Life :)

Life :)

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April 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I paid my rent and expenses (a mixture of euros and lei; yes it’s crazy) at my landlady’s work, near the Timișoreana beer factory. My charge for gas and electricity was higher than usual even though my power usage was completely normal. I paid up anyway. My landlady burst into tears as she has on about the last six occasions I’ve visited her. It seems to be something to do with her husband, who she described yesterday as a vegetable. On leaving her office, I saw a man of about sixty collapse in the street. I tried helping him to his feet, and soon got some assistance. I could smell the alcohol on him. A lady from a nearby office brought out a chair. I called the ambulance and handed my phone to another woman. While we waited for the ambulance (it took about five minutes to arrive) the man was sick on the ground, and the rich plummy aroma of palincă filled the air. The paramedics found the situation mildly amusing; they’d clearly seen it all before.

My Romanian seems to have stagnated. On the odd occasions I get to chat in a relaxed situation in Romanian, I manage fine, but those occasions are very odd indeed. Weekly, perhaps even fortnightly. And that’s the problem. I could really do with some formal lessons too, but they’re hard to come by.

Tomorrow I’m off to the UK. It’ll be my first taste of Wizz Air. I expect to arrive in St Ives around 9pm. I’ll have an early start the next morning as I’ll be meeting my university friend in London. We’ll probably meet outside the British Museum, but after that we have no real plans.

Language teaching - Life :)

On my bike

April 2, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I gave my bike its first proper run today, and yes, it does work! I rode to the end of the Timișoara cycle track, which morphed into the 37 km Timișoara-to-Serbia route that was opened three years ago. It was lovely cycling along the Bega, and I felt great afterwards, so biking is something I’ll want to do a lot more of. This time I turned back just two kilometres up the Serbia track, but next time who knows?

On Monday I had a session with Timea, not at home but at Scârț Loc Lejer, a hippie hangout (yes, we have them here) that I’d read about in 2015 but had never dared go to before. Its walls are covered in all kinds of Communist-era memorabilia. When the weather is nice you can sit outside on a bench or in a hammock. The guy who runs the place has his fingers in two other pies: a theatre company called Auăleu which tours the country, and the Museum of Communism. So hopefully I’ll go back there.

Tuesday’s lesson with Timea’s anagram-mate Matei was hardly my finest hour (or two) as a teacher. He said he was going on holiday in Dublin with his parents, on the same day that I go to the UK. I asked him what he’d be doing and seeing there. He had no idea. I had my laptop with me, so I played him a Youtube video of the top ten Dublin attractions, or tried to. “This video is boring me! Turn it off!” You ungrateful little shit, I said. I immediately regretted that, of course, even if it was accurate. It’s not exactly becoming of a teacher, is it? Matei is a nice kid really, and quite sensitive. The problem is that his parents are wealthy by Romanian standards, and he’s an only child, so he gets everything handed to him on a plate. That includes extra English and German lessons (and French too, perhaps) that he might not actually want. This was my 63rd lesson with him.

Earlier on Tuesday I had my hair cut. A lot. Er…just the back and sides…but before I knew where I was, zzzzz, and it was too late. When we spoke on FaceTime, Mum said I looked more Romanian. Mum and Dad were about to head to Dunedin to see Ed Sheeran. It’s not their thing at all but there were some spare tickets going.

I spoke to my aunt this morning. She seemed pretty lucid (she doesn’t always). She said I should create a blog about Timișoara, or as she calls it, Tiramisu. I don’t think she knows about this one.

Three games of Scrabble this weekend, and three wins. My rating has nudged over 1200 for the first time. But if I’m serious about improving further, I’ll have to actually learn words, something I’m not keen on doing.

Some teaching stats: I had 371 hours of lessons in the first quarter of 2018, with a cancellation rate of 16%.

 

Films - Language teaching - Life :)

New set of wheels (only two, so don’t get too excited)

March 26, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today I bought a second-hand mountain bike from Mehala, the market in the west of the city. It cost me 200 lei. The bike is made by Professional, a UK company. Its previous owner’s name, Allen (first name or surname, I can’t tell) is scrawled all over it, but you only notice that if you’re up close. I rode it home, so at least it works, but there are still bits and pieces I could do with getting. A good lock, for one. The best thing is that if the bike falls apart on me, 200 lei isn’t the end of the world.

