Life :)

Environment - Language teaching - Life :)

Footprints

April 16, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just been watching dramatic footage of Notre Dame Cathedral ablaze. I visited it back in 2003 when I met my French flatmate there (we’d lived in student-level accommodation in the middle of Peterborough). It’s sad to see what is a beautiful work of art go up in flames.

On the 15th of every month I do my meter readings. There are four meters in (or just outside) this flat: electricity, gas and two for water. Yesterday was meter day, and I also happened to read an article about carbon emissions, so I went online to calculate the size of my CO2 footprint (click here). I was surprised at the answer. The centre of this city is increasingly clogged up with traffic, while I don’t even have a car. I don’t fly very often. I don’t think I consume much at all, as I sit here proudly sporting a threadbare seven-year-old T-shirt with a picture of a clapped-out VW camper van on the front (yeah I know, VW, emissions…). But it calculated my footprint as 4.9 tonnes per year, compared to a Romanian average of 3.5. (The UK average is around 7, and for the Western world as a whole the average is about 11.) I did err on the high side with my estimates, figuring that there’s always something I forget, so it’s possible my real total is slightly less. The real negative for me is living alone. In the summer I have the air conditioner going full blast because the heat would be unbearable otherwise. A big plus, however, which the site didn’t take into account, is that I have zero kids. My parents must have an enormous footprint, emitting 8 tonnes last year on their flights alone, and I’d dread to think what my Wellington-based cousin’s figure would be (I might send her the link). As for me, I’m trying to make 2019 my first flight-free year since 2002.

Yesterday was a pleasant day. On the way to my lessons in Strada Timiș, I intended to go to the offices of insurance company to arranging a CT scan for my sinuses, but realised the offices weren’t exactly on the way so I wouldn’t have time. That meant I arrived at Strada Timiș a little early, so I sat in the nearby Parcul Dacia, where old men were playing backgammon, rummy and a traditional card game. The lessons went reasonably well. I played Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with my 17-year-old student, who did rather well in the end, despite starting out deliberating whether Sweden or Switzerland was part of the UK.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

I need to get out more

April 8, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I haven’t written for ages, because I haven’t had a whole lot to say. Work is absolutely fine (and that’s a big thing to be absolutely fine) but it would be nice to have a bit more of a social life. Spring has sprung and I can hear the pleasant ping of fluffy yellow objects hitting strings on the nearby courts, but I don’t have anybody to play with. (The concept of a club which you join and instantly have a playing partner or three doesn’t exist here. Not unless you’re willing to pay the earth, anyway.)

It’s safe to say that it’s all over with S. Lately she’s had to look after her grandmother who is nearly 90 and not in the best of health, but regardless of that, it’s obvious that she’s got better, more important things to do with her time than spend it with me. And soon she’ll be leaving the country to go on another of her grand tours.

As well as meeting people and getting out on the tennis court, I’d quite like to travel. There are extraordinarily beautiful regions of Romania that I haven’t yet been to (like the north-east of the country) or have been to but haven’t properly explored (such as Maramureș). So I plan to take at least a couple of weeks off in August, and perhaps a few days before then too. My friends from St Ives had planned to come over around now – we’d had the idea of going to the Danube Delta – but for various reasons they’ve had to knock that on the head.

A few of my students have said that I get quite animated in my lessons, in contrast to their experience at school or with a non-native tutor. They seem impressed at the various games and activities we do, even if continually coming up with new ones presents a challenge for me. I think I come alive in my lessons in a way I struggle to in “normal life”.

I’m finding Brexit compelling and exasperating in equal measure. Most British politicians are not arseholes, but the arseholes – the hardest of the Brexiteers – are certainly getting their moment in the sun. They are like bullies at school (and quite possibly were bullies at school), and make ridiculous comparisons between the Brexit crisis and the Second World War. The most likely outcome now would seem to be a long extension, but there’s a chance (15%?) Macron et al veto such a delay, the government refuse to revoke Article 50, and Britain are out of the EU on Friday night. In that case, Scotland will very likely exit the UK in short order.

