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My cup of tea

November 5, 2016 by 0 Comments

I’ve been in Romania almost a month and haven’t had a single cup of tea yet. Well actually that’s not quite true. I’ve had the odd herbal or fruit infusion, with ‘odd’ being the operative word, but not a single cup of NBT: normal bloody tea. But today I was in Auchan, a large French-owned supermarket, and I found a packet of Earl Grey with a picture of Big Ben on the box. Hooray! I haven’t had a cup yet because I haven’t been given access to the kitchen yet, but give it time. (I know, when in Romania and all that, but a cuppa is a fairly basic human need.)

The marketing manager at the “promising” language school asked me what I do in my spare time. I mentioned tennis. He said he played too, and added that he was “really good”. I said that in that case he’d probably thrash me. He then said that he was carrying some excess weight. Then he talked about learning English. “I didn’t learn much because the teachers were poor. I was the best in my class though, and always got ten out of ten of course.” He said Timișoara had much more to offer culturally than either Bucharest or Sibiu, and of course he was born in Timișoara. He described my Romanian as “very poor” before upgrading it to just “poor” on the evidence of about ten words in total. If you multiply his ego by about twenty you get…

Donald Trump. The US election is just four days away, and as I’ve said before, Trump could easily become president. Only it’s even more likely now. FiveThirtyEight are saying he has a 35% chance of victory. The odds and the map are changing all the time as new polls come in, and it feels more relevant to me than on previous occasions because I’ve actually been to America. (It’s 14 months since I was there. Campaigning had already begun. The whole process is a disgraceful waste of time and money.) I see both North Carolina and Florida have flipped from pale blue to pale pink in the last few minutes. Trump is still behind Clinton by about three points in the national polling average, but (1) that gap could close before Tuesday, (2) even if it doesn’t, there could be a modest polling error, and (3) he could conceivably lose the popular vote by a point or more and still win the election; the Electoral College favours him. So in other words, it’s on a knife-edge. I wonder if their estimation of Clinton’s chances – roughly two out of three – is a touch on the high side. If you’re 4-3 up in a set of tennis, you’ll win about two out of three times. (I’m assuming here that you have a 50:50 chance of winning each point whether serving or not – a reasonable assumption for me, but not for, say, a Wellington regional player, and certainly not for the marketing manager of that language school before he put on those extra kilos.) But imagine you’ve been 4-1 up and have lost the last two games. Momentum is against you; the trend is not your friend; your opponent, like Trump, has the wind in his sails. I think that’s the situation Clinton is in.
My cousin, who I met in upstate New York last year, is contemplating leaving the country if (in his words) the idiot wins.

The Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years (!), and even then they almost let it get away. By all accounts Game 7 was one of the great baseball games and the Cubs’ win one of the great moments in baseball (maybe American sport in general, but my knowledge of the other three major American sports verges on non-existent).

The markets in Timișoara are fantastic (I’ll talk about them in another post) but the one in Oradea, near the fortress where I stayed, still wins.

Life :) - Romania

Why am I doing this?

November 4, 2016 by 0 Comments

On Wednesday I went back to the hotel I started off in. I didn’t know whether the manager, the boss, really wanted to see me again. I can’t quite make her out. The rooms here have names, not numbers. She said my room was called something like Dali or Dally and was on the first floor. I found an empty room called Darling (of all things) with the key in its lock, and even saw a map showing no other rooms beginning with D. It must have just been her accent (her mother tongue is Hungarian). I piled my junk into the Darling room and went back downstairs. I was told to be careful with the skylight. Skylight? It turned out there was a Dali room, not far from Darling, but the map only showed a few rooms. (Room numbers are a great idea, aren’t they? Big businesses, especially really unfriendly ones, love to name their rooms. One company I worked for had ghastly names like the Synergy Room. Even after years, people still couldn’t remember that the Synergy Room was the second room past the lift on the fourth floor. If they’d just called it 4B, which is a much nicer name anyway, life would have been easier for everybody.) So I had to swiftly move all my stuff, some of which I’d already unpacked, from Darling to Dali. I certainly couldn’t dally. The Dali room, where I’ll be staying until 2nd December, is bigger than I feared it might be, but doesn’t have the facilities I was promised (I need to ask about that). It does have a TV however.

