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Out of keff

July 20, 2020 by 0 Comments

I think I’m over my three days of inexplicable fatigue. Uncontrollable yawning. Numbness in my limbs. Not wanting to do anything. In Romanian there’s a very handy word – chef – which we could do with importing into English. It’s nothing to do with food, and is in fact pronounced keff, which is how I’d spell it if it were an English word. It means desire to do a particular thing. Since Thursday I’ve been totally out of keff. Completely and utterly keffless. I still managed to drag myself around the tennis court twice though. Last night was hard work.

Over 90 workers have tested positive at the Smithfield meat plant here in Timișoara. They produce the Comtim brand of meat that you see everywhere. I’ve had students who work there. These meat plants have been an absolute menace all over Europe and the US; they have perfect conditions for the virus to spread.

I’ve just been on the phone to my brother. They’ve had an offer accepted on a house. In the UK nothing is finalised until they have the keys in their hands, but that’s a good start.

Coronavirus - Life :)

Hair chop, and a second wave

July 9, 2020 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I got my hair cut. I wore a mask and had my temperature checked. When the barber put his comb through my long, thick, grey strands, it was almost like he was putting a fork through spaghetti. The mask straps made the bits around my ears rather tricky. He lopped off more than I bargained for, but that saves me going back there for while. I might not be able to anyway, because of these charts:

The charts show seven-day averages, so the bars for today (Wednesday) represent the numbers reported from last Thursday to today, inclusive. Taking an average means you eliminate any day-of-week effects (less reporting at weekends, for example) or other random stuff that might otherwise give a spurious peak or trough. Things aren’t looking too good, are they? Today 555 new cases were reported, giving a seven-day average of 411, taking us into territory not reached even in April when the effects of lockdown were still taking hold. Now the lid is pretty much off. But for how much longer?

Melbourne is now under a six-week lockdown.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Tennis

Back on the court

July 6, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’m back on the court, and it feels good. I’ve played tennis twice this weekend at the courts in Parcul Rozelor – seven sets of doubles with older people including the couple who live on my floor. Socially it’s incredibly stress-free. One of the blokes is 85 (!) and still hits a pretty mean ball. He can’t move much, but heck, I can’t imagine being anywhere near a tennis court in 45 years’ time. Will there even be tennis courts then? There were six of us this evening – at one stage I sat out with a guy who has worked for the railways for 33 years, and he told me about practically every railway line in the region, past and present, in great detail. He even told me about the declivitate of the lines. I figured out what that meant when he said things like “2.1 per 1000”: he was talking about the gradient. He surprised me by saying that what is now a handful of courts of varying quality was once a big tennis stadium with a running track around it. Back in 1981, Romania played host to Argentina in the Davis Cup right were we were playing tonight and yesterday.

With new tennis partners come a new set of “house rules”. So far I’ve picked up three. First, don’t change ends. Ever. Second, you don’t have to receive serve on the same side throughout a set (though you can’t swap during a game!). In fact, changing sides seems to be compulsory and I’m supposed to magically know when to do it. Third, and this is the weirdest, double faults don’t count in your first service game of the playing session. That’s nice, but it has the potential to become embarrassing if you really can’t get the damn thing over the net and into the box. In my first service game yesterday I strung together five straight faults on a single point.

I’m hitting the ball better than I expected to, and the benefits, fitness-wise, socially, and with the language, should be significant. This could be quite a boon for me, as it was in New Zealand at times.

We’re going to be stuck with Covid for the foreseeable future. We’re averaging about 400 cases a day in Romania, just like during the first peak in April. Although we’re now testing a bit more, the trend is clearly upwards. The situation in Timiș isn’t clear: in the last three days we’ve had zero cases, then seven, then zero again. I figure if I’m going to get a haircut I should do so soon before it becomes too dangerous again.

On a worldwide scale there’s little to be optimistic about. The crisis has been politicised to a ridiculous extent in the US, the UK and elsewhere. “Masks are taking away my freedoms!” How bloody stupid can you get? People are getting extremely angry about things they shouldn’t be angry about, and are almost silent on things that really matter. I feel that everybody is complaining about the guttering on their house while it’s on fire. (I don’t put the Black Lives Matter movement in America in that category, by the way. Racism in the police and in many other walks of life is a massive problem there. It’s literally killing people.)

I saw Octavian on Thursday after a two-week hiatus; he’d been on an intensive Zoom-based advanced maths course. Seven hours of maths a day. And he wanted more maths with me. I gave him a maths-only version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He impressed me by knowing instantly that the square root of 18 was three times the square root of 2 (he’s nearly 13; I don’t think I knew that then), but he was flummoxed when I asked him which of 11, 12, 13 and 14 was the most likely total with three dice. I would have known at his age that 11 (along with 10) was the most likely. All in all, I think he’s marginally better than I was at the same age.

