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A life of slime

April 2, 2023 by 0 Comments

It’s been a wet, miserable day. After my first outing on the tennis court last Sunday, you could forget it today. It’s been a real mixed bag – only 3 degrees and sleet on Tuesday, but beautiful yesterday.

Life with my sinus problem ain’t a whole lot of fun. I haven’t had one of those excruciating headaches since December, but the low-to-medium-level pain (like I have right now) is unremitting. Blowing my nose eases the pain; often I only have to tap the right side of my nose and a jet of colourless slime shoots out of my left nostril at a rate of knots. Sometimes I don’t even know where the gunk has gone. Dad said it’s in Embarrassing Bodies territory – get on TV and maybe I could be sorted. Whenever I blow my nose during our Skype calls, Mum says, “I hope you don’t do that in your lessons.” I do try to tone it down, but what about me, Mum? She’s more bothered that I might briefly annoy my students than she is about my pain. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dad suffered from terrible migraines when I was growing up, and Mum’s sympathy cable was permanently unplugged. The only emotion she showed was anger. What will they think of me if we don’t show up to Jackie’s party? Or if I turn up alone? Thankfully Dad’s migraines are fewer and farther between these days.

On Monday I managed to catch my brother on WhatsApp when my nephew was up and about. It was great to see him grinning away on his playmat, but my brother and his wife are struggling with lack of sleep. My brother looked whacked. In the middle of my call, my sister-in-law’s parents showed up to provide some respite, but I could tell my brother would have preferred it if they’d stayed away. I don’t envy him one bit. Some time ago he said it’ll be a “one and done”, but we’ll see. This morning I read an article about only children. They’re selfish and spoilt according to the stereotype, but people with siblings can sure as hell be selfish and spoilt too.

Last night I had an interesting lesson with the Romanian guy who lives in London; he now has two sons. He’d just made a trip back to Romania, and said he felt a sense of greyness on his arrival back in the UK. I know exactly what he means because I’ve felt the same thing many times. That journey from the airport; the grey M25 and M11 with an equally grey sky overhead. He said that people in Romania were happier despite being poorer. That was something I noticed on only my second evening in Timișoara. It was a sunny Sunday October evening and I was walking along the road from the guest house to the university campus to grab some dinner. I passed a constellation of ugly communist-era blocks of flats which had a park outside, full of basic play equipment and half a dozen cheap-looking ping-pong tables. Kids were playing, people were walking their dogs, and all the ping-pong tables were being used. I was amazed how happy everybody seemed. I got the same feeling last night – another sunny evening – when I collected my 15 litres of water; not much money but a real sense of community. In contrast, when I have my lessons in well-to-do parts of town where Porsches abound, there’s no sense of community at all.

This afternoon, in one of those well-to-do areas, I managed to convince my 15-year-old student that a haggis was a hedgehoggish creature that inhabits the Scottish highlands. We read an article on Haggis scoticus from the Daily Record. Then I asked him to check the date on the article, which was 1st April 2021.

Last Sunday I had a wander through the woods with Mark and his two dogs. It was great to be out in nature and to hear the hammering of woodpeckers and humming of insects instead of the rumble of traffic. One thing I love about Timișoara is how easily you can escape from urban life.

The culmination of the snooker season is upon us once more. The sport is going through a rough patch with several Chinese players having recently being banned for match fixing. I also wonder where the fresh new faces will come from: it seems to be a middle-aged man’s sport. Is whiling away hours in a snooker hall, rather than on TikTok, even something a teenager would do these days? At the moment the Tour Championship, featuring the season’s top eight players, is in full swing, then later this month it’ll be the big one – the World Championship, the one event in the game that dwarfs all others.

I’m currently reading The Twisted Ones, which (unsurprisingly) is a horror novel. The author is Ursula Vernon, who wrote the book under the pen-name T. Kingfisher.

Language teaching - Life :)

Conversation Club

March 26, 2023 by 0 Comments

Our clocks have just gone forward and later today I’ll be playing tennis for the first time this year. Before that I’ll be meeting Mark in Dumbrăvița – I expect we’ll have a walk in the woods with his two dogs.