I’ll post some photos of the very Eastery scene outside – the market started up over the weekend, and with temperatures soaring to 23 degrees, it was heaving out there.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

A beautiful day

March 25, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

It has been a glorious Sunday, with weather I’d describe as just about perfect. This morning I biked to Sânmihaiu Român, a village about 13 km from here but it feels a world away. Typical of a Sunday morning, there was almost nobody around, save those fishing in the Bega. There were plenty of animals though, such as a mother goat with her two kids that could only have been days old. At the village I drank a cheap coffee in the sun, then sat in a park to do some Romanian homework, then rode back. Though my bike is probably 40-odd years old, it has been a godsend. I’m able to get a decent amount of exercise and travel to lessons in a reasonable time. This afternoon I asked the lady at the nearby tennis courts how and when I can play. It isn’t a club as such; I’d need to actually find someone to play with. Not that easy. I’ve suddenly got the urge to play again.

Yesterday I joined S and her friend at a wine-tasting session at The Wine Guy, a small wine store near Piața Unirii. We spent 3½ hours there, almost half of which involved listening to the Wine Guy himself talk (in Romanian, so a good lesson for me) about the way wines are produced and classified, the process of becoming a sommelier, the varieties produced in Romania, and so on. Finally we got down to business, and tried out seven wines in all: three whites, one rosé, and three reds. We swilled them around, sniffed them, and eventually tasted them. People came up with all sorts of exotic aromas that they could supposedly discern, but to me it was a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Still, it was interesting, and I realised how much we neglect our sense of smell in 21st-century life. Wine tasting seems enormously subjective to me, and at times I was pining for a ten-dollar bottle of full-bodied Pinot Noir, instead of the far pricier stuff we tried last night with their subtle notes of raspberry or caramel. This was only the third time I’d done wine tasting; my best experience by far was in Birmingham back in 2001, when our session was hosted by Oz Clarke of Food and Drink fame. On that occasion there was no messing about as we drank New World wines in proper quantities.

The topic of wine came up twice in lessons last week. Once because cork oak trees happened to be the subject of an IELTS reading exercise; the other time was in my Romanian lesson when I told my teacher I couldn’t for the life of me pronounce the first word of the popular Romanian wine Tămâioasă Românească. It’s a beautiful-looking word, but the pile-up of vowels in Tămâioasă requires a form of mouth gymnastics for me. She then said she struggled with pile-ups of consonants in English, and wondered why the difference. I told her that English was considerably more consonant-heavy than Romanian (at least 60% consonants, as opposed to around 50% or perhaps a shade over), she then looked at a line of text in both languages, and saw what I meant.

The New Zealand government’s response to the Christchurch shooting, in particular that of Jacinda Ardern, has been very impressive. Decisive, compassionate, genuine, in touch with the people, everything you could want. Whatever your political persuasion, New Zealand’s 21st-century prime ministers have all been very good adverts for the country. The leadership shown in Britain, of course, has been the exact opposite. There were several “We want Jacinda” placards at yesterday’s anti-Brexit march. I watched Theresa May’s brief speech from Downing Street on Wednesday night and it all felt so wooden. As Dad said, it was typically British. I might be more inclined to say English. Regarding the shooting, when the subject came up in conversation last week, my student made an inadvertent joke. When I mentioned that the shooting was in Christchurch, he said, no it didn’t take place in Christchurch, it happened in a mosque.

Albert, my 7½-year-old student, is certainly a live wire. Last time I spoke to Mum, I asked her how on earth she managed with thirty kids of that age, five days a week. Albert is a nice kid, although games present a problem, because he isn’t quite mature enough to realise that you can’t always win.

