Life :)

Fishing - Language teaching - Life :)

Yes I understand, and no I don’t

September 16, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s a lovely evening in Timișoara. At 8pm it’s a balmy 24 degrees. Looking at the forecast, the daily highs are a string of 29s, stretching out as far as I can see. The Bega boats are finally back in business after a delay of almost two years caused my Romanian bureaucracy.

After I caught that tiny fish last month, my next session wasn’t so good. The handle fell off the reel and into the river. Luckily it settled on a ledge in the water, so I could “fish” it out fairly easily, but the screw holding it in place was gone. That same morning I saw the repulsive sight of a dead dog floating down the river. When I told Dad about the reel, he put three screws in the post for me in the hope that one of them would fit, and it did, so I’m now back in business. I’m yet to have any success though. Most times I go down to the Bega, the banks are lined with fishermen, often with maximum roddage. But occasionally it’s completely deserted and I have no idea why. It’s like there must have been a public service broadcast on Radio Timișoara, loud and clear: “There are no, repeat, NO, fish in the Bega today. Seriously, don’t even bother.” One of these occasions was last Friday. Not another living soul. A woman came up to me and asked, “Was there, or will there be, anything in the Bega?” Sorry? Maybe I misunderstood the Romanian. She then repeated her question, which I understood but didn’t understand at the same time. It seemed so cryptic. I still don’t know what she meant. Today I got a much more sensible “Did you catch anything?”

Thursday was Firemen’s Day in Romania: Ziua Pompierilor. There was a big parade of firefighters and fire engines past the cathedral and my apartment block.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, or Ziua Crucii. A crowd of thousands, many carrying candles, congregated outside the cathedral last night and gradually made their way inside to the sound of someone drumming on a wooden cross. The bells continued into the late evening (not just the usual quarter-hourly bells) and I could hear a sermon being sung at about five o’clock this morning. The feast has extended into today, with people snaking around the cathedral. I remember all this from last year, and I still don’t quite know what it’s all about.

Ziua Crucii video: click here

On Friday I had a good session with my new 17-year-old female student. This took place in Dumbrăvița, on Strada Pluto of all places. I posted some flyers on that street last week, for its name as much as anything. (I lived in a damp basement flat on a street called Pluto Place on Auckland’s North Shore in 2007-08, hence Plutoman.) After a chat, I gave her what I hope was a helpful explanation of the difference between the past simple and the present perfect, and then we studied a news article about a marathon swimmer. I was then prepared to give her little brother a lesson, but his mother said he was too tired. (I saw him, and he looked full of beans to me.) My next lessons with them are scheduled for next Saturday.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Little people

September 14, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Earlier this evening I paid my doctor the usual monthly visit to get my prescription. He commented on my new look: a beard and a load more hair in general than I used to have. He said I looked more manly. In truth I’ve always wanted to look like this, and it’s pretty bloody awesome that I now can.

Matei comments on my facial changes every time I see him. We had quite a busy lesson this afternoon. I finally beat him in the Formula One game, after four losses in a row. Tomorrow I’ve got four lessons planned, three of which are with kids, including the new sister-and-brother combination. My only lesson with an adult is on Skype. I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for teaching children when I came to Romania, and when I started getting calls from parents my initial reaction was, yeah OK, if I have to. But in general I’ve found my lessons with kids to be extremely rewarding. At times I’ve had to pinch myself: not that long ago I was staring at (or more accurately, straight through) spreadsheets relating to ghastly insurance “products”, and now my job involves playing racing-car board games with ten-year-olds. Vroom-vroom, baby.

This morning I spoke to Mum and Dad. We chewed the fat once more over the events of the women’s US Open final, which had moved well outside the sphere of just sport. My parents and I were puzzled at how many people, especially in America, sided with Serena. The only people any of us felt sorry for were Carlos Ramos, who earned only in the hundreds of dollars for the “privilege” of umpiring that match, and Naomi Osaka, whose spectacular victory was overshadowed. For that matter, Novak Djokovic’s win – his 14th grand slam, which came less easily than the final score suggests – was spoiled a bit too. And then there was that Australian cartoonist’s take on it all. Cartoons work by exaggerating the protagonists’ features. Real racism happens, and it’s abhorrent, but this cartoon isn’t an example of it.

