Life :)

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Why am I so damn tired all the damn time?

September 25, 2023 by 0 Comments

It was amazing in New Zealand. I’d wake up after a good night’s sleep (or even after a less than stellar night’s sleep) and feel refreshed. Now I’m back in Romania and I’m constantly tired. Yesterday I had to apologise for yawning in a lesson. I’ve mentioned this and two people have given the polluted city air as a reason. Could it also be the warm weather here? (Yesterday we broke 30.) What about the screen time? Or maybe it’s all the talking I have to do in my job? But back in 2018, say, I had busy work weeks one after another – often having to yap away for hours on end – and didn’t feel nearly as tired as I do now. Perhaps I was still energised by the relative newness and excitement of my lifestyle change. This fatigue seems to have coincided with my move to this apartment 16 months ago, so maybe it’s something about being here. Though my sinus problem doesn’t help, I can’t really blame that because it didn’t exactly go away in NZ where I felt much less tired.

On Friday I took a look at a car – a 19-year-old Dacia – just off Piața Bălcescu. It was just after lunchtime and the square was chocka. That made up my mind for me. There’s no way I could handle the stress of a car right now. For getting around the city, a car would be more of a burden than anything – and just think of all the added bureaucracy – so I’m going to wait until March before looking again. I should be pursuing two wheels rather than four; my latest old city bike has just about had it. The uneven roads and paths in Timișoara require something more robust, and it is slightly ludicrous that my main mode of transport – the thing I rely heavily on – dates from when I was in primary school.

Tennis. I was back on the court this weekend for two sessions of singles against my usual opponent. When you’re fatigued, singles will make you feel horribly exposed. Yesterday, something wasn’t right with the guy at the other end, and I led 6-0 6-2 2-2 when our time ran out, tiredness and all. Tonight though was an entirely different matter. I won two close games to start, then I lost seven games out of eight as he hit a deep purple patch that left me floundering despite not even playing that badly. From 3-6 0-1 he went off the boil just enough, and I came back to win the second set 6-2, at which point the heavens opened.

Lessons have been interesting. Many of my students have looked at my photos from NZ and expressed disappointment at the lack of pythons and crocodiles and spiders as big as your hand. A parrot? Telling them it can rip your wiper blades off does little to impress them. There’s also been a general sense of bafflement at the whole snow thing. Most Romanians simply don’t get that there’s another side of the world where seasons are reversed. One student asked, “Are they aware that we have Christmas in winter?” Oh yes, and most of their Christmas cards even depict winter scenes. That made him even more confused. “What about daylight savings?” Yep. I resisted the temptation to talk about Australia’s time zones that include half-hour offsets and some-do-some-don’t daylight savings.

Yesterday I worked with the top-2%-ers in Dumbrăvița. First I had two hours of maths with Matei who spent time with a Spanish family in Toledo over the summer, just like I did in France at a similar age. His family now have a conservatory which they’ve filled with exotic plants. Matei has got himself a record player and he played a few bars of Kanye West for me. I’d like a record player too (they call it a pick-up here), though certainly not to play even one bar of Kanye West. After Matei, I had two hours with Octavian who spent seven weeks combined in the UK and America (his pronunciation hadn’t improved as much as I’d hoped), then my first one-hour session with his six-year-old sister who knew more than I bargained for.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand

More from my aunt, and a rocky time in Geraldine

September 20, 2023 by 0 Comments

A beautiful autumn day here, though the forecast 28 degrees is in fact a degree less than Mum and Dad’s unseasonably warm Wednesday. This afternoon I’ve got my appointment with the ENT specialist. Maybe he can crack the problem of my sinuses – so far nobody else has. I must remember to bring all my scans and reports and what have you. I’m over my cold now, so that’s something. Last night I saw the doctor who told me who to see to get the cyst removed from my back.

