciding to live here. I’ve been wondering how I’ll cope should I survive long enough to be marble-free, be that thirty years or twenty or ten, because even now I’m almost drowning in a sea of passwords and captchas and invalid formats. Today was particularly bad because I had to reactivate stuff and make payments using my new bank card. Then when it came to logging into plutoman – logging into me – I needed three attempts. My fingers just weren’t going the right way anymore.

Talking of aging, June is almost over, and that’s the month that reminds me that my parents aren’t getting any younger. Dad has just turned 72; Mum had her 73rd birthday two weeks ago. The last time I saw them they were 68 and 69. I miss them a lot. October isn’t far away.

It’s been a scorching June. We hit 35 today, and we’ve got 38s forecast for both tomorrow and Friday. Luckily, unlike today, I won’t have to go anywhere. Today my lessons got a bit messed up because somebody came over to take measurements for installing gas in this block. I went up to one of the apartments on the fourth (top) floor to have a discussion (or more like a listen) with the gas man. The heat up there was something else.

Today I finished the first plays of my new skyscraper board game with the two teenage boys. This morning I was surprised to see that my student’s family had acquired a kitten. We read a bit, and then finished our game. I lost 22-19; it became clear that he would win when we each had about four turns left of our allotted 30. (The game lasts 60 turns – or 60 months – regardless of the number of players.) In the game with the other kid which we concluded this evening, I won 23-19, and it was only clear I would win on my penultimate turn. Most importantly, the boys seemed to enjoy themselves and were obviously engaged enough the first time around that they could still remember how the game worked a week later. Interestingly, they each had different tactics.

Wordle. I thought I might bomb out today as I needed all six attempts. This is the fourth time it’s taken me all six since I started in January. I hoped GAFFY (an adjective for someone who makes lots of gaffes) wasn’t a word.

I had an easier time in Romanian. STARE is a common word in that language just like in English, so I often start with that word in both languages. (It doesn’t have the same meaning in Romanian, where it means a state or situation.) As for my lucky guess ALUNA, that’s a hazelnut.

Woodle is a harder version of Wordle, which I try every evening. Woodle tells you how many greens (letters in the word in the right place) and yellows (letters in the word but in the wrong place) you have, but not which letters they are. If standard Wordle is pool, Woodle is snooker. Here was my attempt today, where I started with four frustrating turns but then struck gold. Attempts are unlimited; today’s six is roughly average.

On a forum I suggested a variant of Wordle which lies about one letter every row, then somebody (who knows how to codify or whatever it’s called) made it. Independently of me, of course. I really like this one, which gives you eight attempts. The red letters are the lies:

Life :) - Politics - The UK

Struck down

June 26, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve had a bit of a crappy time of it the last few days. On Wednesday night I had a piercing sinus headache on my right side – one of those “screwdriver rammed up my nose” ones – and although it eased at around four in the morning, it destroyed my sleep and my energy for the next day. Yesterday was an improvement, but the pain returned last night and I’ve reverted to go-slow mode today. I was grateful for the storm that put paid to this evening’s tennis.

The first half of the week wasn’t too bad. I got good feedback from the two teenage boys about my new skyscraper-building board game. The first one said something like “isn’t it amazing that you’ve actually made this?” which was nice to hear. I was on solid ground with them; after a combined 400-odd lessons, they probably weren’t going to say they hated my stupid game and didn’t want to see me again. (Someone basically did tell me that once, though it wasn’t a game I’d created.) The timing was good because they’d just had their high-pressure exams in Romanian and maths that will determine where they go for their final four years of school, so there was a good chance they’d be receptive to some kind of game.

Lots of politics this week. The US Supreme Court have made abortion illegal in something like half the states. Even if you are anti-abortion, actually banning it is monumentally stupid and evil. Thousands of women will die because of this ruling that has been handed down by half a dozen ultra-extreme religious loons whose concern about a child’s life seems to evaporate once it is born, if their attitude to guns is anything to go by. And where will they stop? Will abortion soon be outlawed nationwide? Homosexuality too? Who was it who said that America shouldn’t fear Islam, but fundamental so-called Christianity instead? They’ve been proven right. This latest ruling will have repercussions that go beyond America’s borders; I could see abortion laws being tightened in religious countries like Romania. The whole political system in the US so utterly messed up. It would be good it could burn to the ground.

In happier news across the pond, the Conservatives lost both the by-elections they were contesting on Thursday, the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum. In the next general election, voters absolutely all-capital-letters MUST vote tactically for whatever party is most likely to beat the Tories. Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid Cymru, it doesn’t matter. If Labour don’t win a majority, that doesn’t matter either. In fact it’s better if nobody wins a majority. The more chance there would then be of the terrible electoral system (albeit not nearly as egregious as the American one) changing.

I called my sister-in-law last night. I knew she and my brother had gone up to St Ives, but was very surprised to see her in the church by the river. She said she was at a “Booze in the Pews” event. After the news from the US yesterday, I was glad to hear that so few people in the UK now use churches for their original purpose that they hold drinking sessions there. My sister-in-law, six months pregnant, wasn’t partaking.

I plan to travel to the UK in a month’s time, but I’ve been unable to book a flight because I still haven’t got a replacement debit card after I nearly got scammed two weeks ago. I’m getting just enough cash payments to tide me over from week to week. What a pain.

Family - Life :) - Tennis

Building up

June 20, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s proper aroma-filled summer now; it’s almost the longest day. Luckily we haven’t quite been swamped by the heat wave that enveloped countries further west, though today we’re forecast to hit 34, which is plenty hot enough. The kids have started their very long summer holidays – they get almost three months here – so some of them are taking a break from English lessons.