Last time I forgot to mention the English Conversation Club which took place last Saturday at the elderly English lady’s apartment. She and her Romanian friend (who speaks extremely good English) had decided to resurrect the club after about a decade. There were about ten of us including two teenagers who had been dragged along by their mothers and didn’t say much. People brought food; I made a cottage pie – I would have made a shepherd’s pie, but lamb is hard to come by in Romania. I felt at ease there, even when I made a hash of explaining something to the group in Romanian. I think it was the word “gossip”. Apart from us two native speakers, people spoke English at wildly different levels, so it was suggested that (if the group expands) we split into two. Next time we meet, which – frustratingly – won’t be until 13th May, I’ll give a presentation on New Zealand. It was great to see a social event succeed in the world of TikTok and ChatGPT, and nice to know that social events in which I’m not hopelessly intimidated actually exist. I got a new student out of the meet-up – we met for the first time yesterday. Her level is close to zero. She has four kids, aged 23 and younger, and she was born in August 1981. Yikes.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

The freight train is coming

March 5, 2023 by 0 Comments

I had a long chat with my brother last night. I’m thinking of seeing the three of them over Orthodox Easter weekend. If his grandparents aren’t able to see the little one, at least his uncle can. Mum and Dad have mentioned the cost of the flights as a reason for not coming over. They have loads of legitimate reasons which I entirely understand, but the cost ain’t one, I’m afraid. They’ve just spent almost ten times that amount – money they won’t get back – on an EV. Edit: They will of course save money on fuel, and isn’t there some kind of rebate? But it’s still a fast-depreciating asset.

My work week (28 sessions totalling “just” 32½ teaching hours – unusually many short sessions) is over. Last night I had a weird 90-minute session with the bloke who lives near the Dartford Tunnel in London. As usual he read an article out loud a paragraph at a time, but this time he used ChatGPT to translate the text into his native Romanian, bit by bit. He could hardly contain himself, such was the quality of the translation in his view. “Sounds like you don’t need me anymore, then,” I said. Supposedly it can even translate jokes, and he showed me a letter he’d written to a phone company that was ChatGPT-generated. Although it’s free and intriguing, I haven’t tried ChatGPT, mainly because it forces you to create an account. Why should I have to do that? I know, I know, I have accounts with everything else. Like, for instance, one of the clinics here in Timișoara. Call reception and there’s no receptionist on the other end, just a message telling you to create an account – the 47th goddamn thing in your life that needs a password. You have no choice in the matter. More alarmingly, this artificial so-called intelligence is ripping jobs away from us like a freight train – it’s already gathering serious momentum and will soon be unstoppable. As a private teacher I’m probably safe for the next 10 to 15 years, but all bets are off after that.

This morning I had a one-hour online lesson with a Bucharest-based woman, then I cycled to Dumbrăvița for a pair of two-hour lessons with teenage boys. From 10 till 12 I had maths with Matei. He informed me that the boy I’d be seeing after lunch had just joined him at British School, and in only one week had already become slightly unpopular. “The rich kid,” Matei said. His father owns a computer hardware company. After a packed lunch – a cheese and salami sandwich, a boiled egg and some fruit – I had my English lesson with the rich kid, who can at times be conceited but wasn’t today.

I’ve just been reading something about the demise of cursive writing. I found the whole thing a bit puzzling, because it suggested that there were only two types of handwriting – the flowery swashy style and letter-by-letter printing, when surely there’s a very practical in-between. When I was at school, the word “cursive” was never mentioned – we just called it “joined-up writing” – and a version of that is what I use to this day. Romanian kids, interestingly enough, still learn what I would call proper cursive. The Romanian cursive has some distinctive features like a curvy x, like the one I use when writing maths, but with an added crossbar.

Here are some recent samples of my handwriting from my whiteboard. It’s slightly less joined-up than normal, because I’m sacrificing some speed for an increase in legibility. Note that in the third sample, my student has written “where” and “were” in the bottom-right corner with w‘s that look like pairs of crossed v‘s; that’s typical of Romanians – their native language is w-less, so they don’t develop a quicker way of writing the letter.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report

February 6, 2023 by 0 Comments

Edit: I see I’ve used that Simon and Garfunkel song lyric as a post title before. It is one of my favourite songs, so it can’t be helped.