A pretty hefty earthquake shook Geraldine this morning (NZ time). It was a long, rolling shake that measured 6.0. My parents didn’t feel a thing because they were in a car. It was funny to see Geraldine plastered all over the front page of Stuff.

My aunt is going to get a course of chemo that (in my cousin’s words) won’t be too invasive and might give her another few months. In hospital she’s been on morphine and antibiotics for her crippling pain caused by an infection. She’s also gone cold turkey on booze and cigarettes – that can’t have been much fun. So Dad has booked a trip over there, leaving on 9th October and coming back five weeks later. I might even make a visit. Thankfully his itinerary won’t be as onerous as mine – no clapped-out trains, and instead a 16-hour leg (!) on an Emirates A380. My fun and games in the mysterious depths of Hungary would just about kill him. My cousin has been very good to my aunt while she’s been in hospital, but she’s never had much time for him – her interest ended when he was shipped off to boarding school at the age of eight (!?).

Here’s an interesting YouTube video by a bloke called Noel Philips, who quit his IT job to travel and make videos about travelling, mostly on unusual routes and older planes. He even has a private pilot’s licence. In this video, he was daring enough to fly on an Indonesian airline with a one-star safety rating, out of a maximum of seven. Fascinating to watch – the airports reminded me of travelling through Indonesia as a kid.

I still don’t really know what’s happening with my central heating.

Update: I saw the ENT guy. When I entered his clinic, I saw my name hand-written in his big book, with the number 969 alongside it. He was happy to do everything in English. Normally I hate that, but when it’s my health I’m fine with it. His English was very good, apart from the time he pushed probes up both my nostrils and told me it wasn’t painy. Sorry, but it bloody is painy. He said that surgery won’t do me any good, then asked me to take an allergy test (the last time I got tested for allergies was in 2017) before taking a spray twice a day and a pill only in the evening. I’ll have to take these drugs for two months, then after seeing him again I might end up taking them for life. So that’s where I am with that.

Family - Life :)

Landed with a bump

September 16, 2023 by 0 Comments

On Tuesday, at about the time I met the English lady Dorothy in town, I realised I’d picked up something on the plane. Over 300 people crammed in a tube – it’s not that big a surprise. For the last three days I’ve had a mild fever, a sore throat, and very little energy. And it had all started so well, too. Early-morning visits to the market, meeting my neighbours upstairs, and resuming lessons with the twins who were bronzed after their beach holiday in Greece. It was all rather nice. (That’s the single pair of twins. I might not see the four twins again – their mother said she wants them to concentrate on Romanian and maths.)

This illness wouldn’t be so bad if (a) I didn’t have the constant sinus business too, and (b) I didn’t have life admin chucked at me. More Barclays stuff for a start. I’d given them my New Zealand account to pay the funds into, but the lady on the phone said that living in Romania (not NZ) had caused their system to spit the dummy and send me a cheque instead. I never received this cheque, and at any rate it’s five years since you could cash foreign cheques in Romania. On Wednesday I opened an account denominated in pounds at my Romanian bank so I could receive the funds here without getting hit for who knows what fees, then sent Barclays my latest payment instructions. With the way I was feeling, this was a major effort. Now I’ve got the central heating to deal with. First thing this morning, Viorica (who lives on the top floor) went with me to the energy provider, to help me set up a contract with them. She must sense my cluelessness (and lack of desire to get a clue) about Romania’s bureaucratic systems; she’s been very helpful. I told her I was operating on an even slower mode than usual. At least I figured out how to make the 8am appointment on their automated system. The office had red furniture and red notices everywhere, there were red digits to tell us our position in the queue (at the front, thankfully), and the young woman at the desk wore a red top and had her nails painted red. I got the contract set up, but there are several more hoops to jump through. The next step might be getting the meters or ceasuri (literally ‘clocks’) installed, but it could easily be something else.

