Month: March 2016

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.

Tennis

We did it

March 24, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Some good news: our team did win the interclub competition for our grade.

In Wellington they split the season into two competitions – pre-Christmas, where we finished mid-table, and post-Christmas, where we finished first out of seven teams by the slimmest of margins.

We tied on points with the team who beat us in the penultimate round of matches. The first tie-breaker wasn’t head-to-head (which would have been curtains for us, obviously) but overall wins and losses. Our rivals, like us, had five wins and one loss. The next criterion was set differential: we finished on +16 to their +11.

The teams in third and fourth place were nipping at our heels too. There were no stand-out teams, and our winning total of 32 points (out of a possible 48) is probably some kind of historic low. But somebody had to win, and how often in life have I been part of a winning team? Hardly ever. I certainly played my part in the win: all those straight-set singles wins were a big help, and although some of my doubles losses were disappointing, the closeness of those defeats was crucial in eking out overall wins, as well as for our set differential when it came to that.

In a round robin competition like this, how should you separate teams tied on points? In football, should you use goal difference or head-to-head as the first tie-breaker? I’m firmly in the goal difference camp. Why use only one (or two) matches to break the tie when you can use them all (which could be as many as 38 or 46 matches)? Why shouldn’t every goal in every game be worth something? And when three (or more) teams tie, head-to-head can get messy. The same principle applies in a tennis competition. It’s just as well whoever made the rules of Wellington interclub saw things the same way.

Tennis

Interclub tennis – Week 9 (undefeated!)

March 19, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Our team went into the last round of matches with a chance of winning the post-Christmas competition. I don’t yet know whether this morning’s performance was good enough – it depends on the outcome of a match between two other contenders for the title.

We played the same team as last week but in a different order. My doubles partner was elevated to number one, so I played in the top doubles match against big servers and big hitters. One of them was a young Serbian who played in a Novak Djokovic shirt. I could tell he’d had many hours of coaching. In the first few games the rallies just went on and on and on… Actually no, it almost entirely rally-free tennis. Remarkably there were no breaks of serve at all in the first set. I don’t ever remember playing such a set before. We missed some break point chances but then had to save three set points at 4-5, love-40 on my serve (I’d won both my previous service games to love). We did save them and got to 6-6 and a tie-break, but that was our undoing; we quickly fell 5-0 behind before losing it 7-3. After that “macho” service-break-free first set, there were six breaks in the second which we lost 6-3 after having a point for a 4-1 lead. I had a bad time at the net in the second set, even by my standards. That was disappointing, even if we got closer than I expected we would given out opponents’ sheer firepower. We somehow avoided sudden death in the first set, despite getting to deuce a few times, but played three decisive points in the second set, winning one of them.

I played my singles in the heat of Wellington’s never-ending summer. My opponent, who turns 62 next week, works as a photographer. I felt confident that my younger legs would see me through in a match I needed to win to give our team a chance of winning the morning’s contest, let alone the competition as a whole. My opponent aced me on the very first point and I had to climb over the fence to retrieve the ball. Apart from that I started comfortably enough, but even though I won the first set 6-1 I’d lost my dominance by the end of it. I dug deep to open up a 3-1, 40-love lead in the second set, but on one of my game points I called a ball in that was out over the baseline according to my team-mate; to be honest I thought it was out too, but I didn’t know it was out. I dropped my serve, and played two absolutely shocking games to go 4-3 behind when I should have just about been off the court. I’d lost all confidence in my shots, everything I tried came back with interest, and worst of all I was stringing double faults together. I needed to win in straight sets for our team to win. It was all unravelling. But my opponent couldn’t quite keep up his level, I regained some consistency, and I won the last three games to give the team the overall win. We won three matches out of six, with every match being decided in two sets, but we won by an eleven-game margin.

And guess what? I finished the season with an unbeaten singles record. Nine wins out of nine, 18 sets out of 18. I didn’t expect that for one minute at the start of the season. I had my hairy moments along the way, not least the match a couple of weeks ago where I faced four set points in the first set, but I did it! My doubles record was nowhere near as good (four losses including the last three matches) but maybe that just shows that I don’t need other people. Flatmates, workmates, team-mates, who needs ’em?!

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.

Politics

Gerrymandering – stop the madness!

March 15, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Feeling better about my living situation, because I know it won’t last for ever, has enabled me to think of other things, such as…

Gerrymandering. A lot of people know this word without knowing what it means. It’s a political term for the process of dividing an area (in the US, a state) into districts so as to give one party disproportionate power. Each state in the US is divided into a number of congressional districts, each of which elects one member to the House of Representatives. In the case of North Carolina, which was mentioned on Al Jazeera tonight, prompting me to write this post, there are 13 districts. By law, each district has roughly the same population. In the state of North Carolina as a whole, support is just about evenly split between the Republicans and Democrats. But the Republicans control 10 of the 13 districts! How? Well, because they have control of the state, they get to draw the boundaries between the districts. And that’s how you end up with maps like this. The “before” map is absolutely batshit crazy, right? The aim of the Republicans is to pack lots of Democrat-voting people (in this instance African-American people) into as few districts as possible, conceding those districts by massive margins, while hoovering up all the remaining districts by far smaller margins. So what starts out as 50:50 becomes anything but. The same thing goes on in (most?) other states, such as Illinois, where districts have shapes that are just as absurd. And the Democrats engage in this process too. It’s totally undemocratic, just like so much of America’s “democracy”; power is taken out of the hands of the people and placed in the hands of the few who draw those goddamn maps. It also leads to massive inefficiencies and in some cases (like in North Carolina) expensive lawsuits.