Another week will soon be kicking off. Only two lessons scheduled for tomorrow.

Family - Life :) - Politics

Unfathomable

July 2, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’m having a better work week. Today I had four lessons – seven hours in total – and the boost that gives to my mental health makes everything else much more manageable, like, for instance, this flat going back on the market. I found out about that yesterday.

What an utterly mad first half of the year it has been. (My hair is now madder than ever, by the way.) I should be glued to Wimbledon right now, but a world in which people thwacked furry objects with bats, and other people queued to watch them do it, feels unfathomably far away. When will I next see any of my family?

Talking of unfathomable, what the heck is going on in the UK? How did we end up here? People throwing bottles and spreading Covid throughout Liverpool just because their team won the league. People shitting on beaches. People generally not giving a fuck. People handed a licence not to give a fuck because the people in power don’t either, beyond their own careers. A leader ripping whole hunks out of Trump’s book who is still remarkably popular (his fans include my own brother). I think how much better Britain would have handled the crisis back in 1995, when the country was led by John Major, who was very unpopular but objectively light years ahead of the charlatan currently in charge.

Last week I had something close to an argument with Mum. (That’s rare these days. Ever since my move to Romania, we’ve got on well.) She was blaming young people again. By young people, Mum means anybody under about 50. “They don’t have any money and for a lot of them it’s their own fault.” Um, OK. “They’ve got to have everything now.” Well yes, but whose fault actually is that? Are you really suggesting that they’re stupider than your generation? Seriously? Or maybe, just maybe, they’re essentially the same people, with at least 99.9% of the same DNA, but born into a very different world, with completely different decision paths available to them. Mum didn’t max out her credit card because there were no credit cards to max out. If Mum had been born in 1999 instead of 1949, I bet she’d be clambering over people to buy whatever the hell the latest number iPhone is. Honestly, this whole generation shaming, and it’s people of all generations who do it, is bloody ridiculous.

Coronavirus - Family - Life :)

Time marches on

June 29, 2020 by 0 Comments

Today is Dad’s 70th birthday. He’s dodged at least two bullets to get there, and altogether he’s had a remarkable life. I know it’s simple maths, and I hit my own milestone a couple of months ago, but both my parents being in their seventies is hard to comprehend. I called him early this morning (my time), before my aunt and uncle and a couple of friends were due to arrive. Mum had the fancy glasses out because, well, they were having fancy champagne. My cousin from Wellington had bought a job lot of Moët, as she can happily afford to do, and given my parents a bottle.

After talking to Dad I had a moment’s panic. I went to the loo and what’s this? Streaks of red. Crikey. If I see the doctor, how will I even explain this? Mi-am dungi de sânge în… what word do I use? Caca? Pupu? Luckily it’s 2020 and we have Google, and the culprit seemed to be the several great hunks of watermelon I’d eaten in the previous 24 hours.

It’s been another hot day, but I’ll soon be wishing it was only 32 degrees. My student friend who lives in Austria (she had to quarantine for two weeks when she returned to Romania to visit) gave me a guided tour of central Timișoara today. In fact she had some friends visiting from Moldova, decided to show them around, and asked if I’d come along for the ride. It was great. I know the centre of Timișoara pretty well, but she had encyclopedic knowledge of the history behind the buildings, and pointed out details, some of which had escaped my attention in all this time. Best of all, the commentary was in Romanian. (Her friends’ Moldovan accent was very noticeable, but didn’t stop me from understanding them.)

Back to medical stuff, on my monthly visit to the doctor on Friday, he tested the oxygen saturation in my blood. The readout flickered between 96 and 97; that’s good news should I ever contract the virus.

Dad has just sent me another batch of photos, including me in my 1984 Nissan Bluebird. It’s amazing how tidy that car looked – it was already 20 years old. There are also some pictures of my great-aunt, who was a lovely person from what I’ve heard. I sat on her lap once as a baby; she died of cancer soon afterwards.

It doesn’t seem long ago that the official worldwide tally of coronavirus cases reached half a million. Today we reached half a million deaths and ten million cases. The real case numbers are, of course, far greater. (It is now spreading alarmingly in poor countries with limited health care. Will we reach ten million deaths?)

Tomorrow I might go back and look at those bikes.

Coronavirus - Life :) - Politics

Will I be able to stay?

June 24, 2020 by 0 Comments

This virus is still wreaking havoc. I’ve just heard that Novak Djoković has tested positive, along with three other players who took part in some exhibition event that Djoković himself organised. They even went clubbing after the tennis because, you know, they’re all young, super-fit, super-rich, and basically immune. You set a pretty crappy example there, Novak. Thousands have picked up the virus at an abattoir in Germany, sending the country’s R-rate skyrocketing. Several hundred of those infected are Romanians – their living and working conditions must basically be a petri dish. There have been similar outbreaks at American plants.