Yesterday Mark, the teacher at British School, came over to my new flat. Then we had some beers at a bar near the market. It was nice to show him a part of Timișoara that he hadn’t yet explored. He and his girlfriend are heading off today on a seven-week tour of Europe. Lucky them.

My big project in the last few days has been creating a new board game. The theme is skyscrapers; players have to accumulate resources such as steel, concrete and glass, and then start building. It has three versions – Chicago-based, New York-based, and international. The tallest, most resource-heavy buildings score the most. There will be occasional “shocks” such as earthquakes or landslides or stolen metal (yes, you can steal steel). It took me a while to research just how many tons of steel were required to build Sears Tower and all the other buildings I’ll be using in the game, how deep the foundations were, and so on. This week I hope to try the game out on one of my long-time teenage students. I’ll be on safe territory with him; even if it’s a complete flop – which it could be – he won’t hate me for it.

On Saturdays I always have a funny online lesson with a 24-year-old guy who lives near Cluj. He works in IT and wants to become a contractor. We’ve been practising interviews, and last time he got me to ask him some industry-specific questions that he had prepared. I didn’t have a clue what I was saying. To one question he replied by saying he used some software called Hamcrest. Hmm, I like that name. Where does it come from? I went to the Hamcrest site, whose logo is a surfer guy riding a wave of sliced ham, and I could deduce that the name is an anagram of “matchers”, but what they’re matching I have no idea. In the top-right corner of the Hamcrest site is an invitation to “fork me on GitHub” which reminds me of a a few days into my first real job when, out of the blue, a colleague asked if he could grab my dongle.

I managed a pair of two-hour tennis sessions over the weekend, and in both of them we played two against one, taking it in turns to play as the one.

Last week Dad had a check-up on his aortic valve, which he had replaced in 2005. Apparently there’s a gap where there shouldn’t be, and they’ll need to monitor it. I was worried that he’d need urgent surgery and my parents would be cancelling their trip to Europe once again.

Language teaching - Life :)

Old English

June 13, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I Skyped my parents this morning from the café next to the market and by the river. It was a bit noisy there so I moved to a bench by the river bank. It was already hotting up; a shirtless man on the other side of the river hauled in a fish. On Friday I sent Dad a depressing article about the beautiful River Wye being polluted – killed – by chicken factories along the river. He spent much of his childhood around the Wye, which was then teeming with salmon.

Dad mentioned that a new autism clinic had opened in Wellington and it was a shame I wasn’t still there and able to help out in some capacity. Helping people with autism was near the top of my list of career options when I left my insurance job in 2009, but that never eventuated.

The lady whose birthday was last weekend lent me two small English textbooks entitled Eckersley’s Essential English – triple E – dating from the fifties or so. They aren’t without value today, even if the language is outdated. The illustrations are delightful; they remind me of the John Thompson’s elementary piano books that I learnt from when I was little. Here are a few pages:

Interestingly in the second picture she’s circled the pronunciation of “always” with a schwa, as if she didn’t quite believe it. It does seem extremely old-fashioned; I’m not even sure the Queen says it that way. Or Jacob Rees-Mogg. In the eighth picture the author seemed to think that marquesses were something a student needed to know about.

It’s that time of year again that everything smells in Timișoara. The ripe fruit, the lime trees, the general scent of summer heat. That’s nice, but on Friday there was also the distinct whiff of pollution when cycling along the busy roads. Unfortunately that is a problem here.

The weather put paid to tennis once again yesterday, but it should go ahead later today.

Life :)

A narrow escape

June 12, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I was going to write about something else, but I had a bit of drama last night.

I very nearly got scammed. I put my old mattress on OLX, Romania’s version of TradeMe. Price 300 lei. Then someone WhatsApped me. How old is the mattress? What sort of condition? Could you arrange delivery? Lots of messages. He was insistent. God, this sounds like a lot of hassle. If you haven’t done it before, I’ll show you how. Still sounds like faff, but OK. Here’s the link. You’ll pay for delivery, right? Yes. I’ll pay you, then you just have to accept the payment, and the guy from the delivery company will call you to pick it up.

Now here’s the clever part. The link, which directed me to a page asking for my card details (why do you need those?) also brought up a live chat facility, which a lot of organisations now have. “I’m Mihai. How can I help you?” It all looked remarkably genuine. “Just tap in your number, go to your banking app, then tap to confirm.” I don’t like this, but whatever. My banking app then asked me to confirm that I wanted to make a payment of 1400 lei (£250; NZ$500) to somebody unknown. CANCEL!

For a few minutes I was worried I’d actually made the payment. Then I googled “OLX deliveries” and discovered that I’d nearly been the victim of a common scam. Everything was bogus. The live chat thingy was what fooled me, that damn Mihai who was just him, the scammer. It just seemed like another of the dozens of situations in the last few weeks that I’d been faced with something a bit dodgy and uncomfortable under time pressure but had to reluctantly go ahead with it. And all in Romanian. I wondered if he targeted me; because OLX unfortunately uses real names (they appear on the site as first name and last initial), he could have seen that I probably wasn’t from these parts and was easier prey.

I then called the bank to get my card blocked. The woman told me that someone had already tried (and failed) to use my card to buy something for hundreds of Singapore dollars.

This was a narrow escape. I kicked myself afterwards for being so gullible, for getting that close to losing hundreds or thousands. But having weird shit thrown at me from all directions on a regular basis does excuse me somewhat.