Last week was a pretty good one. Articles on Stephen Hawking, games of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, a piece on the oldest man ever to ride a rollercoaster, some construction-based vocabulary, my Space Race game, practice IELTS speaking tests, Simon Says, and Canadian driving theory test questions all made at least one appearance. The difference between last week and the sense of complete barrenness I use to feel every week, year in, year out, is almost indescribable. Of course I felt knackered by the end of it, as always. At one stage I had 15 lessons in just two and a half days, and I finished at 9:30pm every day from Monday to Friday.

Our clocks went forward last night. Yes, we’re now on summer time. After the unseasonably cold weather we’ve had over the last week to ten days, with snow blanketing the city, “summer time” sounds like a bad joke. The EU stipulates that all countries must change their clocks at the same time. In the UK, Ireland and Portugal, this means that 1am becomes 2am; for central Europe 2am becomes 3am; and for those of us out east, 3am becomes 4am. I happened to be awake for the switchover, and I lay in bed wondering just what the cathedral clock would do. Would it strike three or four? Surprisingly it did both, and even more weirdly it did the four first, then the three. I looked at the clock which clearly said 4:00, so who knows what those bells were playing at.

The change of clock did bring with it a change of weather and a palpable change of mood in the city today. Hopefully winter is finally over. Unfortunately, unlike last year, it looks like being a bad year for fruit.

Last night I watched Metrobranding, an interesting documentary on Romania’s manufacturing industry. Factories that employed thousands in Communist times have since mostly fallen into disuse. The documentary was in five parts, covering sewing machines, bicycles, tennis shoes, mattresses and light bulbs.

 

Life :)

Snake oil

March 20, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago one of my students texted me to ask if I’d be interested in trying some pumpkin seed oil. I was in the middle of the lesson at the time and replied with a very quick yes, without even noticing that she’d mentioned the price of the stuff, and promptly forgot all about it. Last Monday she came with two half-litre bottles of the oil, which was only marginally cheaper by volume than printer ink. I paid up, and was actually glad I did. (If I’d seen the price I almost certainly would have refused, and would have missed out on trying something new.) I’ll give my friends in St Ives a bottle when I go over there in two weeks. Talking of expensive food items, I saw salak (a.k.a. “snake fruit”) on sale at Carrefour yesterday, at something like 70 lei per kilo. Plenty of people were picking it up, smelling it, stroking it, but not buying it.

This morning I saw a small brown dog, probably a mixed-breed stray dog (or vagabond dog as they say here) using the pedestrian crossing during rush-hour. It was fascinating to watch in a way, as it strode across into the middle of the road, scurried back, and then (with no urgency whatsoever) ambled to the other side. When my friends came over in the autumn, the roadsides in places were strewn with dead dogs.

I took a 180-point beating in Scrabble yesterday, my worst on ISC to date (I’ve still played less than 100 games). I performed a post-mortem on my thrashing in Quackle, and it turns out I didn’t play that badly. I did miss one bingo I should have spotted. I’ve only just started attempting to learn bingos. Up until now my focus has been on the short words.

It’s the second half of March. And it’s snowing.

Books - Language teaching - Life :)

The snap is back

March 19, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Thursday evening a miracle occurred. The books that my parents bought me for Christmas actually arrived. Who was to blame for the ridiculous delay we don’t know, but they’d been to Timișoara at least twice prior to last week, before making a bizarre detour to Réunion, perhaps because it has the same initial letter and the same length as Romania. I’ve just made a start on Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. The best title of the books I received is clearly Fucking Apostrophes.

Only 29 hours of teaching last week. Perfect, really. I haven’t done much this weekend and I don’t feel particularly guilty about that. Yesterday I had my only lesson of the weekend – the best moment was when I showed my student the synonyms for “happy” in an online thesaurus. What’s gay doing there?!