Scrabble. You meet all kinds of weird and wonderful people on ISC, the Romanian-based site I play on. A little while ago I played an 80-year-old woman from Sydney who talked very positively about the tournament scene down under. She mentioned somebody by the name of Bob, assuming I knew who he was. Excuse my ignorance, but who’s Bob? Apparently she was referring to Bob Jackman, a veteran Scrabble expert. I’ve also now played three games with a semi-retired actuary. Last weekend I played a lady from Scotland who had played 31,000 games. She was bemoaning her bad luck and lack of improvement. Maybe it would help if you took a break. She then mentioned that she suffered from ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, and often struggles to leave the house. Yesterday I had perhaps my worst experience to date. My English opponent’s notes consisted of screeds of information about all sorts of things that piss him off about all sorts of players. I quite often see this (seriously, get a life people), and it rings alarm bells. Anyway, we play, he starts, I reply with a bingo, and then play short words on my next three turns because I can’t see any other options. Then he writes “you won’t be playing with me again”. I ask why, but a message flashes up on my screen to say my opponent has already added me to his no-play list, which means no-speak, too. Lovely. He then plays an obscure nine-letter bingo (a rarity which I would always congratulate, but of course I’m on his no-speak list) and I fall behind. Late in the game I find another bingo and lose by a single point, not that I particularly care by then. Perhaps that’s his tactic all along. Unsettle people by being an arsehole, so they no longer care about winning. To me it’s baffling.

I hope this fantastic weather continues.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

9/3/99

March 10, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last week was an exhausting one. I’m not sure why – my 30 hours of lessons were pretty standard – but after yesterday’s final lesson I didn’t feel like doing a whole lot. It might have been the late finishes (on five consecutive days) and all the extra to-ing and fro-ing that happens when I teach kids. With the exception of one boy, a 14-year-old, all my lessons with kids involve a trip.

When I turned up nine days ago for my lesson with seven-year-old Albert (I’d seen a Victoria earlier in the day), my heart sank. He stood almost pinned to the back of the sofa, cowering, wondering why this strange man had entered his lair. I felt sorry for him. Look, I said, it’ll be fine, knowing of course that I had an hour and a half with him, and it was likely to be anything but fine. But to my surprise, I was able to put him at ease. Being able to communicate with him in Romanian was a huge help. Unlike some kids who expect me to be fluent in their mother tongue, Albert seemed quite impressed with my Romanian skills. He had a pretty good knowledge of the basics: numbers, colours, animals, simple food items. We played a simple board game I’d created involving frogs, and before I knew it our time was up. On Friday I had my second lesson with him, and he ran up to me when I arrived. It was quite incredible to see that. He spent half the lesson wanting to run: he was a bundle of boundless energy. Simon says for god’s sake stop running! It truth it’s much easier to teach someone like him than a kid who looks perpetually bored and whose favourite words are “no” and “I don’t know”.

Yesterday I had a pair of new students – an ambitious 20-year-old couple – who want to do the Cambridge exam and perhaps move to the UK. They were both at a good level, around a 7½ on my 0-to-10 scale. They specifically mentioned Birmingham as a city they’d like to live in. The bloke marvelled at what I see as my extremely standard British accent. I get that from time to time from people who have been brought up on a diet of American movies and games. With this couple, I’ve now had 76 students (but no trombones) since I started back in November 2016.

My grandfather (Dad’s dad) passed away twenty years ago yesterday. It was a Tuesday, I was in my first year of university, my brother was in his first year in Army uniform, and my parents had been in London to try and fix up a teaching exchange for Mum in New Zealand. As it happened, New Zealand was booked out, so my parents decided to spend 2000 in Cairns (Australia) instead. My grandfather, who had been a physically strong and debonair gentleman, with quite a sense of humour to boot, spent the last decade of his life in the ever-tightening grip of Alzheimer’s. It was all very sad, and extremely hard for my grandmother. His problems came to the fore when they visited New Zealand in the summer of 1989-90 (we were living there at the time). He, who had always been a lover of the outdoors, became dizzy and disoriented when exposed to the sun. From then on it was a downward spiral. My grandmother tried to keep things as normal as possible, even going on holiday in Barbados with him and my father as late as 1996, but it was very hard work. I remember the speech my dad gave at his funeral – a very good one, especially for someone who doesn’t normally speak in public.

