Life :)

Life :) - Tennis

Let this be over

April 28, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

My flatmate keeps acting as if he’s here for the long haul, so on Tuesday I asked him about his exit date which he previously said would be late May. He then talked pompously about his connections in Liberia or whatever African country it happens to be, and when I interrupted him to ask how any of that was relevant, he got angry. He did mention a date eventually: 1st June, which is a Wednesday. I don’t believe him. I think he’ll try and stick around for what will be a really long Queen’s Birthday weekend, and beyond. In the meantime, as I remind him of the date, the tension between us will only ramp up.

He’s always there, and I can always feel that he’s there. That’s why I don’t look forward to weekends, even normal-length ones. I prefer being at work where I don’t get hassled as much. The highlights of the week for me have been sitting on a bench at lunchtime, overlooking the sea, while trying to follow baseball on my phone. A year ago I never imagined I’d be doing that. We’ve had beautiful autumn weather all week.

I’m still going to marimba lessons. These are very enjoyable, if not quite as much as fun as during the first term when the resonators were always attached. Last night I found out the name of the seed-filled gourd that is used as an instrument in marimba music. It’s a hosho, which is a Zimbabwean word that sounds Japanese. Until last night I thought our teacher was saying “listen to the whole show” which I took to mean “pay attention to everybody’s parts, not just your own”, but all this time she’s been saying “listen to the hosho“.

They’ve started up a round robin singles competition at the tennis club. On Monday I got thrashed 6-0 6-2 in 45 minutes by probably the best player in the competition. It was just what I expected; I’m a shadow of the player I was six months ago, and he took me apart, accelerating through the ball on both sides and hitting inches from the junction of baseline and sideline with alarming regularity. I also averaged about two double faults per game. OK, the sun didn’t help me at one end, but in October I might have served two double faults in an average match. I got on the board early in the second set, much to my relief, but once that set started running away from me I thought, please, just let this be over. That’s just what I’m thinking about my flatting situation.

Language learning - Life :) - My big plan

Romanian commentary 8 (it’s happening!)

April 24, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

The timing of all these long weekends has been bloody terrible. I wish I could have saved the days up until my flatmate moves out. He should be out before the next three-day weekend, Queen’s Birthday, but I’ve a horrible feeling he’ll try to extend his time with me. That will be the last long weekend before I go away on 27th September. Yes, I’ve now booked my flight (a one-way ticket, how exciting is that?) so it’s happening! I plan to spend a few days in the UK before heading to Romania.

Yesterday I met up in town with the Romanian lady who my cousin knows through work. This was awkward, first because I didn’t know what time she wanted to meet so I had to hang around for hours, and also because she had somebody with her. Still, we got a chat a fair bit. She was very nice but she gave such a glowing description of Romania, especially the part of Transylvania that she hails from, that I didn’t know what to believe. She even spoke longingly of her childhood under the Ceaușescu regime.

I did get to speak some Romanian. She tried to get me to improve my pronunciation of the â or î vowel, which I mentioned before on this blog as being difficult because we don’t have even a near equivalent in English. It’s especially difficult when followed by i such as in pâine and câine, or in words that also contain the ă vowel such as sâmbătă, săptămână and smântână. I’d better make sure I try smântână. I was also struggling with rău, său and tău.

Another major sticking point for me was possessive pronouns. I wanted to say “my brother’s cell phone” which is celularul fratelui meu. Needless to say, that isn’t what I said. When you want to talk about an item that belongs to someone, you have to articulate it, i.e. say “the phone” rather than just “phone”. In this instance you do that by tacking ul on the end of celular. As for “brother”, which is frate, you need to articulate that and change it to the genitive case, because something belongs to my brother, and that gives you fratelui. Without the case change it would just be fratele, obviously. You finish with the masculine singular version of “my”, which is meu. Simple, right? If it was my sister’s cell phone instead, it would be celularul sorei mele. The last word, mele, is the feminine plural version of “my”, even though I’m only talking about one sister, because you always use the plural when dealing with feminine nouns in the genitive case. I mean, c’mon, everyone knows that. So, yeah. All this articulation and case changing on the fly, when you’re also trying to process what someone has just said to you, is a feat of mental gymnastics, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to master it.