On Friday my UK-based student asked me what “gusts of three degrees” meant on the weather forecast. He said he’d heard it several times. A frost and three degrees, maybe? He insisted that it was gusts. Sorry mate, I’m struggling with that one. But it did make me wonder about weather forecasts. Sometimes they just kind of wash over you, don’t they? If Catriona MacLeod came on Radio NZ and said there’d be “gusts of three degrees, south-westerly fog patches, and moderate to heavy drizzle later in the ranges, rising to 30 knots”, half the listeners wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

Here in Timișoara, the actual weather has been pretty nippy. When I went out today in mid-afternoon, the temperature was zero. Yesterday was one of the windier days I can remember here, with the exception of this day. It was also wet. Getting to my pair of two-hour lessons in Dumbrăvița on my bike, worried that my left handlebar grip might fly off at any moment with all the moisture, wasn’t much fun. After my maths lesson I had my 252nd session with Octavian. I feel bad because, although he’s now got a pretty handy command of English, he still has a very non-native pronunciation – he hasn’t got a proper handle on the English r or th sounds, nor can he properly distinguish the vowel sounds in bit and beat, or bet and bat – so I spent almost the whole session on pronunciation drills.

What a horror day last Tuesday was. This blog tells me that 10/8/16 was pretty bad; perhaps 31/1/23 was even worse. I felt so hopeless and overwhelmed by everything, and had lost control of my emotions. When I think about it I’d been feeling anxious for some time, and my memory and concentration had shrunk to comatose goldfish level. It reminded me of the last time I worked in life insurance, when I couldn’t remember what I’d done five minutes earlier, let alone on the previous day. I really need to act on those first warning signs – take a day or two off, whatever – before things spin drastically out of control. Since Tuesday I’ve bounced back reasonably well, I feel. I’m trying to get back to what I did during the initial stages of Covid which, bizarrely enough, were quite a positive time for me because my life became quieter and simpler. I planned each day the night before, went to bed early, got up early, and executed the plan as best I could. Grocery shopping was always first thing on Monday at the exact same place. I’m going back to that routine now. It’ll be harder because of my increased workload and the books – things are bound to get in the way – but if I have to put something off until the next day because of something out of my control, that’s OK. Tomorrow, apart from my four lessons, my list consists of shopping (I’ve made a list), tidying this flat which has become a mess, cooking, booking flights to NZ (I’ve got to bite the bullet on that one, and bugger the cost), calling the plumber, spending an hour on the dictionary, and reading.

Yesterday Birmingham City – Blues – scored twice in the last few minutes to win 4-3 at Swansea, snapping a run of five straight losses in the league. Mayhem ensued when the winner went in.

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Knowing when to go

January 19, 2023 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had another online lesson with that boy who cried. It was hard work – he rarely uttered anything apart from “yes”, “no”, and “I don’t know” – but at least he didn’t cry this time. Later I’ve got that maths lesson again. Yesterday I had a terrible session with the four twins. Having already exhausted all topics with them, I tried a printable domino-style words-and-pictures game that I found online – lots of painstaking printing and sticking – but the game descended into farce because there were too many cards and they were unable to read the words on them; none of them can read in English beyond words like “cat” and “dog”. The rest of the session turned into a load of nothing. It didn’t help that my mood was terrible and my enthusiasm at rock bottom.

Jacinda Ardern has resigned as prime minister of New Zealand. Good decision, I’d say. Most leaders are ego-driven, desperate to retain power at all costs, and they outstay their welcome by years. She dealt admirably with the horrors of the Christchurch mosque shooting, then the initial stages of the pandemic. Had National retained power in 2017, I imagine thousands more New Zealanders would have died of Covid “to keep the economy moving” or some such tripe, and the economy wouldn’t have moved any faster. Quite the opposite, in fact. Set against chaos of Trump and the like, her leadershup was a beacon of calm. Latterly, though, her star has fallen. The disappointment, as I see it, is that Labour won a majority in 2020 – almost unheard of in the MMP system – but have totally failed to use it. Housing is a zillion-dollar disaster. Mental health for many Kiwis continues to be a mess. (Mental health provision got noticeably worse in my time there; here was a chance to reverse that.) My parents are always telling me that local farmers can’t get workers from overseas to do the jobs that Kiwis won’t. I don’t know anything about this Luxon bloke who may well be prime minister by the end of this year, except that he’s probably less of an arse than Judith Collins.