Last weekend S and I watched an unusual film about Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president. It wasn’t an easy watch – it brought back some ugly memories of the early 2000s: that awful election, 9/11, and the Iraq War which Britain, and of course my brother, got dragged into. I learnt plenty about Dick Cheney and the machinations of American politics at that time, but it was hard not to watch it and feel angry. It was all just a bit too close to home. S disagreed with me, but it showed to me that elections can and do matter. Had Al Gore been the victor in 2000, which he perhaps would have been if the Florida recount hadn’t been stopped by the Supreme Court, the world would be a different place now. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people’s votes in elections matter, but that wasn’t my point.

Scrabble. Five games yesterday, and just one win, despite averaging 402. At the level I play, that kind of average is likely to give you four wins rather than four losses, but it wasn’t my lucky day. I lost one game by five points when my opponent played an out-bingo, and in another game I was a long way behind, but found a bingo and some other high-scoring plays, only to fall short by three points. Even in my final game I was made to sweat a bit when my opponent played a 97-point bingo to the triple, making several overlaps, but I managed to edge over the line. My rating has dipped into the low 1300s, which is probably an accurate reflection of where I am right now.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Normal rules don’t apply

March 1, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last Wednesday was a terrible day. I had to go to the doctor, then I faffed around with paperwork for ages, then I managed to lose some pretty important paperwork that might still mean I have to go to Bucharest. Or not. The next day, when I’d just about come to terms with my situation, I ended up in an argument with Mum on the phone, my first for a while. Mum, you should try living in Romania. In hindsight I shouldn’t have told her; it would have made both our lives easier. My difficulties stem from the fact that I’m not a Romanian citizen and I don’t have the national ID card that everybody else has. Anything admin-related becomes so much harder because normal rules don’t apply to me. I shouldn’t complain; being off the grid is otherwise quite nice, really. As I said, normal rules don’t apply to me.

S told me that if I do need to go to Bucharest, we can make a proper trip of it. That could be good. I now have major doubts as to whether anything will happen between S and me. Heck, it’s already been over five months. It’s odd that she (temporarily) lives with her parents, but I’m still yet to meet them.

Yesterday I celebrated my 100th lesson with Matei; Zoli (my first-ever student) is just two behind. Tomorrow I’ve got four hours with the Cîrciumaru family – two hours with the mother followed by two with the son. It won’t be easy with either of them. She’s fixated on grammar to the point where I wonder exactly what her aim is (tomorrow I’ll ask her), and he’s Mr I Don’t Know. I say it isn’t easy, but when I think back to some of the bullshit I faced in my previous jobs, it’s an absolute breeze. After that I’ve got my first lesson with a boy of just seven. Ninety minutes. For a boy that young, that’s an absolute age. In the evening I’ve got a Skype session, not with the young man who lives in England, but (for a change) with his mother, who lives in Focșani in the east of Romania.

This morning I attended a performance of Puss in Boots, in English, at Waldorf School. The cast were aged around fourteen. I didn’t know what to expect but it was actually rather good, with plenty of comedy moments. An incredible amount of work must have gone into it. Learning lines in a foreign language is no mean feat.

Today is the last day of winter, according to one definition (and the one I tend to use). It’s been quite a tough three months, probably the most challenging spell since I arrived. My main goal for the spring and summer is simply to be well. I’m taking a new nasal spray, and eventually (when my paperwork is sorted) I’ll be having a CT scan. That’s a positive development. The weather is improving and that always helps too.