Today is my nephew’s first birthday. Now that has gone by quickly. They’re putting on a party for him tomorrow. Let’s hope they give him a celebration he’ll never forget. I’ll call my brother tonight. As for my aunt, her one-night stay in hospital has turned into six or seven and nobody knows what’s going on.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Photos

New Zealand: I like what I see

September 6, 2023 by 0 Comments

Sadly it’s all coming to an abrupt end. Dad’s got his Google gadget gizmo playing sixties music (they’ve turned the TV off – will wonders never cease?), and appropriately the deceptively complex Here Comes the Sun is playing as I write this. Spring has sprung; I’m seeing the daffodils coming out for the second time this year. Today it hit 19 degrees here, and at 1pm one of the famous nor’westers whipped through. Now we’ve got the Beach Boys – Surfin’ USA.

My brother called us this evening, just after we’d finished our chicken and vegetable pie. My nephew – nine days shy of his first birthday – was in a happy mood, as he is pretty much always. He’s a lovely little boy, it must be said. I’ve hardly ever seen him cry. He’s benefited hugely from all the time his parents have spent with him. My sister-in-law goes back to work soon – she’d rather not have to.

This afternoon Mum took me over to my aunt and uncle in Woodbury. It looks like they might pull the plug on their rhododendron nursery. I’m amazed they’ve kept it going for so long. We were there for two hours, most of which were taken up by gossip about various local no-hopers (quoting verbatim here) getting handouts they obviously don’t deserve. Before that, I got some life admin done involving phone calls to RaboBank (I had a high three-figure amount in an account that they’d closed) and the IRD, while Mum and Dad were getting haircuts and doing the laundry in Temuka, and sorting out a new kitchen in Washdyke. I also watched an incredible women’s doubles match at the US Open. At the end of a topsy-turvy third set, the American pairing of Taylor Townsend and Leylah Fernandez raced to a 7-2 lead in the first-to-ten tie-break before Gaby Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe won 10-8. I didn’t know at the time that Routliffe played for New Zealand. I also saw Sorana Cîrstea’s quarter-final with Karolina Muchova. The Czech had too much for the Romanian, who had done extremely well to get that far. There was one crazy game in the middle of the first set – it went ten deuces, and Cîrstea had nine break points – which could have sent the match on a different path had it gone the Romanian’s way.

Yesterday both Mum and I visited the IRD in Timaru. She’d been faffing around for many angst-ridden hours on the IRD site using her four-inch phone, and I also had a problem to resolve with non-resident tax, so I persuaded her to actually visit the office which is located just off the main street of Timaru and open 5½ hours a day, three days a week. Nowhere near enough. We arrived before it opened and were first in the queue. The two women we dealt with at the desk were very pleasant, although Mum was still effing and blinding because she had to pay provisional tax.

When we got back from Timaru I had a sudden urge to clear the cobwebs. Too much sitting around, either in a car, or worse, in my parents’ living room. So I took Dad’s rather good bike out and went all the way to the huts at Milford, 24 km away, and obviously all the way back. I’d packed a flask of tea. On those last few kilometres I was saddle-sore and ravenous. Mum was visibly concerned by the time I got back.

After a month in this neck of the woods, I like what I’ve seen. Could I move back here to live? Probably, yes, if I could somehow keep teaching and find a suitable place. It would need to be out of curtain-twitching range. As beautiful as Waikouaiti is, I’d find it hard to hide there. Dunedin would suit me I think, but could I afford it? These are things to consider in the medium term.

It’ll be a sad moment tomorrow as my parents drop me off at the Jucy Snooze place next to the airport where I’ll doss down for a few hours before my 6am flight – an early start to a long ordeal. Saying goodbye to Mum is the hardest. With Dad he’s still sort of there on the end of an email or a video chat. Without being able to hug Mum and smell her perfume – the same one she’s worn since I was a kid, at least – it’s really not the same.

I didn’t immediately parse this name correctly. Mr and Mrs Duzu? Doesn’t sound Scottish or Irish. Ah, does us.