On Tuesday night I watched a football match for the first time in ages. Birmingham City, a.k.a. Blues, a team I saw several times at university, were playing Forest Green Rovers away in the third round of the FA Cup. Forest Green are based in Nailsworth, a town of 5000-odd in the Cotswolds, and the smallest town in England ever to host a league football club. They’re owned by renewable-energy business moguls and everything at the club is fully vegan. During the game, flashing advertising hoardings counted up the number of plastic bottles thrown away, millisecond by millisecond, and other depressing environment-killing stats. Forest Green took the lead with a stunning goal in the eighth minute. Birmingham were terrible in the first half, though I liked their young player Hannibal, mostly because of his name. Their manager must have dished out a bollocking at half-time because they sprang into action and equalised just after the break. The big moment came at 1-1, when Blues’ keeper pulled off a scarcely believable double save. Though the atmosphere was mostly flat – the magic of the FA Cup is nothing like it once was – it was worth watching the game just for those ridiculous saves. Blues soon took the lead and saw out the remainder of the match. Forest Green were unfortunate not to at least force a replay; Birmingham now go to Blackburn in the next round.

Yesterday, before my bad session with the four kids, a fresh breeze blew, and as I was sitting at my desk hundreds of helicopter seeds hit my window before slowly twirling to the ground. At first I thought they were insects. This isn’t normal for mid-January, is it?

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Grand designs

January 17, 2023 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to my parents who were cheesed off, as Mum put it. Just as the builders were about to get stuck in, they got an in-passing estimate of $800,000 for the job. One zero too many, I suggested. But no, they were expecting it to be $500,000. Sweet jeebus. Now they’ll have to start all over again, taking care not to besmirch these builders’ good reputation throughout Geraldine, and coming up with excuses for the many occasions when nosy (and, let’s face it, competitive) “friends” ask them what’s happening with their house. I was sympathetic to the extent that it was affecting their mood, but (and this might sound rude) their ambitious project itself is neither here nor there to me. Tomorrow they have to make a trip to Wanaka to pick up a painting.

Outside my lessons, and thank heavens for them, life has been a struggle. Yesterday I had my cerebral MRI scan. First I had to go to another clinic for a test to confirm that the contrasting dye wouldn’t wreck me. An allergy test, right? No, we don’t do allergy tests for that. We do something else. Ugh, this is getting complicated. Beyond me. Outside the Nokia office block next to the clinic, I tried calling the MRI place but momentarily forgot that my credit had expired because I’d had problems with the BT Pay app the night before and wasn’t able to top it up. I visited the nearest branch of Orange in the centre of town and got my credit restored, then went back home, took photos of the six water meters and sent them to the administrator of this block who requests them once a month, and called the MRI people who confirmed that the something else was what I needed. I returned to the clinic and got the something else which was just a blood test. The nurse asked if I’d ever had a blood test before because of the way I must have been acting. I felt a mess. I went home for a second time, planned and printed out some material for my lessons, then left for my scan.

The MRI place was just over the border into Giroc. I rode to the stadium and another 2.5 km down Calea Martirilor 1989 which turns into Calea Timișoarei at the boundary. When I arrived I told them my weight, ensured them I had nothing metal inside me, and filled in a bunch of forms. I had to tick “Da” about two dozen times in what looked like a kind of waiver. They chuckled at my distinctly non-Romanian name and email address, but were good-natured. They hadn’t had the confirmation of my blood test, but proceeded with the scan anyway. I stripped almost naked and lay on the bed, my head clamped. I wore headphones and the woman placed a squeeze ball in my left hand; she said she’d stop the scan if I squeezed it. Was it a good thing that I had that option or a bad thing that I might need it? She said it would take twenty minutes so I counted the seconds. The initial screeching noises were like dial-up internet, then they changed to a “duvduvduv”, then a “baapbaapbaap”. The sounds were off-putting at first, but I got used to them. I was still going when I reached 1200; the time was only an estimate, and the noises had a rhythm which made it hard to count seconds with much accuracy. I was in the 1350s when I saw the light of day again. The lady told me that my test results had come through OK so I went back “under” for the contrasting agent to be applied – an injection to my hand, then a few more minutes of “duvduvduv”. It was all over. I got dressed, parted with 930 lei (NZ$320 or £170), then left. I should get the results by the end of the week.

The next hour or so was the best part of the day. I had plenty of time before my lesson with the single pair of twins, but not long enough that I could go home. I bought a cheese pie (8 lei) from a bakery, then a coffee (2 lei) from a vending machine inside a shop. While my coffee was being poured, an animated advert for cigarettes flickered above me. Let’s Camel! Only 19 lei. I liked all the greens and yellows and the seventies-style font. I also liked that while my parents live in the world of smoking permabans and half-million-dollar home renovations, I live in the world of fuck-it-let’s-Camel. I love the rawness of these little shopping hubs located all over the city. I bought some celeriac, leeks and mandarins from the market, then I was off to my lesson.

