Month: May 2016

Life :) - Tennis

I still don’t get it

May 27, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

My parents just FaceTimed me from Desenzano del Garda in Northern Italy, where they’re staying for my cousin’s wedding which takes place in a few hours. Last night there was a big pre-wedding do which Dad said I would have absolutely hated. He’s absolutely right. You travel half-way around the globe to stay in such a beautiful place, only to be stuck with all those people! What a waste! I’m so sociable, aren’t I? I made a list a few years ago of five things I really just don’t get, of which weddings was one.

Simona Halep’s third-round match at the French Open starts in 15 minutes, and I hope I can watch that with Romanian commentary. I’ll then see Andy Murray’s match with Ivo Karlovic if I hold out that long. Tomorrow (forecast to be a wet and horrible day) I’ve got a property manager coming over to assess my apartment.

The prospect of doing something I want to do feels, well, amazing.

Language learning - Life :) - My big plan - Tennis

Humming

May 21, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

The last few days I’ve been humming. During the day everything has been beautiful, amazing, wonderful, and at night I’ve hardly slept. On Thursday, after my fifth night in a row of sleeping for a couple of hours max, I decided to take a sick day, only my second in over two years there. It was the perfect day for it, the sun was shining and my flatmate had moved out the day before. I walked around my local area for two hours or so, wide-eyed, taking photos of beautiful trees and houses that were now so much more colourful than I remembered. Other than that I gave the bathroom a good clean (it needed it – my flatmate was a rather aggressive user of the toilet) and studied some Romanian.

I’ve now got my Google set to Romanian: the “I’m feeling lucky” button is now “Mă simt norocos” and if I search for Sibiu I get aproximativ 32.100.000 (de) rezultate in just 0,57 secunde. The same goes for Google Maps, Google News and Google You Name It, everything is in Romanian including all the suggested search terms and my supposedly tailored results. As anti-Google as I can be at times (they are so pervasive), that’s pretty cool. There’s also a social network, Google Plus, which I’ve joined. It’s much smaller than Facebook or Twitter, with “only” a few million active members. I find the network part of Google Plus as confusing as hell (and of course all the terminology and help pages are in Romanian for me), but what I like about it is that it’s great for viewing and sharing photos, and I’ve spent hours staring at colourful photos of Sibiu and elsewhere. I might even post some photos of Wellington at some stage, and I’ll post the link here if that happens. I’ve even got an animated Romanian flag as my mascot or avatar or whatever you’re supposed to call it. I had to find one that wasn’t so fast as to drive everyone batty and to re-order the frames so that the first one looked nice (sometimes you only get to see a still photo and it defaults to the first frame). Yeah, working with animated images, or GIFs, is fun.

romania_done

 

I think what’s made me hum is the realisation that I’ve got so much freedom. I can be who I want and for years I didn’t even know it. Isn’t that something? Billions of people around the world don’t have that. In my own country we do pretty well in the freedom stakes, but so many of us are constrained by the situations we end up in. Take my boss. He plans to move house soon, but can’t move more than a mile or two because his three kids would have to move to a different school otherwise. He works extremely hard and his mind works extremely quickly but to me, as I watch him shove TV food down his throat while he rushes from one bullshit meeting to the next, none of it seems worth it. I used “TV food” there because of something I saw on a train in America. The guy in front of me in the food car dropped an armful of processed crap on the counter, and the bloke behind the desk tried to stop him from buying it: “You don’t want to be spending eighteen dollars on all that TV food.”

It would be criminal for me to waste this freedom I have. I haven’t got a two-mile radius dammit, I’ve got a great big map. My train itinerary which will cover some of that map is likely to be:

  1. London to Paris via the Eurostar, 2½ hours;
  2. Paris to Munich, humming along at 200mph on a double-decker train (Seat61.com tells me to get a top-deck seat for the best views), 5¾ hours;
  3. Munich to Budapest overnight, 9¾ hours, and I’ll have a few hours to look around Budapest when I arrive;
  4. Either Budapest to Timișoara, 5 hours, arriving in the evening of day two, or Budapest to Sibiu, 10 hours (why so much longer I have no idea), arriving in the early morning of day three.

Without Seat61.com I don’t know where I’d be.