On Tuesday I visited six language schools in the city. I received a very positive response from the first one. They currently have no native English speakers among their staff, and before they’d even looked at my CV, they wanted me to run conversation classes with their advanced students. I sat down with two of their senior staff for 45 minutes. They want me to promote myself, and to be honest that’s not something that comes easy to me. I also received advice about accommodation in Timișoara. It seems I’m better off using Airbnb instead of renting an apartment where I’d likely face a 25% price hike as soon as I open my mouth. All in all, things sounded promising.

Sometimes, when I’m buttering bread with my penknife or finding somewhere to put the soap so it won’t slide off, I wonder why the hell I’m doing all of this. But then I think I could be in some god-awful meeting in the Synergy Room.

International travel - Life :) - Romania

My new home

October 29, 2016 by 0 Comments

There’s definitely been an upswing in my mood since I last wrote. I persisted with the woman at the hotel in Timișoara, and she replied properly, giving me some advice on dodgy Romanian landlords and basically telling me to knock on the door of every language school in the city. She offered me a small room in the hotel for 250 euros a month (just NZ$400) including expenses, and I accepted for one month. I’m going to Timișoara tomorrow but will be staying at another hotel for four nights before moving into what I expect to be little more than a cubby-hole, though I will have a shower, a fridge and basic cooking facilities. So Timișoara will be my new home for the foreseeable future. I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite city of those I’ve visited – that would be a toss-up between Sibiu and Oradea – but it’s where I was lucky enough to make a connection. Because it was the first place I visited in a country I was very much looking forward to seeing, everything all seemed new and exciting there, a bit like Boston did when I went to America last year. And just like Boston, I spent long enough there to at least sort of get to know it. It’s nothing like Boston though, let’s face it.

Arad, where I’m staying now, isn’t far from my new home and in some ways it’s a smaller version of it. I like it. Today I visited the water tower, partly because of a tip-off I got from someone in Bucharest that it would be interesting and its owner doesn’t speak much English. The water tower was built at the end of the 19th century and hasn’t been operational for 60 years. It now functions as a five-storey museum, showing the history of the city, some artwork and the fire and water services. You can enter the tank at the top through a hole which has been cut out. The owner explained the history of Arad to me and then let me get on with it, but after I came down we had a 15-minute chat in Romanian, my longest yet. If only I could manage that every day. They had a wine festival in one of the main squares. I only had one glass of mulled wine and (for the first time) some sarmale. I’ve been having a few tummy troubles and didn’t want to push it.

Yesterday’s near-three-hour train journey from Oradea, which cost just 18 lei (NZ$7 or £4), was interesting to put it mildly. The guy opposite me had a BO problem and fidgeted constantly. The guy across the aisle drank beer from a 2.5-litre bottle and some clear liquid, which I soon found out to be palinca, from another big plastic bottle. Behind me was a large contingent of gypsies, the equivalent I guess of a whanau. One of them, a girl of five or six, walked up and down the train, saying “Da-mi un leu” or “Give me a leu.” One leu isn’t very much, but it’s the principle I don’t like: a child learns at a young age that you obtain money by begging. The guy with the bottles wanted to talk to me. He didn’t make a lot of sense. I wasn’t sure whether that was a language barrier or a three-sheets-to-the-wind barrier. He offered me some palinca – heaven knows where it had been – and I settled for just a capful. The train stopped at numerous towns, villages, hamlets, rusty signs…

I can bring up maps on my phone, but I struggle to get an idea of scale in a completely unknown place, so last night I dragged my suitcase and carried my other bags more than a mile from the station to the hotel. Tomorrow I’ll get a taxi for the return trip.

One thing Romania is not is boring. It’s raw, it’s unsanitised (not like that), it brims with life. And now it’s my home.