On Monday I went back to the cheap eatery I stumbled upon three weeks ago as I was posting flyers. I noticed the name of the place was Aditex, which I found unappetising: the -tex ending invokes something manufactured in a factory, a textile perhaps. Definitely nothing that should pass between one’s lips. Realising that it was just a word and I shouldn’t be bothered by such things, I sat down. My meatball soup was absolutely fine, but then I got the rest of my meal. My fork was dirty, and I should have sent it back, but I wimped out and tried to minimise my fork-in-mouth action until I finished.

It’s warm for the time of year, with temperatures pushing 30.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Insults, intensity and incredible finishes

September 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I had my back-to-back lessons with the brother and sister in Dumbrăvița. On the way I got a coffee from the little shop with benches outside. On one of the benches was a slightly darker-skinned man in his twenties with his feet on the bench, and on another bench was a man of about sixty who didn’t look particularly healthy. The older man didn’t like the fact that the young guy had his feet on the bench, and told him, “This is Romania! We don’t put dirty shoes on benches. Go back to Turkey, you fucking immigrant!” The young man said only a few words and otherwise ignored him; he was soon in the middle of a voice call.

As for the lessons, well this time I started with the boy. He’s hard work, and he really doesn’t want to be there, but it’s only for one hour and he seems to find the motor racing board game at least somewhat engaging. It was a relief though when he was out of the way and I got to see his big sister who’s much less of a handful.

I’ve watched some extraordinary sport – both tennis and baseball – in the last few days. This morning I turned on the TV – it was well past midnight in New York, but you never know – and lo and behold, Nadal and Thiem were still out there. They were out there for a good deal longer too, Nadal squeezing through in a fifth-set tie-break, a few minutes past 2am local time. There was incredible shotmaking under pressure from both men. I only just managed to see the finale before heading to Dumbrăvița. Then this evening, after a high-intensity grammar workout with two beginner students, I saw that the Red Sox were down 7-1 in Atlanta, heading into the final two innings. In other words they’d all but had it, but hey, this is the 2018 Boston team and you just never know, and over the next 90 minutes I saw the most incredible comeback.

Books - Films - Life :)

Dipping my toe in…

September 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Friday I joined Tinder. My Skype student has been telling me about the wonders of Tinder over the last six months – that’s how he met his wife – and finally, just before my weekly lesson with him, I signed up. So far I’ve only just dipped my toe in, and I’m guessing it’ll be a while before I dip anything else in. I uploaded a selfie of me standing outside the cathedral, but I still haven’t completed my blurb, which needs to be in Romanian of course. I haven’t yet figured out the mechanics of swiping right and “super likes”, and besides, it’s all just a bit scary. At least I wasn’t forced to sign up using Facebook. (Someone “hearted” me earlier today. What do I do now?)
I would like a partner, but I’m not desperate. Most of the time I’m absolutely fine being on my own.

A film festival has been taking place here over the last few days. Some of the films have been showing at the small amphitheatre just two minutes’ walk from here. On Friday night, soon after my Skype lesson, I saw Coborâm la Prima (which I’d translate as “We’re getting off at the next stop”). It seemed very Romanian, being set almost entirely in one carriage of a Bucharest metro train, on the day after the Colectiv night club disaster of 2015. The train got stuck and the occupants of the carriage got to know each other quite well. Some of them even used Tinder. Last night I expected to be seeing a film about the massacre in Norway, but there was a technical hitch and they showed Jeune Femme, a French film, instead. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Neither of those films cost me a penny.

Station Eleven was a brilliant read. My only issue was that the flu pandemic, that wiped out over 99% of the world population, spread at an unrealistic speed. If you die within two days of catching it, with almost no incubation period, how could that level of contagion occur? That’s a very minor complaint though. It was a beautifully written book, and I highly recommend it.

My Skype student also said I should join a dance class, but we all have lines we need to draw.

It’s still pretty damn hot: we’ve had a high of 33 for the second day running.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

Heading into the home straight

August 31, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s the last day of August, the final day before we hit those similar-sounding month names that signal the home stretch of the year. As yet, there’s little sign of autumn. Our expected high today is 31 degrees.