Scrabble. Three tough games tonight. I was starved of high-point tiles, eleven out of twelve falling on my opponents’ racks. In the first game I out-bingoed my opponent 3-1 but still fell to a 41-point loss. In game two I couldn’t get anything going at all, and was thrashed by 159. The final game had an attritional feel about it, but finding DAIKERS gave me a second bingo to my opponent’s one, and a 42-point victory. I’m getting better at the game. Learning a bunch of bingo stems has helped me memorise and find words like DAIKERS (which is RAISED + K). That’s still a sticking point, however. There are many thousands of highly playable words, many of them fours and fives but lots of sevens and eights too, that I have no knowledge of whatsoever. Compared to some regulars, I’m playing with one hand behind my back. I’ll keep persevering though; I enjoy the challenge.

Life :) - Scrabble

Slowing me down and tiring me out

February 19, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

My mood is certainly better than when I last wrote. The spring-like weather, the snowdrops coming out, and the people filling the squares, might have something to do with that. Yesterday Piața Unirii was heaving. This permanent state of being a bit ill is one thing I really could do without, however. It’s slowing me down and tiring me out.

Last week I had 31 hours of lessons. Right now, that’s about my limit. They included two hours with my eleven-year-old Mr I Don’t Know, preceded by (for the first time) an hour with his mum. I could see where he gets it from. She was terrified to actually speak English, preferring to focus on grammar instead. I kept telling her that gaining the confidence to speak is more important (at the beginning, at least) than learning grammar rules. Her son had to contend with a day of school, followed by two hours of me, followed by three hours of Romanian. This was a Friday. Poor chap. I made sure we just played games during the second hour.

I now have a bookcase. On Saturday S an I went back to one of the hardware stores, and surprisingly the two-metre-long flat pack fitted in her rather small car. I put it together yesterday. My level of practical nous just about stretches to that.

Scrabble. I’m not playing all that much, concentrating on learning words (sevens and eights) instead. When I have been playing, I’ve mostly been winning, and my rating on ISC has hit the low 1400s once more. Come the middle of this year, the lexicon will have expanded to include three extra two-letter words (EW, OK and ZE, with OK being the most controversial), half a dozen additional three-letter words, and many more longer ones.

Tomorrow I’ll try and get an appointment with one of the ENT specialists. This has been going on for too long. I’m even looking into surgery, but I don’t like the idea of going under the knife unless it’s absolutely necessary. (I’ve just spoken to my brother about this, and typically, he says I should just get on with it.)

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

A bump in the road

February 14, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve hit the skids in recent days and weeks. All this being sick all the time, the sinus pain, the serial colds, the lack of energy, has caught up with me. I guess I’ve been experiencing low-level depression. I’ve had an extremely good depression-free run since my move to Romania; it was bound to rear its ugly head again at some stage.

Last weekend was a low point. Some cancellations meant I had no work at all on Saturday. Lack of work is rarely a good thing. In the morning a shelf loaded with books and files collapsed. This was my stupid fault; I knew the shelf was far too flimsy for everything I had sitting on it. Luckily nothing was damaged. In the afternoon I decided to walk to Shopping City and try to find a bookcase. This took forever; just putting one foot in front of the other was a serious effort. I was also completely unable to relax.

This anxiety continued into Sunday, when S picked me up to take me to some of the various hardware hypermarkets in the southern part of the city. I wasn’t in the mood for any of this. She thought I just wanted a shelf, not something far bigger. We found something suitable but it didn’t fit into her car. She suggested getting her brother (who has a bigger car) to pick it up for me, but I hardly know her brother. During our trip, she tried to execute a U-turn that I’m amazed was even legal (this is Romania, though) and could easily have caused an accident. As it was, her manoeuvre led to a queue of cars and honking horns left, right and centre (again, this is Romania). We got back into the centre of town, but many of the bars near the river were inexplicably closed. We ended up in a café in the square, where they were showing the Fed Cup match between the Czech Republic and Romania, on Czech turf. S knew almost nothing about tennis (she said she’d never played it), and I tried my best to give her a run-down of the rules in Romanian. Simona Halep beat Karolina Pliskova in a tight three-setter. When I got home, I saw Mihaela Buzărnescu lose in straight sets to Katerina Siniakova. That left the encounter tied at two matches apiece, and the doubles match would decide it. This was one of the best doubles matches I’d ever seen. Drama and quality from start to finish, and a great atmosphere. When the Romanian pair dropped the first set on a tie-break, I expected the Czechs to rattle through the second, but no. Romania won the last two sets 6-4 6-4 to record something of an upset. A great result for Romanian tennis. (This reminds me, it would be good if I could start playing tennis again soon.)