Milford yesterday. No whitebaiters that I could see. The names of the huts/baches are always interesting. There used to be a Passing Wind.
Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Photos

Let’s talk about money

August 24, 2023 by 0 Comments

As a boy I was often blown away by how casually my parents talked about sums in the thousands. “A thousand to you is worth a normal pound to me!” I remember saying. Now I’m in my forties and I’ve come a long way: two of those three zeros have been wiped out – there’s just a ten-to-one relationship between my parents’ financial world and mine. Their financial position hasn’t really sunk in to them. When Mum complained that politicians give handouts to both the rich and the poor and don’t care about those in the middle – like them – I just about spat out my tea. Just yesterday, Dad began a sentence with “If I was a millionaire”. Had he suddenly switched to the Kuwaiti dinar, worth NZ$5.42 or £2.55? I wonder how much their vast wealth – let’s be frank – has been a demotivator to me, or at least a motivator to think, bugger this and exit the world of real estate offices on every corner. It’s also been a source of some upset for my brother. Mum and Dad are seriously giving the cost of flights as a reason not to see their grandson? Gimme a break. They could easily fly business class. (Seriously, how many more return trips to the UK will they make? Four or so? It would be worthwhile use of their money.)

Mum and Dad don’t agree on everything, but when it comes to their finances they’re a team, steadfast in defence. Five-nil up with five minutes to go, the gleaming silverware long since secured, still keen to score another goal if the chance presents itself, but desperate not to concede. Their renovation has cut out a lot of their cooking facilities and made dinnertime a stressful part of the day. Mum is a good cook and rustles up something tasty every night, but there’s always tension in the air. (Dad said he’d like to help but she won’t let him.) I suggested that twice a week they should eat out or get takeaways, just to lighten the load during the renovation. Eighty bucks a week for the two of them; it would surely be worth it. They thought I was mad. There aren’t many restaurants in Geraldine, they said, and the cost! Since I arrived 17 days ago, we’ve had two takeaways – sausage and chips on the day I arrived, and fish and chips from Palmerston – and had two coffees out, including at Mitre 10 in Timaru yesterday.

A lot of their frugality has rubbed off on me. My brother and I were hardly spoilt as kids, with the exception of travel, although even that was mostly on the cheap. We had little “stuff”, and basically no expensive stuff, but never felt deprived. Big-brand clothes and shoes were unthinkable. Even at ten, I knew that £60 Nike or Reebok trainers were a huge waste of money, and didn’t demand them. Between 24 and 28 I got regular pay rises and spent a bit more freely, but when my career soon went rapidly south and I took out a mortgage I tightened my belt considerably. I find proper eating out – at actual restaurants – quite stressful and tend to avoid it. It can take ages to get served – especially in Romania – and there’s the whole issue of tipping (I’m ideologically opposed to the concept) which, alarmingly, is starting to become a thing even in New Zealand. When I lived in Wellington there was a huge choice of “semi-restaurants” – Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese – that served yummy, inexpensive food in a virtually stress-free environment. I miss those. But if I had my parents’ riches, hopefully I’d check out those real restaurants a little more often.

The racecourse between Geraldine and Orari

An alpaca farm. It reminds me of the British band Llama Farmers, who were around in about 2000.

Maybe 20% of the Resene test pot selection at Mitre 10. In Romania, I had a choice of two yellows. Paint is much cheaper over there.

Pop in – one of those pesky phrasal verbs that I teach my students

Mum said she won a mixed doubles golf tournament with the owner of this place. Her partner’s ability to play proper golf in his garden must have given him a distinct advantage.

Red rhododendrons are everywhere at the moment
Life :) - New Zealand - Photos

Off to Moeraki

August 15, 2023 by 0 Comments

We’re about to head off to Mum and Dad’s holiday home ⁠–⁠ you could hardly call it a bach ⁠–⁠ in Moeraki. On Thursday I’ll drop in on my friend in Naseby whom I haven’t seen since 2016 when she still lived in Auckland.