I started with a new student on Sunday – a 53-year-old man who lives in eastern Austria, having left Romania in 1989, making his way illegally over the border, risking jail (at least). The revolution came at the end of that year, but he didn’t come back. He got married and had two children; he still sees his parents in Arad. He had a beer and smoked two cigarettes during our lesson.

I haven’t been sleeping that well and by mid-afternoon I’m often struggling to stay awake. Maybe it’s the headaches I’m getting. Maybe it’s the grey, wet, soporific weather. Maybe I’m just getting old.

Yes, after a bone-dry spring that we spent mostly under lockdown, we’ve had the most unsettled spell of weather in all my time here. Timiș has been hit particularly badly – some villages have been flooded.

“All my time”! On Friday I popped in to the immigration office to ask what was happening with Brexit. There was no queue, obviously. Will I be safe after 31st December when the transition period ends? (It’s crazy that in these circumstances they aren’t extending it. The UK government are using Covid – and tens of thousands of deaths – to their advantage, so they can ram through a hard Brexit when people’s attention is elsewhere. The bastards.) The guy said I just have to go back in December and they’ll replace my certificate with a new one. But did he really know? I speak Romanian whenever I can, but it’s especially important to speak the language in those sorts of situations, to show that I’m serious. I really would like get residency here, and maybe one day have a place with a garden, or even just a deck or a balcony, and most importantly rope off part of my home for work. Oh, and a car. So many beautiful places in Romania are out of bounds to me because I don’t have one.

I’ve had a good few days with the language. When I spoke to my new student on the phone in Romanian, he told me I had a “slightly unusual accent”. That’s quite the compliment! And on Saturday I had that beer by the river with Bogdan.

Joe Biden has, on average, a nine-point lead over Trump in the polls. He’s getting on for eighty, dammit, way too old to even think about becoming president, and not exactly the spark that America and the world badly needs right now. But still, he must beat Trump. He has to. He still might not of course, because there are over four months until election day, the wacko electoral college works against him, and who’s to say the election will be free or fair? But he simply has to win. (It’s clear to me that people have underestimated Biden, as an election candidate, and probably as a person too. He’s got more humanity in his little finger than Trump has in his entire body.)

Coronavirus - Family - Life :)

The calm before the next storm

June 20, 2020 by 0 Comments

Bogdan, the guy on the second floor, just phoned me to ask if I wanted to join him at a bar on the riverbank. He said there was live music. I would have joined him but I have a Skype lesson soon. Hopefully we can meet tomorrow.

The coronavirus case numbers aren’t looking great in Romania – more than 300 new cases on each of the last three days – but people I talk to seem to be living in a parallel universe. “Social distancing is nonsense,” the father of one of my younger students told me yesterday. We still have very few cases here in Timiș, but the return of all those ambulance sirens I heard in April feels inevitable, sadly. But this time with the lid off.

My parents have a friend of sorts who has just flown from Christchurch to Arizona, where he grew up. Imagine voluntarily going to Arizona at the moment – they’ve got terrifying Covid numbers. What’s more, he’s over 70, he’s overweight and he’s got type II diabetes. His wife has stayed home; she might never see him again.

In my list of Timișoara smells in my last post, I didn’t mention mici. In the summer, the smell of those pieces of pork sizzling on a barbecue (grătar) permeates the city, and probably the whole of Romania. From time to time (not where I live, thankfully, but on other arterial roads in the city), you also get the dreadful pong of what will become mici. Pig crates. Even when they’ve rattled by and are well in the distance, the stench from the pigs, or rather their ordure, still lingers.

Family has seemed more important than ever, now that we can’t see each other, and Dad has been sending me family pictures from when I was a kid. My favourite so far is from the time we lived in Temuka in 1989-90 and Dad’s parents came out to see us. All four of my grandparents are in the picture, along with Mum, my brother, me and our cousin (she’s between me and my brother in age). My brother had Grandad’s hat on – he liked to wear it. Other highlights are my brother sitting on a tractor on my uncle’s farm on the West Coast, and one from even further back (December 1986) when we stopped off in New Caledonia on the way from the UK to New Zealand – my brother and I looked unbelievably tired.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Photos

When will I see you again?

June 17, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had a lesson with a guy who admitted that he was addicted to fishing, to the point where he regularly dreams about it. It sounded like quite a good addiction to have. This was our first lesson since early March, before the lockdown.

I had a long chat with my parents this morning. I won’t be seeing them for absolutely ages. Not until we get a vaccine, which is probably a year away. For me, this has been the saddest part. I don’t know when I’ll next see my brother in the UK either. At least this is 2020 and not 1990, when hour-long video calls to the other side of the world would have practically been science fiction. Mum was disappointed that two new Covid cases had been imported into New Zealand from the UK.