I’ve had a solid amount of work so far this week. That seems to be a good remedy. Yesterday’s early-morning lesson started in amusing fashion: he’d been driving the car immediately behind S’s when she attempted that U-turn. He said he recognised me in the passenger seat, and thought my face was a picture. One of those funny coincidences. Last night I had a new student, and I should have another one – my 70th – this evening. The sun is shining, there’s a busker outside singing Vinovații fără vină, and I’m reasonably confident that this latest episode will be no more than a bump in the road.

Language learning - Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Making a difference

February 4, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

The last few days have been a struggle. I’ve picked up my fifth or sixth cold (I’ve lost count) this winter, and I feel feeble. All the colds have pretty much merged into one, and with all the sinus pain that never totally goes away, it’s a long time since I felt anywhere near 100%. Maybe I contracted this latest bout at the doctor’s surgery on Thursday night. As I do every four weeks, I went to the after-hours doctor to pick up my prescription, but that might not have been all I picked up. There had been a flu outbreak and the woman behind the desk was wearing a mask.

The good news is that I met S for coffee this morning, and we spoke for two hours in Romanian. Being able to speak someone else’s language is one of the most awesome things ever. I haven’t seen a lot of S lately. She got sick, I got sick, she went skiing in Austria, she got sick again, I got sick again, and so on. Before we met it was just lovely being out in Timișoara on a Sunday morning. It’s always so quiet and peaceful then. Then it was equally lovely having somebody to talk to. On the way back from the café I filled a pair of six-litre water bottles from the well, as I do every few days, but this time the bottles in my backpack felt unusually heavy. My life here is primitive in a lot of ways, and I don’t mind that too much. The water trips, the tram trips to pay my rent in cold hard cash, and of course work. My work is deliberately manual. The world we live in is automate, automate, automate, but manual is often way more interesting and fun.

I had a bunch of cancellations again last week, but the lessons I did have went pretty well. One of my latest exercises for kids is asking them to come up with 26 foods, or animals, or games, one for each letter of the alphabet. Last week one of my eleven-year-old students thought of Tasmanian devil, or diavol tasmanian in Romanian. He wanted to put that under D, but he already had “duck” there. Of course it needed to go under T instead, and that letter was free. It’s cool when kids come up with stuff that I hadn’t even thought of. I asked another eleven-year-old boy to write about his favourite time of day, expecting about four lines. Instead he wrote almost a whole page about why he liked evenings. I was bowled over, not just by the amount he wrote but also by how much his English had improved since I started with him in October 2017. Man, this is fantastic. All my work is making a difference, hopefully.

The men’s Australian Open final sure didn’t take six hours. It barely lasted two. Djokovic was brilliant and Nadal was very passive and indecisive, perhaps simply because Djokovic was playing so well as to leave him flummoxed. That’s the 52nd grand slam won by either Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. Thirteen years’ worth of majors. Extraordinary stuff. I’ve sat in Rod Laver Arena once, back in 2005 (I did also visit the Open in ’08, but didn’t have tickets for the biggest court). In ’05 the experience felt “big” but not too big. Not like today, with obnoxious electronic advertising boards pulsating in between games. Wimbledon seems to be getting too big as well. They’ve purchased the adjoining golf club, so more land, more courts, bigger, bolder, better. Bleuugh.