She compared my attempt to learn Romanian with her experience of learning English. She said she was struck by how much “fill” English speakers use in speech compared to Romanians, and how she struggle to distinguish the fill from the content. I can believe that. I use “I mean”, “y’know”, “like”, “basically” and “I reckon” and numerous other fillers all the time. And they serve a really important purpose. Contrast “Don’t park here!” with “Y’know, it’s probably best if you don’t park here, yeah, [points] somewhere over there would be just fine.” In English, not using those fillers gives one’s speech a sharp, icy quality. A few times my flatmate has said things to me in a way that comes across as rather twattish, and it was only yesterday that I figured out why. He uses very few fillers; he’s a “Don’t park here!” kind of guy. He spends a lot of time during the day editing Wikipedia articles about armies and battalions, and it’s as if he doesn’t switch off from that mode when he’s talking. And he talks a lot. He also makes jokes, that I don’t think are nearly as funny as he thinks they are. So I find interacting with him more exhausting than with the average person, and believe me, I find average tiring enough.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was simply brilliant. To call it a classic Kiwi film doesn’t praise it enough. It made me laugh, it made me emotional, it made me feel good inside.  I loved the scenery, I loved all the main characters, even the CYFS lady who I loved to hate. I really hope this film makes a splash internationally as it surely deserves to.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Just another year

April 20, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is my 36th birthday. I brought some cake and biscuits to work, but other than that it’s just another day, although it is a reminder that yet another year has flown by and I need to do something with my life.

Some numbers geekery: 36 is both a square and a triangular number. You can arrange 36 snooker balls in a square with six on each side, or in a triangle (which is more what one does with snooker balls) with eight on each side.

36 square triangular

What’s more, the current year is a triangular number too. If you happen to have 2016 snooker balls lying around, you could arrange them in a nice pretty triangle with 63 balls on each side.triangular-number-2016

I gave my third English lesson on Monday. It went well, far better than last week’s one where I think I overwhelmed and confused my poor student. This time we talked about the world of work and didn’t stray much from that (apart from the bit where he tried to tell me that, unlike in Myanmar, there isn’t much farming in New Zealand). Half-way through the session I thought to myself, this is great. I’m helping someone, he’s appreciative of my help, and we’re both clearly enjoying this.

I made myself the underdog in my first-round singles match in the club champs, but it was a toss-up really. My opponent is undoubtedly more technically proficient than me, but his approach to the game is more casual than mine even if he plays more than I do. I won four games in a row to go 5-2 in front in the first-to-nine match, and felt I might win comfortably, but in the following game I seemed to forget how to serve. Three double faults cost me dear as I was broken in the first of five consecutive deuce games; I lost four of them and we were all square at 6-6 (the game I won was thanks in part to a stone-dead net-cord that left my opponent seething). Six-all became seven-all and it was down to the wire, but I then played my best two games of the match, winning them both to love, for a 9-7 win. I played well to reach the second round but once I got there nothing went right. I was flat-footed, my first-serve percentage was low, my unforced error rate ballooned, I lost control of my forehand, and before long I’d lost the match, 9-1. It wasn’t a match I expected to win, but I didn’t think I’d go down in a heap like that. Oh well. That’s how it goes sometimes, but the reality is that I’m not playing nearly as well, or enjoying the game nearly as much, as at the start of the season.

The doubles, both the men’s and the mixed, went as well or as badly as I thought it might. My most enjoyable match was a men’s match that we lost 9-4. My partner has only been playing tennis for a matter of months and played remarkably well, considering. He has a Filipino partner. His small daughter, Luz, was sitting courtside. He pronounced the name “luzz” to rhyme with “buzz”, and looked at me blankly when I said that it means light in Spanish. I can see that both the “lose” and “loose” pronunciations could be problematic in English, but I still prefer either to “luzz” which doesn’t do justice to such a beautiful name. Talking of parents pronouncing their kids’ names in unusual ways, I recently met a woman who had a two-year-old daughter called Arya. “Everyone keeps saying it wrong. It’s not ‘aria’, it’s ‘aah-ya’, as in ‘aah-ya going to the party?'” Well I’m sorry, if you give your daughter an unusual name that people haven’t seen before, they’re going to say it how they see it, and in this case that’s “aria”. Poor Arya.

Tomorrow I’ll be seeing Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I’m expecting to be at least ten times better than Batman and bloody Superman.

Life :) - Tennis

Club champs preview

April 15, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

We’ve got the tennis club champs this weekend. Tomorrow is the singles, and in the first round I’ve been drawn against the gay bloke I endured Batman vs Superman with. We’ve never played each other but he knows my game well. My fairly unorthodox game, combined with being left-handed, gives me an advantage in interclub (against people who don’t know me) that I won’t have tomorrow. I haven’t been hitting the ball well of late, and I’d say I’m the underdog in spite of my run of interclub wins. Last year I made the semi-finals of the singles. In round one my opponent didn’t show up until it was almost too late but made a good go of eating into my huge lead. I got there in the end. My next opponent was seeded third and in a different league to me but in the midst of a very protracted ninth game after I’d clawed his lead back to two, he said he was getting the aura from a migraine and pulled out. In the semis I was outclassed and lost 9-1. The format, just like this year, was the first to nine games, with a best-of-three-set final.