Last night I had my Romanian lesson in which ⁠– predictably I suppose ⁠– I talked about New Zealand. When prompted by the teacher to talk about a news item, I said the wildfires in Hawaii which were horrific ⁠– the death toll, currently at about 100, will climb substantially. I got the impression that the fires hadn’t received the same level of coverage in Romania as here. After Romanian, I had my first English lesson with a woman in her late thirties who lives just outside Bucharest and works for Deutsche Bank. As is often the case, she underestimated her level. She’s a very competent speaker.

I don’t have much time to write because we’re shooting off any minute. I will however say that traditional New Zealand showers – the zinc ones with the big intuitive red, blue and black dial – are amazing. When I came over as a kid I thought they were in a different league from the pathetic drizzly ones we had in the UK with mastic surrounds that always eroded. My parents have a proper Kiwi shower in this place, and when I first stepped into it following my two-day journey, I didn’t want to get out.

On breakfast news this morning I heard “if it gets back into power” (referring to the Labour Party) and that Chelsea (the football club) “has been spending up large”. Oh, is that how we do things in New Zealand now? I go away for seven years and now you go all American by treating clubs and teams and political parties as singular.

Yesterday I took Dad’s bike for a trip around Geraldine and Orari, going back via their old house. Here are a few pictures:

Mum and Dad’s old place

The stream that runs through Mum and Dad’s old piece of land. It often ran dry.
Life :) - New Zealand - Other sports - Photos

A smashing time

August 14, 2023 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning was bright and sunny, and while Mum went to church and her after-mass coffee meeting, I joined Dad at the Model Aero Club near Pleasant Point. It’s a nice drive out there. I saw that the Pleasant Point taxidermist had sadly closed down. Dad was one of six flyers at the club, all aged between 60 and 80. Dad and one either guy make their planes painstakingly from balsa wood – for Dad, that’s the whole point, and having spent decades honing his fine motor skills, he’s pretty good at it. The others use ready-made planes, often made from foam. Unlike Dad, their focus is servos and resistors and diodes and all that technical stuff. (I was impressed that Dad had got a sufficient handle on all of that, because it isn’t his thing at all.) Dad’s blue plane was up and away, then after two minutes the engine cut out. Not to worry, he should be able to glide it in … but he was flying into the sun which blinded him, and the plane nosed into the ground. He says it’s fixable, but for that particular morning it was game over. I had a chat with one of the guys about Windows 10 and 11 (don’t upgrade to 11!) and Covid in Romania. One (British-born) bloke had a smart Commer van that his in-laws bought new in 1965; he regaled me of his road trips around Europe in it as a young man. (Commer vehicles were used in WW2. One time the comedy writer Frank Muir was driving a Commer which spluttered to a halt; he famously said over the radio, “The Commer has come to a full stop.”)

Before

After

To my mind, the most impressive of the planes on show, but engine trouble prevented it from flying

The Commer van

We went home via Hanging Rock. I hadn’t been there for ages. I probably swam in the Opihi there during our 1986-87 trip. When we got home, Mum opened an official-looking letter that had been sitting there for a couple of days. Dad had been hit with an $80 speeding fine. She took it pretty well; had she opened it the previous day when she was in an especially vile mood, she’d have hit the eleven-foot-high ceiling. I showed Dad a picture of the damage his Piper Cub sustained when it crashed when I came to the club in 2009 – he’d forgotten about that. I’m a jinx, it seems.

Hanging Rock

The day before yesterday Dad and I tried to sort out my crap in the garage. Boxes of books, mostly. I’ll take a few back with me, but I was happy to see most of them go to a charity shop. I’d also accumulated a surprising number of shoes that were all in a blue sack. Many of them will go too.