Scrabble. I’ve had a fairly iffy start to 2019, but I won all seven of the games I played yesterday. Although my results haven’t been fantastic so far this year, I’ve made some interesting plays: my first-ever triple-triple (ACTIONeD for 149 – he left the C in the triple lane, not particularly dangerous in second position, but I just happened to have a play that fitted perfectly); TOUZLED for 120; SqUARELY (the first time I’d ever used the blank as a Q); and two nine-letter bingos in ASPERsION and OVERDOINg (that last one in the final game I played yesterday; OVERDOg was also playable but I didn’t see it; I only saw its anagram gROOVED which didn’t play).

Brexit. Oh dear. Last Tuesday was a quieter than average day on the work front, so I watched a stream of the debates and series of votes, open-mouthed. One of the amendments was to extend Article 50 in the event that no agreement is reached by a certain day. A chance to sit down, have a cuppa tea, and think about what you actually want to do. It was voted down. So hang on, there are barely 50 days until the scheduled exit day, you’ve got no bloody clue what you’re doing, you’re fast running out of options, and you’ve just voted to deny yourselves the option of a bit more time in the event that no solution magically presents itself in the next few weeks. Are you insane?

Five lessons planned for tomorrow.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Tick-tock

January 18, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Occasionally one of my students does something extraordinary. That happened this afternoon. I gave her an IELTS writing exercise, where she had to write a letter about sub-standard student accommodation. Twenty minutes, a minimum of 150 words. As always, I had a go at the task at the same time. Hmm, too much noise? Problems with the heating? Too far away? What should I write about? These questions posed no such problems for my student. With barely half the time gone, she gleefully said “Done!” and presented me with a letter easily good enough to get the grade she’ll need when she does the exam. If she’d actually used the last ten minutes it might have been just about perfect.

Dad recently acquired a 9-carat gold pocket watch that his great-grandfather (or to be specific, his dad’s dad’s dad) had received as a present from work. He showed it to me over Christmas. For some reason he was happy to throw it away, or get some money for the gold. It’s a double hunter, meaning it has a lid on both the front and back. The case (monogrammed on the back) has been battered a bit, and the glass is missing, as is the second hand. We couldn’t get it to work. I told Dad I would take it in to one of the watchmakers here in Timișoara; he might be able to do something. The shop, on Piața Libertății, was a delight to visit. Every type of clock and watch, and piece of clock and watch, and tool for mending clocks and watches, was on display. Old cuckoo clocks were going off, left right and centre. It was like visiting a clock museum. Fitting the theme perfectly, the pocket-sized man who dealt with my great-great-grandad’s watch was about seventy. Two hours after handing it to him, I went back to find he’d got the mechanism going. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It might have been the first time it had tick-tocked for half a century, perhaps more. Unfortunately he didn’t have a glass that fitted, nor a second hand, but that’s a start.

The Australian Open is back, with its crazy hours. Last night a match didn’t finish until nearly quarter past three in the morning. We’ve also got a new tie-break rule. There are (sadly) no more advantage final sets; instead there’s a first-to-ten tie-break at 6-6 in the decider. Even if it feels gimmicky to me, there’s nothing wrong with the new rule as such; I just think the old one was better. We’re now robbed of the kinds of drama-filled long final sets we’ve seen at the Aussie Open in recent years, such as in both the Djokovic–Wawrinka matches (2013 and 2014) and both marathons Simona Halep was involved in last year. If they wanted to change it, I’d have preferred it if they’d gone down the route Wimbledon has done: a normal (less gimmicky) tie-break to seven points at 12-12. But that’s not what they did, and we’re now in the slightly mad situation where all four grand slams have different systems for determining the winner of close matches. The French Open is the only one to retain a no-limit deciding set, although I can’t imagine that will be for long. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll eventually plump for the Aussie system.