Yesterday morning I got a phone call during my lesson. The number was unknown and I couldn’t answer it. I rang him or her back straight after the lesson, but the number was busy. Later I’d need to see my landlady, or to be more accurate my landlord’s intermediary (my actual landlord is based in Israel), to pay my rent in euros and my expenses in lei. Having to trek across town at the end of each month to physically hand over cash in two different currencies doesn’t seem any less ridiculous now than it did nearly two years ago. I walked to Piața Badea Cârțan where I handed over 1390 lei in return for €300 at one of the many exchange offices, picked up some fruit and vegetables and a 2.25-litre bottle of Timișoreana, and then read the final chapters of Station Eleven. I called my landlady to ensure she’d be home, then hopped on the tram (Line 4) just around the corner from the market. It was the hottest part of the day by then, and it was steaming inside that old tram. The only respite I got was when it stopped and the doors opened.

For the first 17 months I met my landlady at her work, the power company which is situated almost next door to the Timișoreana beer factory and conveniently close to Piața Badea Cârțan, but she no longer works. She lives with her husband above a pizza restaurant, almost right outside the penultimate tram stop on the line. Her husband seems to be suffering very badly from depression, perhaps with additional complications, but severe depression is more than enough on its own. The last few times I met my landlady at her office, she broke down in tears. I called her again when I got off the tram, and I could hear a small child in the background. Her husband came downstairs to meet me. I asked him how he was, and immediately regretted it. “Sick,” he said. He took my money, said goodbye, and that was that. I went home on Line 7. When I arrived home I called that unknown number back. After several rings a young woman answered, and said she’d found another teacher in the intervening few hours, almost certainly a non-native speaker.

I had four lessons on Wednesday, two of them back-to-back with the brother and sister in Dumbrăvița, and then two with adults. The lessons with the kids went pretty well; the ones with the adults less so. My 6pm session was with a bloke who is just one day younger than me. His wife used to attend too, but I think she took a dislike to me during a lesson in which we discussed Romanian customer service. She got a job in Vienna soon after that, although she’s since moved back. As for him, he’s had a tough year. His father, who lived in Spain, died in June after a long illness. On Wednesday he was very tired. I wasn’t at my best either, getting myself all confused about the meaning of “repatriation” in a particular context. At 8pm I had a lesson with two beginner-level guys in their early thirties, and I probably made most of the lesson boring, hard and confusing, all at the same time. The final part, where we discussed the habits of British people (football, beer, tea, and so on) possibly just about saved me.

When my aunt and uncle were in Timișoara, I took them to the Museum of the Revolution. The woman at the desk was called Simona, and my aunt said that one of their rhododendrons had the same name. When she was back in New Zealand, my aunt emailed me a picture of the Simona flower, for me to pass on to its namesake at the museum. I don’t think my aunt realised how many Romanian women carry that name, including one of the most famous right now, Simona Halep. Unfortunately for Romanian tennis fans, she fell at the first hurdle at the US Open. It’s been a brutally hot first week in New York.

The Red Sox appear to be back in business; they lost six games out of eight but have now won their last three, including Wednesday night’s game in which they belted a colossal eleven runs in one inning.

Life :)

Flyers and food

August 25, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I posted 250-odd flyers in people’s letterboxes in a part of the city that I’d picked essentially at random last night. I’d only posted three or four when I ended up in a longish conversation with a man of 79 (he said) on the corner of Strada Mangalia and Strada Johann Nepomuk Preyer. The man mostly wanted to talk about the history of western Romania, and what he perceived as a gradual brain drain in the region since it became part of Romania a century ago. I rarely got a word in edgeways. He seemed a perfectly nice bloke though. I’d missed last year’s flyer postings, when I’d get to walk down picturesque streets and try not to be attacked by dogs. I still had several hundred flyers left, so I thought I’d give it a go once more. There were fewer dogs today than I remembered, but quite a lot of chickens. Eventually I saw these two signs, which looked like they were for a place that used to serve food. The bottom sign was so faded I couldn’t work out what was FREE!! anymore. (It didn’t matter of course; if you have to buy something to get the free stuff, the stuff ain’t free.) To my surprise the place was still running, and I dared to walk in. Or around the back, and then in, to be more accurate. The place was extremely basic, and traditional Romanian music was playing. The meal was absolutely fine though; noodle soup (supposedly containing chicken), fried potatoes, pork schnitzel, some salad, and a small sweet pastry, all for just 10 lei (as advertised). I’d happily go back.