Several of my colleagues had interviews today for the new roles that have been created by the restructure. They were understandably stressed even though they would almost certainly keep their jobs whatever happened. I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that – my care factor would have been through the floor.

Language teaching - Life :)

What’s eating me?

April 12, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

First, I saw this piece about autism in the Guardian last Friday. A wonderfully written piece that moved me to tears.

My cousin put me in contact with a Romanian lady; last night I got the chance to talk with her. We chatted for over an hour on the phone, almost entirely in English. She did most of the talking. Food and gypsies were her hot-button topics. I can’t wait to try Romanian food. I’m always thinking about food at the moment.

I bumped into my other Wellington-based cousin at the market on Saturday morning, the cousin that I have so much in common with, you just wouldn’t believe. We’re less than a month apart in age, we go to the same market, we even support the same baseball team. He was sporting a Boston Red Sox cap that he said he picked up in Rebel Sport. Guess where I got mine, I happily said. He gave me the news that he’d just become a father for the second time – another daughter to go with their two-year-old.

My flatmate’s phone calls to Liberia added up to $82. I was worried they might have been more. I’m sure they would have been more if I hadn’t overheard him spell out his very common name and asked him about that. For all my previous flatmate’s faults, he’d always pay me promptly, thanks in no small part to his dad. Things are a bit harder with this guy even if I do get the money eventually.

With this bloke, food shopping is extremely stressful because he wants to spend almost bugger all on it. Every week I make a ridiculously small list. He vets the list, queries items that he doesn’t think should be on it, and puts asterisks next to the things that he doesn’t eat, lest I charge him for them. I go to Pak ‘n’ Save and come out through the 15-items-or-less lane with less shopping than I did when I lived alone. The first time I did the shopping after he moved in, I just, well, did the shopping. He didn’t like that one bit, and pulled everything out of the cupboard complaining that I’d already got three jars of this or four packets of that, jars and packets that I’d bought with my own money. Now the cupboard is virtually empty. I’m eating a lot more pies at lunchtime than before. I used to struggle to eat the BBQ pork fried noodles I sometimes get from the takeaway next to McDonalds on Adelaide Road. Now I wolf it down.

I wasn’t too happy with my English lesson tonight. I made the classic mistake of trying to pack too much in, too much vocab especially. I’m still learning.

Language teaching - Life :)

Commencing my descent

March 29, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

I reached the top of the mountain over the long Easter weekend. Nine weeks of living with my flatmate, nine more to go. I’m so glad I had a chat with him earlier this month, hard as it was. I really don’t know where I’d be now otherwise.

I’m living in a state of perpetual fatigue. A good night’s sleep, when I get it, does little to energise me. Walking up to the top of Mount Vic on Friday was a major effort. Even just walking into town is a struggle – I watch people stream past me when I’m used to it being the other way round. Tennis on Sunday was a case of dragging myself onto the court. After the game, which was borderline embarrassing for me, I went to see Batman v Superman at the Embassy with a bloke from the club. He’s gay. He thought I was. I’m not. Before the film we ate at the Chinese place nearby. My meal was extremely good value. I’ll get number 98 again the next time I go there. The film was never going to be my thing. Given the name I use for this blog, I guess I like my superheroes to be extraterrestrial.

On Friday night my flatmate’s parents invited him and me over for dinner at their rather nice place in Kelburn. That would suggest that neither my flatmate nor his parents hate my guts. His scheduled exit in late May didn’t get a mention. Instead we talked about the flag referendum. The three of them, plus exactly 1.2 million other Kiwis according to the preliminary figures, voted for the status quo. I voted for change, but I wasn’t too bothered either way. His parents are very nice people. So is he, for half an hour, down the pub, every other week or so. No really he’s fine. Honest. OK, there’s the small matter of the calls he made to Africa on my landline…

I read an article in the Guardian soon after the flag referendum result was announced. There were hundreds of comments, most of them coming from people whose knowledge of New Zealand ended at sheep and rugby. “The hard left who hate the flag and hate the country have been defeated! Hooray!” That’s fact-free crap, and they would have realised it was crap if they’d bothered reading the article, but it’s also crap that taps into the zeitgeist, and therefore gets plenty of upvotes. That’s the world we live in now unfortunately: people writing whatever is most likely to be plussed, hearted, thumbs-upped or up-arrowed, facts be damned. I know, I should avoid reading comments altogether.