I had three more lessons when I got back from the twins. The best one was with the 16-year-old girl. We did role plays set in bars and restaurants. One of them was set in a pub, and had three parts, a barmaid, a customer Tina and her husband Paul. I asked her to play the parts of both Paul and Tina. She did Paul in a deep baritone, then rose about five octaves for Tina. This was hilarious.

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A major upset

January 13, 2023 by 0 Comments

Yesterday was a ridiculous day really. For the first time I ever, I made someone cry. I told the 12-year-old boy at the end of our online lesson that he was being a pain in the butt (do you understand that?), and look, I really don’t care about what you’re saying because it’s irrevelant and disruptive, then he burst into tears. His mother then came on the line and she was fine with me, but I might never see him again and if I do, the next few sessions are bound to be frosty. After that I had to dash off to see the ENT specialist. She was very nice and had a look a the results of my CT scan in 2019, then recommended me for an MRI scan (known as RMN in Romanian) which I’ll have on Monday in Giroc, a place that used to be a village to the south of Timișoara but has now been subsumed by it, just like Dumbrăvița to the north. The scan will use a contrasting dye, so I’ll first have to get an allergy test.

Later yesterday evening I had my first maths lesson with the 16-year-old girl who started English lessons with me in November. She’s been getting low maths grades, so wanted help there too. That was a tough session for me because I don’t know to talk about maths in Romanian. I was unsure how to say even simple stuff like “root two” or “a over b” or “x to the y“. I had great trouble articulating the “hundredth triangular number”. Even the alphabet posed a problem, because when spelling a word (say vatră), Romanians say the letters differently to how they pronounce them in an abbreviation (say TVR). The T, V, and R are pronounced differently in each case. So what do they do in maths? Buggered if I knew. I resorted to writing expressions and pointing to them. What does this mean? What does that equal? She showed me her intimidating textbook which was older than her. I only skimmed it, but found no shape or space or anything else to give relief from the unremitting algebra, and certainly nothing handy for everyday life such as compound interest. She showed me a test she’d had to do, all handwritten by the teacher. It all seemed very backward.

I’ve been working on my book. Forget about the 28th February deadline I gave for myself; this project will take a while. The important thing is to work on it daily, or almost, so I don’t lose momentum. I remember when my grandmother wrote her memoirs. In 2001 she began with great gusto, but then her enthusiasm drained away and then she started losing her mental sharpness. In 2008, when she was really losing it mentally – probably as a result of a stroke she’d had – she verbally attacked the publisher when he visited her house. In the end it only just got published at all, although it did, which was certainly something. I feel a bit more optimistic about my first book now – “the handy English hints for Romanians” book – after the elderly English lady showed interest. I asked her if she’d like to collaborate more fully.

There’s another book that seems to have captured Britain’s – and the world’s – imagination this week. My brother somehow managed to get hold of a free PDF version of it. If I read any of it, it will be to look at Harry’s (or whoever’s) writing style and see if I should incorporate or avoid it in my own writing. Apparently it’s staccato. Short sentences. Like this. The content itself doesn’t interest me at all.

Now that it’s 2023, Timișoara is officially the European Capital of Culture. Or one of them – three cities got the honour. My home town, as it now is, was supposed to be the capital in 2021, but Covid put that back two years. In the centre of town on New Year’s Eve there was a celebration of Timișoara’s status, with live bands. I wish I’d gone and seen that instead of what I ended up doing.

Last Saturday I made $96 in my online poker session. A surprising second place in triple draw, followed by a win in single draw. It’s a shame double draw isn’t also a thing. I won’t be playing much for the foreseeable future – I’m getting more than enough screen time as it is.

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The boon of the book (so far)

January 8, 2023 by 0 Comments

The book based on my time with the guy in Auckland has been uppermost in my mind this week. Many hours spent on it. For my mental health it’s been a real boon. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going.

Fifty years ago my mother was on the ship from New Zealand to England; it left port on 1st January 1973: a six-week voyage (probably not an inaccurate term) via the Panama Canal. She paid $666 for a return ticket – a fraction of the cost of an airfare back then. When the return leg didn’t happen, she was able to recover half of what she’d paid.