A week ago yesterday I had my performance review, the last one that will matter in my current job (and I’d prefer not to ever have another job where they’ll matter). I got through it OK, and that felt pretty good. The same evening I went to a regional tennis awards presentation. Someone at the club nominated me for an award for those nine consecutive singles wins I had, but there wasn’t much chance I’d ever win it. Most of the prizes went to the elite players who already win heaps of awards anyway. The best moment of the evening was when a bloke of about eighty, who had done so much work organising competitions over decades, was recognised with the volunteer of the year award; it brought a tear to his eye.

Talking of freedom, having this apartment to myself again, and the freedom that gives me, feels incredible.

Language teaching - My big plan

I can (almost) properly plan my dream now

May 17, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

My flatmate moves out tomorrow. I can’t believe I just wrote the last sentence. The last four months have taken quite a heavy toll on me – lack of energy has been an almost constant problem – and I’ve got a lot to pack into the next four.

My parents took off this morning. They’re away for ten weeks and will spend time in the UK, Italy and Romania! They’ve got four days each in Timișoara and Sibiu, with a train ride in between. I can’t wait to get FaceTime calls from those places. (For my birthday last month my parents gave me an iPhone 4 which they bought on TradeMe but it’s turned out to be unusable as a phone because it’s locked onto some mystery network. And, not to be ungrateful or anything, the screen is too small for 2016. I can still use FaceTime though as long as I have wi-fi.)

I still haven’t decided which city in Romania I’ll live in, although Timișoara is in the lead. I have decided however to take the train from London to get there, to make the experience as awesome as possible. Taking a train trip across Europe is a dream to me. I still have to figure out the best way to do it, with some help from Seat61.com.

My student pulled out of his English lesson yesterday, two hours before I was due to give it. He said he had to go to a friend’s party. I asked if he would reschedule for later in the week but he gave a firm no to that. That’s the third time he’s missed a lesson, if I include the one scheduled for Easter Monday. I’m not that happy with him. Is he just feigning interest? I think it’s human nature to a degree that you don’t value things you don’t pay for. Dad has always said that about giving paintings as presents. Maybe a small charge of $5 a lesson would be better, with a three-strikes-and-you’re-out-style policy for people who don’t show up without good reason (and parties don’t count). I suppose such a policy goes against the ethos of the organisation. It’s frustrating because I really want to do this. Last Tuesday I rushed into town to go to the resources library to pick up some material for last night’s lesson that didn’t happen. I spoke to a Czech lady who works there. She speaks almost perfect English and knows exactly what sounds students find difficult depending on where they come from. I thought, I wish I could be you.

I used a very famous baseball phrase in the preceding paragraph. The Red Sox are red hot right now. Sizzling. Offensively (and it feels weird to use that word in the American sense) they’ve been just about off the charts and it’s been a real team effort.

I played some bad tennis again on Sunday. I was sluggish, as is the norm of late. Afterwards I chatted to a guy whose exploits at the poker table put me firmly in the shade. I also had a meal – again –  with the gay bloke of about my age (or so I thought) who figured I was gay until I told him otherwise. As usual he only ate half his meal. He’s 41 as it happens, and had stomach cancer in 2008, so that explains his eating habits. He’d been given a 20% chance of survival. His story was inspirational.

New Zealand has been in the international news for the wrong reasons, with soaring property prices pushing both buying and renting beyond the means of many, forcing them to sleep in garages or cars. It makes me feel pretty guilty about being so desperate to be by myself.

Language teaching - Life :)

On the up

May 10, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

After six days of feeling run down, I’m suddenly feeling really good.

We had our first post-restructure team meeting today. That meant a new team. Prior to the meeting I didn’t even know who was in my team, or why. That’s probably bad. On Friday we visited a water treatment plant, in a beautiful location it must be said, not far from work, and not far from where I used to do some of my day tramps before tennis sort of put paid to them. Even though I was feeling like crap, it was great to get out of the office. We even got to go on a jigger – a small train – that runs alongside a water pipe through a two-mile-long tunnel. That was a lot of fun. Unfortunately most days at work (such as today) aren’t like that. The highlight of today, undoubtedly, was the ten minutes I spent at the language centre at lunchtime – I dashed in there to get some material for my student. The staff were so helpful – they even knew which sounds people from Burma tend to struggle with.

Last night I tried to stop my student from calling me Teacher – endearing as it is – and asked him to call me by my first name instead. It’s commonplace in NZ even for schoolchildren to call their teachers by their first name. My mum has always asked her kids to address her in the traditional “Mrs Smith” way, even in NZ, and asks their parents to do the same. I’m with her on this. Teachers should be respected.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Tanking

May 9, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

The last few days I’ve had a cold and almost no energy, but I’ve still shown up to work because that sure beats the alternative.