On Saturday night I watched my first rugby match for decade or so. It was a provincial game between Tasman and Auckland, played in Blenheim. Mum was particularly interested because the Tasman team – who ran out quite comfortable winners in the end – included both her sister-in-law’s nephew (if I’ve got that right) and someone she used to teach at Waihi, back when she still did relief teaching. What a weird game rugby is. Scrums and lineouts are really quite bizarre, when you think about it. Tasman’s star player in the first half – a heavily tattooed battering ram – was almost neckless. Auckland’s forward pack weighed 919 kg, or 115 kg per man. After that, England played Colombia in the women’s football World Cup. An end-to-end first half finished with a quick exchange of goals; England won 2-1 to make the semis where they’ll play Australia.

Also that evening we played the card game Skip-Bo. I’d found a pack in the garage; Mum must have bought it in 1993 after her brother in Auckland showed us how to play. It’s mostly (but not entirely) luck-based. While we were playing, I reminded Dad of a five-handed game of Skip-Bo we played on New Year’s Eve ’93, involving his father. He was a couple of years younger than Dad is now, and had quite advanced Alzheimer’s. He needed considerable help with the game. I remember that whenever my grandad had a lot of a particular numbered card, he’d say “I’ve got eights (for example) up the ying-yang.”

Tonight I’ll be taking a Romanian lesson and giving an English one.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music

What was the secret?

August 1, 2023 by 0 Comments

I had two lessons this morning. First I had an hour with the young woman who looks like a similar-aged Martina Hingis when she ties her hair back. Her English isn’t bad, but – as is often the case with the young ones – her vocabulary is a couple of thousand words shy of where it needs to be, and I don’t think she’s all that interested in expanding it. Then I had Alexandru, the twelve-year-old football fanatic who lives in Spain. I asked him whether he goes by Alexandru or Alejandro or just Alex, and to my surprise he said Alek, with a k, a letter that doesn’t exist natively in either Romanian or Spanish – he clearly just wants to be a bit fancy. I’ve got three more lessons planned for later today, and with a bit of luck they’ll actually happen.

On Sunday I had a longish chat to Mum and Dad. How did you get into this mess with the plumber? Well, it’s not that much mess, but the how is because I’m in Romania. The Wild West (or East). You literally just pay for the building or plumbing work, in cash of course, and if there’s collateral damage (that could in some cases be lethal), that’s your lookout. I spoke to my upstairs neighbour who has family in Canada and she said how “civilised” it all seemed over there. I then met Mark for lunch. He also has a Canada connection – his daughter lives in Vancouver – and he and his girlfriend had just got back from there. Later I played tennis, with thousands of squawking crows flying overhead and somebody in a nearby church banging on a toacă. When I got home I called my brother who has his knee op tomorrow. His mood was about what you’d expect from someone about to be put of commission for a while. We didn’t talk for long.

My parents said that they’re unlikely to see their grandson in New Zealand anytime soon because the cost would be beyond my brother’s means. Well then, Mum, how did you afford to fly your two boys – both under two years old – to New Zealand in 1982? My brother is ten years older than you were. They have two incomes, not the one-and-a-tiny-bit you had. Just how? Oh yes, your double-digit (ha!) monthly mortgage which you were able to achieve by, let me see what the trick was, let me think for a sec, hmm, oh yes that’s it, being born at the right time. To be fair, my parents were pretty frugal too, but society somehow allowed them to be.

Muzicorama last night. Big birthdays were the theme. Lobo (born 31/7/43) was first up with Me and You and a Dog Named Boo (1971) – the wonders of a simple life on the road. Most of the rest of the programme was devoted to Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim (born 31/7/63), with those massive hits in 1998-99 that remind me so much of my first year of university. Some I liked, some I didn’t, and that’s OK.

Though it’s now August, we still have long evenings, mostly as a result of our geographical position and time zone. I should make the most of my final four of them. (Sunset tonight is 9:11.)