Today I had a look at second-hand bikes at Aurora, one of the weekend markets, but they only had a small selection. I’ll have a look at Mehala, another market (supposedly famous for being where stolen bikes end up) next weekend, if I get the chance. I really need the exercise.

Stephen Hawking’s passing is sad, even if he lived half a century longer than his prognosis gave him. He was something of a local hero for me.

And it’s cold and drab again. Not a ray of sun in the forecast for the next five days.

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Romania

Drained (and our cold snap)

March 11, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I need a break. A day off. Even a week off. For the first time I’m really feeling it in my body.

It’s time I stopped saying yes to everything and started blocking out days in my calendar. My last day off was 13th January, eight weekends ago. There’s a certain irony that this week I was missing the hours and days I spent last spring and autumn roaming the streets of this beautiful city, putting thousands of adverts in people’s letterboxes. The weather is far too nice now to be stuck inside all the time, or to venture outside only when I have a lesson to get to. It really hit me on Friday when someone rang me up asking for lessons. Of course I said yes, and my new student came over yesterday morning. We had a productive session, but it meant I no longer had a block of free time in my Saturday. In the afternoon I had back-to-back lessons in Dumbrăvița with the brother and sister who are both hard to teach for very different reasons. Their mother provided me with food – celeriac soup, chicken and rice, and even though it was delicious, I’d earlier grabbed a pleșcavița from one of the kiosks in Piața 700, so I felt quite bloated after that. I had another lesson in the evening – this time on Skype – and I muddled through despite my inadequate preparation.

I still love my job and wouldn’t go back to some god-awful insurance company for all the tea in China, but I’ve got to remember that I’m the boss here (that’s kind of the point!) and the extra money I make by saying yes all the time isn’t worth it. At the end of the week I have a healthy brick of lei in my hand, but in pound or dollar terms it might as well be Monopoly money, and at the moment I’m not even getting the chance to spend it.

Here are a few pictures of Timișoara during our late-winter blast of cold weather:

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Romania

Don’t talk about the weather

March 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ll soon be having a lesson with my Italian student who’s taking the IELTS exam in three weeks. His country went to the polls at the weekend. I watched John Oliver’s “explanation” of Italy’s political environment on YouTube because he was likely to make as much sense as anyone else. Like many young Italians, my 25-year-old student is a supporter of the Five Star Movement. It was a good result for them. I’m sure he’ll want to talk about the election in the lesson.

Two cancellations on Saturday meant I could go to Piața Badea Cârțan, my favourite market, in the morning. I was thinking, if I can’t do something as simple as this, it almost defeats the purpose of being here. I didn’t get very much: a few filled peppers, various hunks of rather chewy meat, and a sausage. Just one big sausage, as is the norm here.

Last night I spoke to my brother. He looked tired. Washed out. He’s currently in the middle of some kind of instructors’ course which, as he explained in no uncertain terms, he doesn’t see the point of. I imagine it reminded him of school, which for the most part he didn’t see the point of either.

On that note, my lesson with the near-ten-year-old boy on Saturday afternoon didn’t exactly get off to a rip-roaring start. I began by talking about the snow. He said to me in Romanian that “if we’re just going to talk about snow, I’ll die of boredom.” Right. Where do we go from here? I asked him if he wanted me to leave. He didn’t say anything. I then brought out my emergency pack of cards, and we played Last Card. He probably learnt a fair bit in those seven games: jack, queen, king, ace, the names of the suits, “pick up”, “put down”, and so on. He beat me 5-2 and mercifully the lesson was over.

That replacement watch strap I bought in January broke after just 41 days. I couldn’t find my receipt anywhere, quite possibly because I never actually got one (this is Romania), but thankfully they gave me my money back. Hopefully I can get one in Cambridge.

Three games of Scrabble at the weekend and three wins, although I failed to break 400 in any game. I’m sure my play was very sub-optimal.

It’s warming up a bit now.

Language teaching - Life :)

Flake news

March 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I definitely didn’t come up with that pun. It’s been a white week here, and a massive departure from our otherwise mild winter. Yesterday it was minus 17 first thing in the morning, or if you’re American, one degree Fahrenheit.