International travel - Life :)

Not long now

September 26, 2016 by 0 Comments

Mum’s behaviour on Saturday − rolling around on the floor for 30 seconds, screaming and shouting, and saying that she wanted to die − was a classic case of playing the victim and attention seeking. That was clear when I saw her looking at home furnishings online minutes later. She’s been playing the victim for decades, most often with Dad, but he never calls her out on it. There’s no point reasoning with Mum so I’ve just let time take its course. She’s much better now. Mum is intelligent (if by no means an academic), helpful (in her own way!) and very practical. It’s just a shame her emotional IQ, or EQ if you like, is a couple of standard deviations below the mean.

I don’t enjoy staying at my parents’ place anymore. Our lives are drifting apart; a mansion like this isn’t something I’ll ever have or want. The weather has been awful since I arrived. In Wellington I manage to get out even in the wind and rain, but here there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. My aunt and uncle came over last night for dinner. I get on well with them. Unfortunately the topic of conversation didn’t stray from real estate for the whole time we ate. “How did the Robertsons get seven-twenty for that? It wasn’t even renovated!” Mum said, “If that one on Tancred Street went for 679, how much would we get for this?” I said 680. Even I, with my very limited knowledge of Geraldine house prices, know it would go for at least $800,000.

Packing, which two days ago was finished, has now become unfinished. Mum has bought me some winter clothes and it would hurt her feelings if I didn’t include them. The weight limit doesn’t allow me to take both her stuff and mine. I’m unable to fully leave her behind.

My flight leaves Christchurch at 4:55pm tomorrow. I’m flying with Emirates. My first plane, a 777, makes short stops at Sydney and Bangkok on the way to Dubai. From there I’ll be taking one of Emirates’ extensive fleet of A380s to Heathrow.

I got an email from the marimba teacher asking me how I’m getting on. I’ve missed that a lot − it was the highlight of my week while I had a flatmate. I see the Red Sox have won their last eleven games and have almost wrapped up their division. Won’t it be great to write about travel, language, music, baseball and things that I actually care about? I hope I’ll get the chance. Not long now.

Life :) - Tennis

Falling out

September 24, 2016 by 0 Comments

I’ve managed to fall out with Mum. This isn’t the first time this has happened, or the 21st, but none of the other occasions involved her rolling around on the floor screaming and saying she wanted to die. There’d be no point in suggesting that she visits the doctor, which is probably what she needs. Minutes after dragging herself up from the floor she was browsing curtains on the UK-based John Lewis website. I’m no expert on these things, but that would seem to suggest that she wants to live. This all happened five hours ago and she still won’t talk to me. The easiest thing would be for me to apologise, but I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. Mum flies off the handle and ratchets up the stakes at the slightest thing, causing a lot of unnecessary stress for everyone. Today I called her out on that,  not that she paid any attention to what I said of course. She was just deeply offended and that was that (as always; you can never have a reasoned argument with Mum). This is awful timing when I’m about to go away.

One side benefit of our falling-out is that my bags are now fully packed. I thought I might not be welcome here anymore. I’d rather spend the next three nights in Christchurch than here in Geraldine, even with the added expense, because there’d be far more to do, but I expect I’ll be staying here after all.

I played tennis last Saturday for the last time in a long time, against the guy I was extremely lucky to beat last month. No such luck this time. He played a blinder. Everything he touched turned to gold. I played far better than last time too, but after losing four games out of five to concede the first set 6-4 I was out of ideas. My losing run extended to eight games from nine in the second set, and the glimmer of hope I got from winning the next two games was quickly snuffed out as I lost the set 6-2 and the match in an hour. It was a damn good hour of exercise though.

Timișoara has been named European Capital of Culture for 2021. It’s the same award that was bestowed on Sibiu in 2007, and hopefully it will have the same effect. Fantastic news for the first Romanian city I’ll get to visit (in just 13 days!).