Life :) - Tennis

The final lap

July 30, 2023 by 0 Comments

This time next week I should be on the first leg of my journey, from Budapest to Istanbul (2 hours). That entrée will be followed by flights to Singapore (nearly 11 hours), Melbourne (7½ hours) and finally Christchurch (3½ hours). That adds up to almost 24 hours in the air, plus several more on the ground in between. I’ve decided to take the train to Budapest, then the bus to the airport. People have asked me why I didn’t book a door-to-door bus to the airport, and I probably should have done, though the train trip (the reverse of the last leg of my Cambridge-to-Timișoara train journey in 2016) should be enjoyable.

The very nice plumber has done his bit for now; yesterday I gave him a chunky wad of lei and we had a good chat before he left. He had to gouge holes in the thick walls to poke the pipes through, and some parts now look quite unsightly. Also he somehow knocked out the power in two of the sockets that I use all the damn time in my office. I’ll have to get an electrician in, and when I get back I’ll probably need to do some plastering. In Romania the “making good” bit seems to be the responsibility of the customer … sigh. There’s still a swamp of hopelessly opaque admin to wade through with the gas company and whatnot before I get the central heating up and running.

I played tennis tonight. I enjoyed it much more than last week because Gabriela wasn’t there. That sounds bad – I’m sure that if you take away her cheering of opponent’s mistakes on the tennis court, she’s absolutely lovely.

Life :)

A must-see video, and how to quickly spot idiots

July 26, 2023 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I had four lessons – my students were Andreea, Alexandru, Adrian and Alin. By rights, I should get Bianca, Barbu, Bogdan and Beatrice today. Alexandru was a new student, aged twelve. He lives in Madrid and was born there, but is on holiday in Romania where his extended family are. He’s football mad – he dreams of being a professional footballer – and came wearing a bright yellow Ronaldo shirt from the Saudi team he apparently now plays for. We worked from the Cambridge book he brought – he was desperate to finish the book before I go away.

Dad likes to send me videos. This one of Maramureș in northern Romania, nearly 40 minutes long, is a must-see. It was shot in the summer of 2019, and gives an incredible window on village life in that part of the country. The first half of the video was so achingly beautiful that it almost brought a tear to my eye. Seriously. Someone asked in the comments what brings people to turn their backs on a life of peace and beauty to live in soulless, overcrowded cities. The answer to that is complicated. It’s a life of peace and beauty but also back-breaking work in many cases. The second half of the video showed the Mocaniță that I went on two years ago, with extra drama that I managed to avoid. Jenny Parsons, the British woman who made the video, seemed lovely. The camera work was great too – the close-ups of the butterflies in all their varieties, or the way she focused on the opinci – the traditional leather shoes. “The best holiday ever,” she said. I wanted to buy a car so I could see all of this more easily, although I’m now glad I didn’t buy one before going away. The central heating business has pretty much forced me to be at home.

On Sunday I saw a great piece in the Guardian entitled “Want to quickly spot idiots? Here are five foolproof red flags.” Yes, I know, it’s the Guardian which is left-leaning, but it was hard to disagree. These were the big five:
1. People who are proud non-readers of books
2. People who think that all books should just be short blog posts
3. People who think that wealth is directly linked to intelligence
4. People who go on and on about AI or ChatGPT
5. People who obsess about their IQs

Loads of people fall into number 3, and that’s half the reason why the planet is increasingly fucked. This guy is a gigantic twat but he’s a billionaire so he must be super smart. So I’ll vote for him. To number 4, add crypto. I dealt first-hand with number 5 when I did interview practice with this guy in his twenties who kept going on about his IQ. (Come to think of it, why do women never talk about their IQs?) “What’s the best way of talking about my IQ in the interview?” Don’t talk about it at all! But, but, but, it’s 145. No! To get the message across I wrote IQ in six-inch letters, crossed out. To be fair, I don’t think this guy was an idiot, he was just decidedly weird. I would add a number 6 – people whose favourite travel destination is Dubai or somewhere else that’s similarly fake and extravagant. A huge red flag.

Ten days to go, not that I’m counting or anything.