Yesterday I met up with a friend at the Southern Cross. We then went to Ekim, a bohemian-looking burger joint just opposite. Ekim backwards is the owner’s name, and he was semi-famous last year for this Facebook rant (which I can view even though I’m not on Facebook, and no I didn’t read the comments). Mr Ekim sounds like a right reknaw. The hospitality industry does attract such people. (And tips? Huh? This isn’t America and we should be very grateful for that.) Still, we both would have given our burgers at least four stars and neither of us came down with food poisoning, so they’re doing something right. They even played Paul Simon’s Call Me Al and that gets an extra star from me.

Last Monday I met my English language student for the first time. He’s a Burmese refugee in his early thirties. I also got to meet his wife and seven-month-old daughter. His wife also has a tutor. I was struck by how happy he was. He smiled pretty much the whole time I was there. They live in an apartment block in Berhampore. His daughter’s name begins with the “th” sound as in “thin”. Burmese must be one of very few Asian languages to have that sound in its (to use a technical term) phonemic inventory. Normally you have all kinds of fun and games trying to teach that sound, so at least I’ll be spared that. Burmese lacks the “v” sound, however. My student seems to have a reasonable vocabulary but lacks confidence in speaking. When presented with my name on a piece of paper, he spelled out the letters rather than attempting to say the words. I expect I’ll find the teaching extremely rewarding and I can’t wait to crack on with it.

The restructure at work hasn’t gone away. On Thursday I should find out whether I still have a job.

My parents have got the keys to their house in Moeraki. I can only see positives in this. It gives them both a chance to get out of (as Dad put it) fucking Geraldine, it’s close to the sea, Dad will be able to fish (he hasn’t done that in ages), and it’s not far from Central Otago which is its own amazing world. I initially thought they were crazy for buying a fourth property (two in the UK, two in NZ) but this seems a great buy, for their own well-being as much as anything.

Language teaching - Life :)

Run down, but managing

March 18, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

I feel run down again. I will get this place to myself (I hope) at the end of May, but I can’t just count down the days. I actually have stuff to do before then.

The Ethiopian student I was supposed to be teaching got sick. He still wants to go ahead but doesn’t know when he can start. The organiser knew I was keen to get make a start, so I’ve now been assigned a Burmese refugee in his early thirties. My first session with him will be on Monday. Apparently that’s the only day of the week he can do, and to avoid delaying the start of the teaching (and possibly my move) by two weeks, I’m missing an important body corporate meeting where the earthquake strengthening will be discussed and voted on. Bugger. I’m also losing my voice when (unusually for me) I’m going to need it.

As I see it, after Super Tuesday II, Trump does now have one hand on the nomination. It was interesting watching the results come in, having been to three of the five states that voted, but just about everything is wrong with the process. There are still the best part of eight months until the election itself, and billions of dollars will be blown on the campaigns between now and then. What a waste.

Paul Daniels, the British magician, died yesterday. Most people in the office hadn’t heard of him, but he was on TV all the time when I was growing up. I even had a Paul Daniels magic set.

Tomorrow morning will be my ninth and final interclub outing this season; I’ll be sure to write a report later.

Life :)

Please bugger off

March 11, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Some positive news at last. That was supposed to be the point of this blog when I started it.

“You’re doing nothing wrong but you’re still making my life intolerable. Now please bugger off.” It wasn’t easy to say this to my flatmate on Tuesday night, and of course that’s not what I said. I said I’d need my own space well before I go away, and talked about my anxiety levels and lack of sleep. He was taken aback – I’d given no verbal indication that I was struggling. He’s happier here than he was at his parents’ place – a large house in Kelburn in the same street as a number of politicians and diplomats – and in his mind he was here for the long haul, beyond late September when I intend to go away. He agreed to be out by the end of May, although nothing was put in writing. That’s still a long time (80-odd consecutive days of having to interact with this guy), but I can now see light at the end of the tunnel, and I’ve slept much better as a result.

I’ve learnt a lesson here. I’ll need to be extremely careful before I ever think of taking on a tenant again. (This is where blogging comes into its own. It’s really helpful to keep a record of this bad experience because I sure as hell don’t want to repeat it. My mind filters out bad experiences.)

I found out yesterday that I’ll be starting my English teaching in the next week or two. I’ll be teaching an Ethiopian refugee of about fifty. He arrived in Wellington in 2009 but doesn’t speak good English and is only semi-literate, having had virtually no schooling in his home country. He clearly gets by all the same. When I was down south, I watched Dad fly his glider at the model aero club, and there was a bloke there who (according to Dad) couldn’t read. It amazed me that anybody could get by in the modern world without a reasonable level of literacy, but here he was, flying model planes, fixing cars (he worked as a mechanic) and, somehow, buying parts on the internet. Anyway, this promises to be quite a challenge for me but it’s one I certainly look forward to. This also means that I can start making travel plans.