My bathroom is done, or just about. I just need to get the bath painted. The work and materials cost about 12,000 lei (a bit over £2000, or around NZ$4000). My parents said you can just about pay that for a set of taps in New Zealand. As for them, they’re about to get the builders in for an altogether more ambitious renovation. They’ll probably need to vacate their house for a period. They’d been stressed because of delays in getting the builders to come. Soon they’ll take delivery of a new electric car. I often wish Mum and Dad could be content with cooking, eating, watching the flowers grow, and playing euchre with their friends, like my mother’s own parents did.

On Thursday my brother had keyhole surgery to repair his knee ligament which had been shot to pieces from overuse in the army. He said he was under general anaesthetic for an hour, and described the experience as like something out of Red Dwarf – that hour was mysteriously deleted. He talked about the artificial intelligence revolution, embracing the concept much more than me. He said, “It’s all fast-evolving mathematics.” Fast-evolving mathematics, you say? (He got an F grade in his GCSE maths.) Are you just making shit up, I asked him. I said that fast-evolving mathematics has been responsible for a lot of misery, like the 2008 crash. To demonstrate I turned my camera around and scrawled a random formula on my whiteboard (making shit up), then added a fudge factor to it. He then said I looked like one of those Open University professors in the eighties, complete with beard. This was, I suppose, what you call banter.

This morning I gave my first maths lesson of 2023. Matei, who started at British School when it opened in 2019, said he now thinks in English, even when he’s alone in his thoughts. For me, a foreign language becoming dominant in my life like that is hard to imagine. He said he uses Romanian at home with his parents and his dog, but that’s about it. His Romanian lessons at school are relegated to minor importance. That verged on sad for me. On the way to our lesson I cycled on the cobblestones of Piața Traian, then had to negotiate a wobbly old yellow tricycle; the man sitting on it reminded me of Omar Sharif, though it must have been watching Doctor Zhivago recently that made me think that. That all lasted seconds and seemed perfectly normal, but before coming to Romania it would have been bizarre.

The darts. What a match the final was between the two Michaels, van Gerwen and Smith. In the second set, van Gerwen left 144 after six darts, but missed double 12 for a nine-darter. Nothing too crazy there, but Smith himself was on 141 after six darts and proceeded to check out on double 12 for a perfect leg. That had never happened before and the commentators couldn’t cope. Van Gerwen, the clear favourite, was just a notch below his best; Smith took advantage. I had a lesson in the morning and I couldn’t watch the end of it. When I went to bed, Smith was 5-3 up. Either there would be a big shock or a big comeback, and it was the former, Smith winning 7-4 after a tense finish.

Song of the last few days: Aimee Mann’s Save Me. It’s a masterpiece. It’s part of the soundtrack to Magnolia, a three-hour film that I saw once but can’t remember anything about except the boy who peed his pants on a quiz show.

The weather. It’s like April, with sunshine and temperatures rising into the teens. The mild conditions mean I can get to my lessons easily, but it does all feel weird. This time six years ago I was waking up to temperatures in the negative teens.

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Winter is upon us once more

December 2, 2022 by 0 Comments

… but right now it’s pretty benign. I’ve just been to watch the parade for Romania’s national day. This time it was outside the cathedral, and from where I stood I looked directly up at the windows of my old apartment. In the past the parade took place outside the Timiș council building, and last year we all congregated in Central Park as the tanks, police cars and fire engines went by in the middle distance. They played the national anthem – one of only a handful in a minor key – and then there was a lot of hanging around as mostly inaudible sermon-like speeches were delivered before all the military vehicles and people in uniform drifted by, and two choppers flew overhead.

I’m now on day two of escitalopram after my vanilla citalopram ran out and all shipments had been halted. No side effects yet, touch wood. I got the results of the tests I had on Monday. My cholesterol is high as it’s always been, and some of my liver enzymes seem to be elevated – hopefully when I see my doctor next Tuesday he’ll tell me what that all means. I’ll also ask him to refer me to a specialist. I continue to be pleasantly surprised by my level of medical care in this country. I could see a doctor at the drop of a hat if I needed to, not like in the UK where I’d be waiting days. I’m baffled by how accepting the Brits are of their increasingly shitty reality. Maybe the easy availability of consumer goods makes them lose sight of the big picture.