Unlike so much of American politics, where I wouldn’t know where to start trying to sort out, gerrymandering is a problem that I could solve myself. Give me a week and a decent GIS program, and from almost the other side of the world, I could make the US significantly more democratic than it is now. I’d respect geographical features and centres of population, but pay no attention whatsoever to racial or other demographic data: drawing boundaries along racial lines is part of the problem. Of course it would be better if the US could abandon the district system altogether and bring in something like STV (which could even help end the horrible two-party system) but you have to start somewhere.

North Carolina and four other states vote in the presidential primaries in a few hours’ time. Donald Trump might have one hand on the Republican nomination this time tomorrow. Although I think he’s odious, he’s giving the biggest middle finger to the system (even if he has the smallest hands) and when people are so desperate and fed up, that has a definite appeal.

Tennis

Interclub tennis – Week 8

March 12, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

I made a bad start to this morning’s interclub. I thought we were playing at Karori, not Kilbirnie. I arrived at Karori in plenty of time, but none of my team-mates turned up. One of the guys we played last week did turn up, however. Damn. I had a look at the drawsheet and had to hightail it to Kilbirnie, which isn’t particularly close to Karori (or Kelburn or Khandallah or any other posh places beginning with K that I might have forgotten about). At the time I thought, this is normal anxiety, normal stress brought about by a normal everyday event. It almost makes a nice change.

I didn’t play well in the doubles, to put it mildly. In the first few games I hardly hit the ball. That might be why we led 4-1. Our opponents had no problems wiping out our lead, and we were fortunate when they caught the tape on the sudden-death point in game nine (the only game of the match to reach sudden death) to put us back in front. We broke in the next game to win the set, despite my general ineptitude. We trailed 5-2 in the second set but pulled it back to 5-5 after my only decent spell of the whole match. The 11th game, however, was on my partner’s serve. Just what am I supposed to do in that game? Intercept at the net, that’s what, but I’m so terrible at that. They broke, and their better player put together an impressive love service game to put away the set. His serving didn’t get any worse in the super tie-break which we found ourselves in yet again; we won the first couple of points but went down 10-5. I was really disappointed with my performance and felt I let my partner down badly.

Singles. What a contrast. I played the weaker of our doubles opponents, the same bloke I played in Week 5 when I fell over and lost four straight games but won easily in the end (the format of the competition makes it possible to face the same player twice in one season). This time, after one or two scratchy games early on, I won 6-1 6-0. He had no real weapons and I was able to stay in the rallies and generally wear him down. He came to the net probably too much and I hit a number of passing winners.

The sun came out just as I was finishing my match, and I was more than happy to hang around for the next two hours while the other matches played out. Overall we lost by four matches to two. It could have been worse if my doubles partner hadn’t won his singles 7-5 in the third set. It could have been a lot better if I’d shown up to the doubles.

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.

Tennis

Interclub tennis – Week 7

March 5, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

Everything is such a struggle at the moment that I didn’t hold out much hope for today’s outing at the Wellington club, which is one of many clubs in Wellington. Sleep deprivation would surely have an effect on my play. We started with the doubles: we lost the first set 6-4 after gaining an early lead, then won the second 6-3 to set up the dreaded super tie-break. We trailed 8-4 in the ten-pointer but won the next three points, only for their (better) player to send down two fantastic serves, the second of which was rendered almost unreturnable by a gust of wind. It was a dramatic finish to a close match. Before the shoot-out we went to sudden death six times (0 from 3 in the first set, 2 from 3 in the second).

I had a longish break in between matches. I spent some of that in the club rooms which are always fascinating. Photos of winning interclub teams going back more than a century: the hairstyles, the rackets, even the fonts used for the names. Occasionally I’d recognise a famous surname. Sometimes you’d get opening day photos: just look how many people turned out in the thirties or the fifties compared to today.

In the singles I felt really sluggish. From 3-1 up in the first set I lost four straight games amid a barrage of winners from my opponent. I lost 14 consecutive points or something ridiculous. He made his fair share of errors, but he could accelerate through the ball on the forehand, killing off points that I’d had the upper hand in. I saved a set point on my serve to close to 4-5, then faced three more in the next game which was the longest of the match. He double-faulted on one, but I saved the other two with winners including a volley (most unusual for me). Strangely the fact that I’m feeling so much pressure elsewhere in my life might have helped me on those crucial points. When I’m feeling my sanity going down the plughole, who cares if I might lose a set of tennis? Two more breaks of serve took us into the tie-break in which I struck something of a purple patch to take it 7-2. I still wasn’t overly confident because physically I felt shot to pieces, but I got my nose in front and finished strongly in the second set which I won 6-3. Four months ago I might well have won rather more comfortably, but under the circumstances this was a very good win for me. It took 80 minutes or thereabouts. Sheer determination and a stroke of luck got me over the line in the first set; had I lost that set I suspect the match would have run away from me.

This was a direct match-up between the top two teams in the league. We won three matches out of six but claimed the overall win by virtue of winning more sets. Those four set points were pretty important then, not that I cared about that at the time.

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.