Life :) - My big plan

Pretty vacant

September 16, 2016 by 0 Comments

I still haven’t got anyone to rent out my flat, and time is getting pretty damn short for me. It wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed my property manager had changed the ad to say it had two bedrooms rather than three without telling me. I told her what I thought of that. She’d received some feedback that one of the rooms was too small. And anyway, as I realised yesterday, the advert was crap. Really, really crap. That’s why thousands of people were looking at the ad but not liking what they saw. The lead photos were of the outside of the apartment, the interior photos gave no sense of spaciousness, the major selling points were omitted from the blurb or relegated to near the bottom, and if a student of English had written it, it would have been dripping with red ink by the time I’d finished with it. On that last point, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I never said anything. I completely rewrote the ad for my manager; it now includes the dimensions of the bedrooms so nobody can have any complaints. I asked her to take some more photos. And perhaps most importantly I dropped the rent by $25 a week. The good news is that someone who viewed the flat almost a month ago has expressed interest now that the rent has been lowered.

On Sunday I played a singles match. So much spin of all varieties to contend with. I won the first set 6-2 − a slightly flattering score; it was really a case of me winning the important points. But I really struggled after that, losing the last two sets 6-1, 6-2. At one stage I lost nine games in a row; at least from 5-0 down in the final set I salvaged two games and some respectability. The whole match was done and dusted in 65 minutes. The main positive I took from the loss was that I had no trouble getting to the ball − I’ve got my energy levels back. It was what happened after I got to the ball that was the problem. I thought I’d done tennis for the foreseeable future but I now have to play one final match on Saturday, a rematch against the guy I recently beat from match point down.

On Monday my student and his wife made dinner for both me and his wife’s tutor who comes from America. After soup to start, the main dish was big on seafood including squid. The American tutor (who will still be teaching my student’s wife) has a much stronger bond with her student than I had with mine, and helps her with many things that aren’t directly language-related. It was great that they invited us over for what I gather was typical food from their part of Myanmar minus most of the spiciness.

On Tuesday I attended a quiz, mainly just to say goodbye to some people.

My dad arrives tomorrow.

Life :)

Creepy

September 10, 2016 by 0 Comments

When I got home last night there was a large envelope propped up against my letterbox that had come from Egelsbach in Germany, a stone’s throw from Frankfurt Airport if Google Maps is to be believed. Only it wasn’t for me. It was for a (presumably) young woman with the very common German surname Müller. I live at 2/19 Kowhai Street, i.e. the second flat of number 19. (My address isn’t exactly that but it might as well be.) In New Zealand they read 2/19 as “two bar nineteen” which struck me as a little weird the first time I heard it. I’d always called the / symbol a slash, or before web addresses became part of everyday life, a stroke. I never would have thought of calling it a bar. The sender, who I think was Miss Müller’s mother, had written the number 219 with a continental-style one which started with a long diagonal stroke. The postman took the diagonal stroke to be a slash (or “bar”) and the envelope, which contained pictures, ended up with me. I also noted that her mum had written her own surname as Müller with the umlaut (as a horizontal line) but her daughter’s name as Mueller. I trundled off down the road all the way to number 219 and sure enough Fräulein Müller lived there. I guess she was lucky that I’d lived in France where people do funny ones and crossed sevens. (I started writing crossed sevens when I lived there because I had to sit maths exams, and I still do them that way now. My ones are just a straight line though.) By the way, the word “mullered” was (is?) used in the UK to mean either what “munted” does in New Zealand, or extremely drunk.

This morning’s dullness and half-arsed but persistent rain reminded me of England. I met up with a friend at lunchtime (the last time I’ll see him before I go away − it’s getting like that now) and we stood in the cold in Civic Square for part of the low-key but worthwhile anti-TPP rally. Grant Robertson and some other politicians spoke. It’s a shame Robertson, my local MP, didn’t become Labour leader, but it’s good that he has the time and energy to attend events like this. (I know, his sexual orientation would make him less electable in certain parts of the country, even in 2016.) He was probably the most eloquent speaker there.

I had somebody (the sixth person or group) to look at my flat earlier this morning. It helps if I’m there because I can answer questions and build a some kind of rapport (even I can). I expected this place to be snapped up in no time, so the fact that it hasn’t been after nearly a month and that initial frenzy on Trade Me is a bit frustrating. The only people who were keen wanted it for too long and I had nagging doubts about them anyway.