Ethiopia. When I was five, if someone had asked me to name a poor country, I probably would have said Ethiopia. But apart from famines and wars, I know precious little about the place. Until yesterday I would have guessed that it had a coastline and a population of, I don’t know, 30 million. A pure guess. It turns out it’s the most populous landlocked country in the world with 100 million people. I’m sure I’ll find out more in the coming months.

The only two realistic presidential nominees on the Republican side are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. If either of them become president, heaven help us all. Trump is a megalomaniac who says he wants to make America great again, without giving any clue as to how, other than building a wall along the entire border with Mexico and banning all Muslims from entering the country. At least he’s funny, I’ll give him that. Cruz is far more competent than Trump; he’s cold, he’s calculating, he’s evil. I met some lovely people in America last year but I really fear for that country right now, and if they do elect one of those two guys, the shock waves will spread far beyond the country’s borders.

Some more good news: zero-hours contracts have been banned here in New Zealand. The UK should follow our lead.

Life :)

Shutting down

March 7, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

I can’t get away from my flatmate. There seem to be at least four of him. If only he (they?) could pay me accordingly. A hundred bucks a day and I’d happily give them 24/7 access to every room of my apartment while I sleep in the car. I’d probably (seriously) get more sleep than I do now. I average about 90 minutes less per night than before my flatmates all piled in. The problem is the sheer amount of interaction required, with the same person (people?), each and every day. With no chance to replenish my tank, I’m now running on empty (that’s a link to a song that appeared on Forrest Gump; sorry if the different colour for links isn’t showing up in your browser). My mind and body are shutting down. I might as well not have shown up to work today.

The whole arrangement is far too hands-on and it’s affecting every aspect of my life. There’s no escape, whether I’m at work, at the supermarket (now that’s stressful), at the tennis club, in the car, or even when I’m on a different island. At this rate I’m not going to Romania or very far at all. (Remember when I used to write about learning the language? By some bizarre coincidence that finished at about the same time as my living situation changed.)

I had a discussion with one of my flatmates at the weekend. He now knows I want him and his gaggle of friends out before September, but has no idea quite how soon. I’ll have to hit him with a May termination date in the hope that he agrees to June. Any later than that and my plans will be in tatters. None of this is easy. What a mess I’ve got myself into. The thing is, I’m not depressed, but I’m very anxious and in a permanent state of fatigue.

I don’t know how I won my singles match at the weekend.

Life :)

South to see my brother

March 1, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Thursday night I found, completely by chance, a letter that my brother sent me in March 2007 from Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. He was replying to my letter that had taken nearly two months to get there. He told me that three of his friends had died. He talked about our grandmother who died four years ago. It brought a tear to my eye; I’d be seeing my brother in a matter of hours.

The next morning I flew to Timaru. Air travel as it should be. That flight always makes me feel good. Dad picked me up from the airport, and soon I met my brother and his girlfriend, all six foot one of her. Wow, what a contrast between her and his last one who was pernicious. She’s a breath of fresh air; I could relax around her (and that’s saying something – most people intimidate me). The three of us headed to the Village Inn pub in Geraldine and had a good chat over a few beers. As usual, my brother and I got on well – it helps I think that we’re not very similar. (Y’know, Afghanistan, not really my scene. The mind boggles when I think of the places he’s been to.) I’m so happy that he’s happy.

The temperatures on Friday and Saturday soared into the thirties. We went to the beach at Caroline Bay, I saw my aunt and uncle who came over for a barbecue, I watched Dad fly his model glider, we picked some blackberries (I’ve just baked an ice cream container full of them with some apples in a crumble) and that was just about it. I got two very good nights’ sleep – they were extremely welcome. The third night was much more fitful, probably because I had to fly back the next day. I really didn’t want to go back. On the plane I saw Temuka go by and in no time we were into the clouds. I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on outside the window after that. When I arrived in Wellington, for almost certainly the last time on the 19-seater Beech plane before they bring in the bigger ATR on that route, I dawdled through the airport. I wouldn’t have minded staying there.

I really felt that extra day in February; it was a long month. And now the next few months stretch in front of me like a desert.

For most of today at work I couldn’t even log on and the help desk didn’t live up to the first half of their name. I managed to get most of an assignment done for my English teaching, so it wasn’t a completely wasted day.

I’ve got interclub tennis on Saturday. I’m not especially bullish about my chances, even if the team might win.