I played tennis on Saturday morning against the guy I narrowly beat in round one of the club champs. This was part of a round robin singles competition that I wish I hadn’t committed myself to. I lost in three sets, 7-5 3-6 6-2. I led 4-2 and 40-15 in the first set but chucked in six double faults (count ’em!) in that god-awful game, quite a feat when you think about it. I still got within two points of what was a dreadful opening set from both of us. We both improved in the second, and when I won that set I expected to carry some momentum into the third, but not a bit of it. I had nothing left in the tank. My opponent sensed this and hit drop shots to good effect as I tried to defend from behind the baseline. He served well in the second and third sets and his win was well deserved. I was glad to get off the court after a match that took 95 minutes, give or take.

Fatigue has been a huge problem for me ever since my flatmate moved in, and I hope I can get an energy boost when he moves out in eleven days (count ’em!). He has been exhausting. He’s not a bad person by any means, but he needs to learn when to leave people alone. My previous flatmate (in 2014) could certainly be a pain in the butt too, but I felt I was helping him get some stability back into his turbulent life and that made me feel good. He’d made some bad decisions and had got involved with the wrong people, but giving people another chance is part of what makes a good human being. I don’t feel anything similar towards my current tenant.

I gave my English lesson tonight. We worked on the forms of the verb to be (I am, he is, etc.) and the contracted forms (I’m, he’s, etc.). I decided to leave it there rather than go on to the negative forms and I’m glad I did. I’d have only confused him. I got him to talk about his new painting job and we made basic sentences about his colleagues: I’m from Myanmar; He’s from New Zealand; They’re from Vietnam. Getting him to pronounce it’s was a battle; I don’t think the ts combination, which is common at the end of English words, exists in his native tongue (and I wouldn’t know where to start with a word like exists). He said he wanted to practise reading so I’ll get him a simple story book for next week’s lesson.

A Tame Impala song came on the radio tonight. I only recently saw the name written down for the first time. A-ha! A non-wild antelope. All this time I thought it was two people’s names, Tame and Parlour. Jack Tame is the US reporter on One News, and there was a footballer by the name of Ray Parlour, so it seemed plausible to me. Tame Impala are similar to MGMT, and I like them just as much. I should probably see them live some time, and make sure I listen to the whole show.

Life :) - Other sports

It’s not just me

May 3, 2016 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Sunday my flatmate invited me to see The Big Lebowski at one of his Meetup groups. I went along purely to see the film – I had no interest in dressing up in a Jeff Lebowski bathrobe or doing anything remotely social. I’m not sure the film quite deserves its cult status but it’s clever in many ways and is certainly worth seeing. But afterwards people discussed the movie (I just wanted to go home) and my flatmate became political and controversial and strident, as he does, and then I realised something. Look at their faces. You’re pissing other people off here. It’s not just me.

I’d come to just about tolerate my flatmate, mainly because he said he’d be out by the end of May. Without that light at the end of the tunnel, it’s likely I’d be in a pretty bad way by now. But at the weekend I thought, shit, I’ve had enough of this. I really want you out of the picture. And what if you decide not to leave?

And that’s exactly the problem. He’s always in the picture, front and centre, commentating on and making his opinions known about just about everything he sees and does, and wanting to involve me in the process. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this tiresome.

Then yesterday something happened. Someone in Liberia had offered him a job. He was booking his flights to New York where he’ll spend a month before going to Africa. He commentated on the online booking process for a good half-hour – “no I don’t want to book a luxury hotel”, “why on earth would I want to buy travel insurance from you?” and so on and so forth. His commentary was music to my ears. He leaves the country on 8th June and will move out, I hope, two weeks earlier. Then I can get on with my life again.

Yes, Leicester City really are the Premier League champions. That’s just staggering. The upper reaches of British football are so money-driven, and such a closed shop, that something like this is pure fantasy. But it’s real and I have no idea how. The format of the Premier League makes it extremely hard to fluke. Any of football’s cup competitions are flukeable. A baseball World Series certainly is. Even a grand slam in tennis is flukeable to a degree. But the Premier League? Leicester must actually have been very very good. How they got to be so good with such limited resources is a happy mystery.

Talking of baseball, the Red Sox have won seven of their last eight games including a three-game sweep of the Yankees and have a narrow lead at the top of their division, but there’s an awful long way to go. Gosh I’d love to go back to Fenway some time – that was awesome.