I might − shock, horror − join Facebook as a way of keeping in touch with people when I’m away. If I do join the dark side it’ll only be to post photos and occasional updates of what I’ve been up to.

Update: I have just created a new Facebook account and man it’s creepy. How does their algorithm know that I worked with this person four years ago, and she might, just might, have a connection with Romania? How does it know that I went to an open home five years ago and that guy showed me around? How come it picked him and none of the other real estate agents I dealt with? What made it think that I’d want to “friend” him all these years later? (Your algorithm stuffed up there, didn’t it?) I logged off after five minutes but my creepometer had already hit 9 by then. If Fräulein Müller pops up the next time I visit Facebook…

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

High of 14? Yeah, right

September 8, 2016 by 0 Comments

I was about to write a list of things I’ll miss about Wellington. Top of my list was going to be the weather. Yeah, I know, the weather. In Wellington. When I listen to the 7am weather bulletin, the Wellington forecast is usually bright sunshine with a high of 14. Or torrential horizontal rain and a high of 14. Or nor-westers gusting to 130 k’s and a high of 14. The Cook Strait and rugged landscape otherwise plays havoc with Wellington’s weather patterns, but blissfully, the temperature needle hardly twitches for weeks on end. I was going to say how much I’ll miss that in Romania where the high will deviate a long way from 14 in both directions. But then today happened, the rain, the hail, the snow (yep), the wind that you could hardly stand up in, and as for the high, what high? (That’s what I said in 2009 when I was (mis)diagnosed as being bipolar.)

I gave my last English lesson on Monday. He and his wife have invited me over for dinner next week, which will be the last time I see him, in lieu of a lesson. They’re very pleasant people. He had a good last lesson as we went through three readers. He seemed to be more attentive and I was particularly impressed with his pronunciation of “shelves”.

There are billboards up all over the city as the mayoral election approaches. There are several prominent ones for Jo Coughlan that are made to look like road signs, and have slogans like “Four lanes to the planes” and “Toot for a second tunnel”. My carpool mate and I were wondering how on earth Ms Coughlan pronounces her surname. There are no fewer than seven common pronunciations of -ough in English, as in tough, though, trough, through, thought, thorough and drought. (Just look how close the first six of those words are to one another.) So what is it? Coo-lun? Cow-lun? Coff-lun? Turns out it’s Cog-lun. Different from all seven of the above. Fan-bloody-tastic. I’m not voting for you Ms Coughlan unless you change the pronunciation of your name. You’ve got plenty of options. (Ms Coughlan is Bill English’s sister-in-law. Her father, Tom, played one game for the All Blacks in the fifties. Tom’s brother, who died a few years ago, was at the same home in Timaru that my grandmother spent her final years; I remember he had enormous hands.) I won’t be voting for Jo anyway because I doubt I’ll get the chance before I go away, and even if I do, prioritising the car ahead of public transport is not where I see Wellington’s future.

Language learning - Life :)

Romanian commentary 10: some seismic vocab

September 3, 2016 by 0 Comments

I was woken at 4:40 this morning by the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck off East Cape. I felt a rolling motion that lasted a good 20 to 25 seconds. I didn’t get a lot of sleep after that. My carpool mate didn’t feel a thing and didn’t even know there had been a thing to feel. Gah!

Talking of things, Father’s Day is actually a thing that some people make a thing of. Who would have thought? There was me thinking it was just commercialised crap. If I gave my dad a Father’s Day present he’d think I was taking the piss. And he’d be right.

Brexit is back on the agenda after the parliamentary summer recess. I think the process was (and is still being) appallingly handled. The issue of Britain’s EU membership was too complex to be put to a referendum in the first place, both sides lied (though the Leave side did so more blatantly), and I can’t believe they never had a plan or timetable for leaving the EU.