Romania has seen 250 more cases and 10 deaths in the last 24 hours. Still way too many. I don’t know where we might head from here. There’s a lot of good simple stuff here – for instance, whenever I buy anything from the pharmacy (wearing a mask, of course) they give me another mask – but just about everything has now reopened, including malls. I was supposed to have a face-to-face lesson with a boy yesterday, but his mum changed her mind and we ended up still doing it remotely. I mentioned to him that malls had just reopened, and he said he wouldn’t be going anywhere near one because it’s too dangerous. But the fact is that after three months of being stuck, people have had enough. We’re seeing this all over the world. I don’t even talk to my brother about the virus anymore.

It really smelt of June today, with the sweet aroma of lime trees just about permeating the whole city. There’s no doubt about it, Timișoara has smells. When I moved in to this flat, the waft from the patisseries really got me, although that disappeared over the lockdown. The markets can be quite pungent, especially at this time of year, although the cheese section pongs all year round. Then the river has its own distinctive smell too. And then there’s the pigeon poo. And crow poo. I still remember visiting the UK in April 2018 and how good it felt, on my arrival in the middle of the night, to smell Timișoara again.

In March I asked Mum what her secret was for making such good pizza, and she gave me her recipe. Things got ugly with the virus almost immediately, and baking products became hard to come by, especially yeast. But yesterday yeast was back on the shelves, and I’ve currently got a pizza in the oven. I’m sure it won’t be anything like as good as Mum’s.

We’re having a run of wet, stormy weather. Here are some pictures I took this afternoon:

A busker about to start up
The Opera House getting an extreme makeover
So many pigeons
Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :)

Feeling fruity

June 16, 2020 by 0 Comments

Fewer new coronavirus cases today but I think that’s just a result of less testing and reporting; there were still 17 deaths.

Last night I didn’t sleep well – lots going on in my head and the humidity didn’t help either – and this morning I broke my routine of getting to the supermarket when it opens at eight (I was 45 minutes late). A reasonably productive day though.

I’ve recently been attempting alphabetic sentences with my younger students. We take it in turns – he’ll start with an A-word, I’ll add a B-word, he’ll say a C-word (though hopefully not that C-word), and so on. Or sometimes I’ll start, as in this sentence Octavian and I made: All bears can dig extremely far getting hotter in Japan killing ladies, men, near old police quickly running straight to uncle’s van with Xeroxes yelling “Zoo”. When I couldn’t sleep I realised that Octavian’s name is an anagram of vacation, which isn’t a word I ever use (being British and all that) but my students pretty much all do.

Here’s the glorious fruit at the market yesterday:

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Should have stayed in Peterborough

June 15, 2020 by 0 Comments

I gave up painstakingly updating my Covid graph on 21st May, but it hasn’t gone away. Far from it. Today we reported 320 new cases in Romania, the most on one day since 8th May, and 16 more deaths. Active cases are edging back up. In this corner of the country we’ve got near–New Zealand levels, but it’s spreading like wildfire in Bucharest, Suceava and Brașov, and will surely be back here with a vengeance.

Today is Mum’s birthday (and Steffi Graf’s and Donald Trump’s). When I called her, my aunt and uncle (who visited Timișoara two years ago) were over for dinner. It was great to see them on FaceTime. They were shocked to see I now have a ponytail. I’m shocked to have one too.

Yesterday I had a bad day with my sinuses, or migraine (whichever it was), so today it was nice to sit on the riverbank and read my book, and get all the wonderful strawberries and cherries and apricots and tomatoes from the market (while I still can, before the second wave hits).

On Friday I had my lesson with the guy who lives on the outskirts of London with his wife and son whose first birthday it was. They’re looking at buying a house; he said they’d been to see a ghastly place costing £500,000. He showed me an online property evaluator with an intriguing feature called a happiness rating. You tap in a postcode and this needle waggles into position, telling you how happy everyone in the area is. It’s based on crime, deprivation, health, levels of education, and so on. I asked him to tap in the postcode of the flat I rented in central Peterborough in 2003, and the needle hardly budged. So sad. But I was reasonably happy there. My job didn’t pay a lot but I had interesting flatmates, played tennis, went bowling, went to the pub, and ate out from time to time. I often saw my grandmother. I made two trips to France, including beautiful Montpellier. I only had a six-month work contract which they happily extended, and they would have given me a permanent role. But my boss said he was unconvinced that flood mapping and forecasting was the best career path for me, and when my parents decided to shift to NZ, I convinced myself that I’d be better off over there.

Anyway, we read an article containing the word cusp, and I explained that the word is sometimes used in relation to star signs (which some Romanians take as gospel). Like me, he is on the cusp: he was born on 21/9/89. He has a family, a career, pretty soon he’ll have a house, and he has almost an extra decade to play with compared to me. Maybe I should have stayed in Peterborough.