I didn’t use the loo there. I was happy to wait till I got home. The signs were pink for girls and blue for boys. Bărbați (“men”), which you can see on the right of the picture above, literally means “bearded”, which I currently am. There are two words for “man” in Romanian: bărbat (“man as opposed to woman”) and om (closer to “human”). The plural of om is oameni, which means “people”.

During my walk today I was thinking that having lived for nearly two years in Timișoara, visually imperfect but with a heart and a soul, I couldn’t possibly face living somewhere like the North Shore of Auckland again, with all its utterly depressing open home signs. (It’s interesting that Romanians’ desire for home ownership is just as great as in New Zealand or the UK, and not at all like Germany and France where people are happy to rent, but the property market here lacks any in-your-faceness.)

I spoke to Mum recently; she was frustrated after a bad day on the golf course. I suggested that she took up tennis seriously, and played golf purely as a hobby. If she really tried, she could do extremely well in tennis against people her own age, and the challenge of competition could be quite stimulating for her. She doesn’t have the same potential in golf, and at any rate the world of a golf club is a rather artificial one. I’m sure everything I said fell on deaf ears.

I’ve recently watched two streams of Red Sox home games. The first was dire (for me; I’m still unable to appreciate a pitching duel) and the second (last night) was heading in the same direction until the Red Sox broke out for six runs in a single inning on a flurry of doubles. Even when the action is exciting, it’s nothing like being there was three years ago. Still, seeing the vendors wander through the stands selling Sam Adams and Harpoon (another of their local beers) brought back happy memories. In fact, I was in Boston exactly three years ago. Today might have been the day I visited Cape Cod.

Life :)

A national tragedy

August 24, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today I heard the news that Greg Boyed, the New Zealand news presenter, had died while on holiday in Switzerland with his family. He had a very good job that gave him national recognition and respect; he had a wife and two kids. But he also had depression. That eventually got the better of him. So very sad. I’ve just watched the short but very moving tribute that his colleague Daniel Faitaua gave on TV One.

Suicide rates in New Zealand are a national tragedy and something of a mystery to me. I did however stumble upon this web page, whose authors clearly have even less of an idea than I do. One thing I do know is that the previous government gave progressively fewer shits about mental health with each of their nine years in power, and the current bunch need to make reversing that trend a top priority.

My own mental health has improved massively since I left New Zealand. As the recent article I read about “shit-life syndrome” spelt out, I had plenty of reasons to be depressed over there. No family, no real sense of home, few friends, and unsatisfying jobs where I spent the day looking at one computer screen or another and attending pointless meetings where I tried not to look stupid. And most of those things are still true now in Romania! Work is a biggie, though.

My mental health problems haven’t completely gone away, and I still take antidepressants, but by making a complete lifestyle change I seem to have escaped that endless desert of despair. My dad sometimes talks about the risks I took in moving to Romania, but it would have been bloody risky to have carried on what I was doing in NZ.

Life :)

Ajunge!

August 20, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I went to Mehala market to look for a racing bike, but didn’t find anything in my price range (which isn’t very high; purchases from that market are high-risk ventures). It got pretty hot there with all the mici smoking away on top of the air temperature which had already hit 30. On the way back I picked plums from a tree until I got shouted at: Ajunge! (Enough!) I must have collected four or five kilos.

Yesterday I Skyped my cousin in Wellington. We had a great chat, and I got to see the whole family. Her middle son had changed almost beyond all recognition. They thought similarly of me, as I now have a beard. I went through a spell of leaving it for a few days and then getting sick of it, but I’m well past that point now and I’ll probably keep it. I recently played I-Spy with Matei. He said he could spy something beginning with B.

When I heard the news that New Zealand were banning foreign ownership of property, my reaction was extremely positive. Under the previous government there was far too much tinkering around the edges when it came to the housing market, probably because many of their voters benefited from prices remaining sky-high. On a not totally unrelated note, this morning Dad sent me this article from the Guardian about the bluntly but accurately named “shit-life syndrome“. The UK is sadly following in America’s footsteps when it comes to shitness of life. My aunt suggested to me that Mum and Dad might come back to the UK to live permanently, what with both their children in this part of the world and the possibility of a grandchild or two. I think they’ll make regular trips to the UK, sometimes staying for months, but I’d say a permanent move is a non-starter.