I’ve had my fair share of cancellations this week, seven I think, which in the not too distant past would have annoyed the hell out of me. This week I’ve just felt tired and unenergetic and have had bouts of sinus pain, so the slight reduction in workload has been welcome if anything. On Wednesday I had a severe attack and somehow muddled through my second of four almost back-to-back lessons, feeling that I had a screwdriver rammed up my right nostril the whole time. More often than not it’s my left instead. The extreme weather probably isn’t helping me.

This week I’ve felt pretty happy with the standard of my work, or to be precise, how engaged my students have been, and let’s hope that continues.

 

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Brass monkeys

February 26, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Thirty-six hours of teaching last week. That’s almost a whole page of lessons in my notebook, and it’s getting to be a problem. A nice problem, but a problem nonetheless. I need a day off occasionally. Time for myself. Time to sit in the square and have a coffee. Time to be served by that complete lunatic in the funny bar next to the market. Time to not have to think about time all the time. I see people fishing on the Bega and it all looks wonderfully relaxing. I’d like to take up fishing, but right now I know next to nothing about it.

For some unknown reason Ryanair have decided to close their Timișoara base as from 25th March, cancelling both sets of flights I’d booked to and from the UK (in early April and for my brother’s wedding in late May) in the process. My aunt and uncle from New Zealand were also booked on the flight from Stansted to Timișoara on 28th May. We’ve since rebooked all our flights with Wizz Air, going to and from Luton rather than Stansted. What a pain.

“Welcome to Romania. Please turn your clocks back fifty years.” Not if the availability of Bitcoin is anything to go by. The currency of the future is readily available in machines dotted around the city. So is Ether, another cryptocurrency. I had a play with one of the machines which had 2.5 Bitcoins available. How many would you like? Hmmm, 2.5? That’ll be 80-odd thousand lei, please. Ah. I’ve probably missed the boat there.

For a minute there I thought I’d dodged winter pretty much entirely, but we’re now in the grip of an icy blast. It is cold! The next day with a non-negative expected high is Friday.

Three games of Scrabble today. My first was a loss on an extremely tight board that I’d prefer to forget (I had a tiny lead but went into overtime, costing me ten points, and forfeited the game a minute later after failing to find an elusive out play). I then had a close game, clinging on a bit in the end to win by 17. In my last game I managed to play my first nine-letter bingo on ISC: UNrESTING, a double-double through ES for 86 points. I won that game by 56.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

How low can you go?

February 19, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Not much news since my last post. I’ve had 98 hours of teaching over the last three weeks. It’s a challenge coming up with new and interesting material for my students each time, especially now that my preparation time is limited. This morning I described the business of whether to use gerunds or infinitives after certain verbs as BBI: Boring But Important. Yesterday I had the usual business of my ten-year-old student asking me at regular intervals what the time was so he’d know how soon he could get rid of me.

There was another school shooting in America last week. Seventeen people dead. It’s all messed up there on so many levels. And now we have Trump tweeting that if the FBI had spent less time on the Russia inquiry they might have stopped the shooting. How low can you go?

I spoke to my brother tonight. He got completely the wrong end of the stick when I said I’d like to do something other than teaching. It was my own fault – I meant to say that although I enjoy my work immensely I’d like the occasional day off to travel and do other stuff. At the moment I have some lessons every single day. I will have a short break in early April as I spend a few days in the UK.

I’ve watched snatches of the Winter Olympics (officially the Olympic Winter Games, which doesn’t sound right to me). I read something online which suggested that much of the success of the luge is down to the name. Luge. It’s almost onomatopoeia. Wouldn’t it be fun to do the luge in Cluj? (Have you ever watched – or, heaven forbid, done – double luge? Now that is a weird event.) Several of my students, or their kids, have gone skiing in recent weeks, often in Austria. Yes, my students tend to have money.

I played four games of Scrabble this evening, winning three by margins of 157, 171 and 201, and losing the other by just five points. My scores ranged from 422 to 492. My favourite word was COMiX, making CRAP at the same time, for 65.