This morning’s earthquake was the same magnitude as the one that hit Canterbury almost six years ago to the day, and at almost the same time. It generated a mini-tsunami, and came hot on the heels of Wednesday’s pretend “exercise” tsunami. Eastern Romania experiences earthquakes fairly regularly. Thirty years ago on Wednesday 150 lives were lost in a 7.1 quake, and in 1977 almost 1600 were killed in a 7.2 quake, mostly in Bucharest. Here is some earthquake vocabulary that I hope I won’t need:

Earthquake: cutremur
To shake: a zgudui
Shock wave: undă de șoc
Aftershock: replică
Fault line: linie de falie
Depth: adâncime
Damage (noun): pagubă
Destruction: distrugere
Struck: lovit
Earth or land: pământ
Crack (noun): crăpătură
Collapsed: prăbușit

Language teaching - Life :) - My big plan

It’s not normal!

August 30, 2016 by 0 Comments

A couple of weekends ago my friend from the tennis club came over for dinner. I don’t often host people who aren’t related to me. He brought some weed but I declined since it was only my second day on Citalopram and it didn’t seem wise to muddy the picture at such an early stage. A pity really; I’d only ever tried marijuana a handful of times, all of them in France back in 2001, and the experience was positive. We talked for a long time and I must have been unusually engaged in the conversation because I didn’t look at my watch. At one point he said, “We’re not conventional people.” Last year I was taken aback when someone suggested that I don’t conform to society’s norms and until I stop playing the fitting-in game I’ll continue to be unhappy. Those words hit me hard: people don’t like to be told they’re not normal. But he was dead right. The fitting-in game wears me out and makes me unhappy, even though I only play it at a basic level by, for instance, attending work functions only if there’d be a particular loss of face if I didn’t show up. And I’ve been playing it for decades, at school, at university, and at work, by attempting to be invisible. By trying to fit in I’m in danger of becoming nothing if I don’t act fast.

Not being normal, in any of the forms that can take, isn’t easy. It means you probably didn’t have many friends at school. It means you almost certainly didn’t make the first rugby team at your high school, with the immediate confidence boost that comes with that and all the connections and job opportunities that are likely to accrue even 20, 30, 40 years later. Jobs of any description will be harder to come by and to maintain. Ditto relationships. It means you’re less likely than average to drive a car, to own your own home, to get married, to procreate. The kids you do have are quite likely to have the same problems you do. The house you do have is likely to be poorly insulated and get little sun. (D is probably not the only vitamin you aren’t getting enough of.) It means you’re less likely to vote than the general population (who cares about me anyway?) and if you do vote, the party you vote for probably won’t win. It means you’re likely to suffer from mental health problems, to have trouble with the law, to commit suicide, and to die at a young age. It means that even in 2016, life is generally a bitch and a short bitch at that.

Luckily I was born with a certain facility for maths and for language. I come from a loving family for whom education and employment matter. I learnt (I hope) to be warm and polite, and how not to offend or annoy people. I went to university (though it was far from easy for me socially), I got a good degree, I embarked on a career, I did all the normal stuff. And so I’ve been insulated from many of the bad things in the second paragraph. But I had no foundation to underpin any of that normal stuff – no sense of home, of purpose, of belonging, of attachment to anything. It was no surprise that it all came crashing down. From the moment I moved in, my apartment, spacious and conveniently located though it is, has felt like a monument to a past life that itself was pretty meaningless. In the last few years the insulation has worn thin, the veneer has cracked. Pretending to be normal, to please my parents or society at large, is no longer working. It’s about time I decided to be me instead. (That’s pretty much what I said when I started this blog last October, but it’s as if I forget.)

I’m glad I went back on Citalopram. I have absolutely no problem with taking antidepressants if they’re going to be of benefit to me.

Last night I gave one of my last English lessons. He still struggles with short words but does better with longer ones. Went and want posed problems but different and important were no bother. When I asked him if he knew find, he said “I’m find, thank you.” (I went through a list of words with two final consonant sounds, to try to get him to actually pronounce the ends of words, but had little success there.) He still recognises whole words only; he correctly identified hand and stand, but couldn’t then correctly pronounce land. The short-words-hard, long-words-easier pattern reminded me of my attempt to learn basic Chinese; lots of similar short words became a murky mess in my mind.

I still haven’t got anybody to rent my apartment. A group of three people were keen but only if I would guarantee their tenancy until February 2018 which I wasn’t prepared to do. That’s my biggest hurdle right now.