I had my latest lesson with the four twins yesterday. They live in the west of the city, a half-hour bike ride away, beyond the road that’s being churned up to lay new tram tracks, and almost right next to the 1000-seater rugby stadium. Yes, rugby is played in Romania; the national side will play in next year’s World Cup. Romanians tend to pronounce “rugby” somewhere between ruby and ribby with no hint of a g, and I try to point them in a more native-sounding direction. The lesson went fine, although the younger boy sat out one of the games, saying he was bored. In the lesson with the single twins on Monday, we discussed what things are supposed to bring good luck in certain cultures, such as a horseshoe, a four-leaf clover, or a rabbit’s foot. We then went on to lucky colours and numbers. What numbers are lucky? The boy said, in all seriousness, 69, without seeming to realise what it meant. Where did you get that from?! “Toma from my class said so.” Tell Toma he’s wrong!

Mum and Dad are back home. Dad said he’d been looking forward to getting back, but felt flat the moment he actually did so. It’s funny how that can work. For him, it might have just been all the chores that they were suddenly confronted with. They told me about the woman they sat next to on the plane. She was Indian, in her fifties, and was clearly far out of her comfort zone. She squatted rather than sat, as if being on a chair was alien to her (perhaps it was in the town or village she came from) and spent the whole journey with a blanket over her head, never eating anything or even taking a sip of water. For ten hours. She had the aisle seat and couldn’t get that she had to move out of the way to let my parents sit down. She didn’t know a word of English. And for some reason she was flying to New Zealand. I found my parents’ account of her fascinating; there’s the basis for a whole novel right there.

The Glass Hotel is great. I’m coming to the end of it. She’s done her research, that’s for sure. I like all the references to shipping, They make me think I’m back in Devonport in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis (which is a major theme of the book). Late at night I’d watch the dockers, lit up like fireflies, from the window of my flat. I became a container spotter: P&O Nedlloyd, Maersk, Hamburg Süd, the occasional Matson. Each colossal container ship carried thousands of these huge boxes, many weighing 30-odd tons, and that made me feel pleasantly small.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :)

An agonising day

November 30, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’d just about got over my latest kidney stone business when Sunday happened. I woke up at about 5:30 with sinus pain, the sort that eats into the quality of my life without completely wrecking it. I got up just before eight. The pain in my left sinuses was still there, and getting more intense. By nine it had become unbearable. Sheer agony. I didn’t go to bed, because pacing up and down helps relieve the pain at least somewhat. Normally the excruciating pain lasts two hours, but what if it doesn’t this time? What if the torture lasts hours or days on end, what then? It did start to subside at eleven, and I went to bed until half-two. I couldn’t eat anything – it wouldn’t have stayed down. The rest of the day I was on a go-slow, and even two days later I feel devoid of energy. Yesterday I felt a strange calmness come over me, as if nothing in the outside world really mattered. No TV please, and no internet if I can help it. Do my lessons and don’t do much else.

Yesterday I had an early-morning lesson, then went to the doctor’s surgery for blood and urine tests. When I got back I made myself a late breakfast (because I had to fast before the tests), and in the middle of eating it, the phone rang. You haven’t paid. The lady used the posh Romanian word for paid, achitat, instead of the common word, plătit. You’re right. How embarrassing. In the afternoon I had the face-to-face lesson with the single pair of twins, and I passed by the doctor’s on the way. All the tests came to 356 lei (£63; NZ$120), so it wasn’t especially cheap. I’ll post my results next time. I seriously need to consider surgery on my sinuses. My normal doctor, who is generally very good, prescribes me pills or sprays that are of very little benefit. As Mum said, spray and walk away.

I’ve been quickly getting through (and thoroughly enjoying) The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel. It’s the second book of hers I’ve read, the first being Station Eleven which is all about a fictional pandemic and its aftermath (I reread bits of it at the start of the Covid outbreak).

Mum and Dad are now on their way from Singapore to Christchurch. They Skyped me from the airport this lunchtime (my time). All around I could see Airportland. Flashing (and surprisingly fast) buggies, travelators that seemed to stretch miles, and a sign saying Changi Terminal One. Changi consists of four vast terminals. They were too tired to enjoy their stay in Singapore much this time, although they’d had a very good beef dish from a street market, or bar, the night before. On the London-to-Singapore leg, they had to contend with a screaming baby for the entire 13½ hours. When I spoke to them today, they dearly wanted to get home.

Two new students tomorrow – a twelve-year-old boy and his mother, separately. Tomorrow will be St Andrew’s Day, the first of two public holidays. Thursday (1st December) is Romania’s national day. Many Romanians have decided to take Friday off as well, giving them a five-day weekend.