On Friday my Skype student discussed the heavy-handed tactics employed by the armed police in Bucharest seven days before. It’s become something of a national scandal.

Four lessons planned for tomorrow.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The big debate

August 16, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Four lessons today, three of them with kids. My favourite moment was probably with the boy who never really wants to be there. We were discussing jobs, and he told me (in Romanian; he rarely speaks English) that he wanted to be either a hairdresser or a cook when he grows up. When I got home I was reading the Guardian and found an article by George Monbiot about obesity, where he notes the distinct lack of fat people in a photograph of a packed Brighton Beach during the heatwave of 1976. He said that excessive eating and lack of exercise are not the main drivers of the epidemic, and surprisingly the average British person consumes fewer calories than they did 40 years ago. Instead he blames the proliferation of sugary, processed foods. Whatever or whoever the culprit is, it’s obvious to me that only some of the blame lies with individuals. OK, so the choices we’re making now are making us fat, and 40 years ago they weren’t. Does that mean we’ve become stupider, lazier and less responsible in that time? I doubt it, and even that were the case, what’s the reason for that?

It’s kind of three steps forward, two steps back, as my teaching volume slowly picks up again. By mid-September I should be back to something like normal.

Since I last posted, the Red Sox have won all five of their matches, including a wild 19-12 game in Baltimore. That score wouldn’t be out of place in rugby. Last weekend also saw an ultimate grand slam, the 30th in the history of the Major Leagues, and something I got all excited about three years ago.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Saddle sore

July 30, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just got back from my bike trip to Sânmihaiu Român. I’m glad to be back: my arse was starting to really feel it, and I’d slightly underestimated the amount of water I needed on a 30-degree day. Just like me, my bike isn’t quite up to the job. People regularly eased past me in a blaze of lycra. (There wasn’t nearly as much lycra as you’d see in New Zealand though. This is Europe. You’re allowed to ride bikes even if you’re not training for a sodding triathlon. In fact a lot of the blokes who whizzed past me were bare-chested.) At the other end I grabbed an insanely cheap beer, spoke to my parents on FaceTime while at the bar, and read a book in a small park next to the town hall. For some reason my book piqued the interest of two kids.

goat_on_car
There’s something very Romanian about a goat standing on an abandoned car.

This morning I had another attempt at fishing. Still no luck. I’m competing with people who use four rods each, the maximum allowed, and one particular dynamic young fisherman who casts his line, reels it in 30 seconds later, and rides his bike to a different spot nearby to repeat the process. My latest batch of maggots had died in the fridge almost instantly, but I imagine fish will eat dead maggots just like live ones.

I’ve got a new student. She’s coming tomorrow evening. We spoke Romanian on the phone; she described her level as intermediate. People tend to underestimate their level, or are just modest, so I expect her to be quite good. On Tuesday I’ll have my first lesson for a while with Matei. He was telling me on the phone about his new dog, a pug.

My Skype lesson on Friday was interesting. My student was happy with my idea of studying a song. I chose Hotel California for him, and sent him a link to a YouTube video which showed the lyrics. I expected him to casually peruse the lyrics, but no, he memorised them all. Had them down pat. I was blown away. That song has a lot of words, some of which are pretty opaque. “Tiffany twisted”? I used that song with another of my students in one of our fortnightly “song and articles” lessons. That time I removed about 15 words from the lyrics, made a list of the missing words, and asked him to fill in the gaps. On Wednesday I had my usual double bill of lessons with brother and sister. The girl went first, and our 90-minute session passed without a hitch. As usual, however, the hour with her little brother was much more of a struggle. Anything that looks vaguely educational is strictly off the menu, as far as he is concerned. He’s getting bored of Last Card now. I’ll bring in the Formula 1 game next time; it’s certainly been a hit with one of the other boys I teach. In fact I’ll try it out on Matei too.

Scrabble. So yesterday I ended up with four losses, including two Jean Van de Velde-style ones, and finally two wins. To hopefully sort out my time troubles I’ll attempt a bunch of quick-fire, five-minute games on ISC. I’m bound to lose a lot and my rating is likely to plummet, but they should benefit me in the long run. My favourite word yesterday I thought was FILLIP. Six-letter words are relatively uncommon, but this one got rid of some very unpromising tiles and scored well, 32 if I remember rightly.

It’s now raining, and I can hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. It’s just as well I got out on my bike when I did.