Towards the end of last week I got hooked on the BDO world darts tournament. This isn’t the biggest and best tournament in terms of standard and prestige (that would be the PDC worlds) but it has that pleasant eighties feel about it. The story for me was really the women’s tournament, with Mikuru Suzuki of Japan steamrolling her British opponent in straight sets in the final, walking on (and off) to the strains of Baby Shark, doo doo doo doo.

Eighteen games of Scrabble in 2019 so far, and I have a 50% record. Last weekend I got utterly taken apart, 574-313, in my biggest loss ever. That took my record for 2019 to 4-9, but to my surprise I followed that up with five straight wins, including (in my final game) a 557-336 victory where I out-bingoed my opponent 4-0, two of my bingos scoring in the 90s.

I’ll leave discussion of the Brexit shambles until next time.

Language learning - Language teaching - Life :)

Romanian commentary 12 – barriers

January 13, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s ages since I last discussed my Romanian language skills, or lack of them. It’s an ongoing battle. People who don’t live in Romania might assume that after more than two years I’d be just about fluent by now. Total immersion, right? Well, no. Considering how many barriers there are to learning the language, I haven’t done too badly. What do I mean by barriers, exactly? Every time I go to a fast-food outlet or a bank or a pharmacy and I’m dealing with somebody under thirty or so, I get nervous. I’m going to get Englished again, aren’t I?! I always speak Romanian, but I might be the only non-native speaker who has attempted to speak the language that they’ve come across all week. Even if my Romanian is perfectly understandable, they’re likely to find my error-strewn version, with a funny accent, comical or worse. So then they reply in English, often with mistakes, and in a slightly funny accent: “Sorry. Are not dere.” But as a speaker (and teacher!) of a language that everybody wants to speak, I’m used to mistakes and funny accents. They don’t bother me. So Romanians can get away with their dodgy English whereas I can’t with my iffy Romanian. Usually I persist, speaking Romanian for the rest of the exchange, but still feeling that I’ve failed. Sometimes, if I’m not desperate, I simply walk away.

It doesn’t happen like this all the time, of course. Or even half the time. But it happens enough to frustrate me. Am I really this bad? Still? Often the person behind the counter will greet me with “Spuneți!” which means “Speak!”. Talk about putting the pressure on. Speak, boy, speak! Shit, what do I say now? The “Spuneți!” situation is just one of many where I become anxious and uncomfortable, and therefore less able to process the language. One of these times came up yesterday, when I got my hair cut in a place I hadn’t been to before, just on the other side of the bridge. People were talking loudly across me from opposite sides of the room, cracking jokes. I couldn’t see my watch from under the cape I was wearing, nor could I see the clock from where I was sitting, and I had a lesson to go to afterwards. That sort of stuff makes me tense in any language.

I’m more comfortable in open-air markets or funny unsophisticated dive bars, which are generally run by slightly older people who didn’t start learning English when they were at kindergarden. Those places also have a couple of side benefits: they’re more interesting and cheaper.

Since the start of the year (which isn’t very long, obviously), S and I have been alternating languages. We spoke Romanian the first time we meet up, English the second time, then switched back to Romanian again, and so on. This seems to be working. At one point, S suggested that my Romanian level is something like B2, but that can’t be right. Perhaps I’d just scrape B1, or about a 5 on my personal 0-to-10 scale.

It’s been brass monkeys here. We had heavy snowfall last weekend, and on Tuesday morning the temperature dipped into the double-figure negatives. One of my students then showed up on the wrong day: Tuesday instead of Thursday. Somebody else would be coming minutes later, so I had to turn him away. I felt sorry for him, having braved such bitterly cold weather to come here, and I also felt that it was partly my fault: I’ve been teaching in Romania long enough to know that everybody seems to struggle with the words Tuesday and Thursday. I’ve even had texts from people wanting lessons on Thuesday. In this case, a simple reply of Marți? or Joi? and this misunderstanding never would have happened. Luckily he was still able to come two days later.

It’s been a good work week, and the more work I get, the motivated I seem to be with everything else. Hopefully that will extend to the Romanian language.