by I’ve just heard about John Key’s shock resignation. I didn’t see that coming. For a third-term prime minister he was (is?) extremely popular. Throughout his eight years as PM he has benefited enormously from a weak opposition and a succession of uninspiring opposition leaders. They’ve enabled him to get away with being, at times, fairly weak himself. The Auckland housing crisis, the hundreds of thousands of children in poverty and an aging population are all major issues that he and his government have failed to tackle head-on. He could have handled the Christchurch earthquakes better and the Pike River disaster much better. It frustrated me how many people were taken in by his “common man” persona when in reality he was anything but. Some people on the left of politics really can’t stand the man but I wouldn’t put myself in that category. He’s presided over a prosperous country, largely safe and free of corruption (more on that in a minute). Good on him for making the move. I wonder how his exit will shape the political landscape in 2017. The global political environment being as it is, it’s hard to imagine Winston Peters not making significant gains. And who will take over as PM? Perhaps Bill English, who I’ve always had time for. If it’s Judith Collins I’m definitely staying in Romania.
I had a reasonably active weekend. I managed to play 6½ sets of tennis, all involving the guy from the language school who I seem to have made a connection with. On Saturday I played on clay for the very first time. The Romanian word for clay is zgură, one of those amazing words they have that begin with ‘z’ followed immediately by a consonant. The courts were in an indoor centre in the east of the city. The surface took some getting used to, but I think I liked the clay. We started a game. He struggled a bit with his serve in practice so when he won the toss he put me into bat. I lost the first point and as I called out the score, zero cinșpe, I thought, wow, I’m calling out the score in Romanian, this is awesome. My serve had been fine in the warm-up but eluded me in actual play and I served two double faults to drop the first game. I broke back but in my next service game I double-faulted three times. Un coșmar, a nightmare, I said. (I knew coșmar because it’s a word they’ve pinched from French: cauchemar.) Despite being massively handicapped by my serve I clambered out of a 15-40 hole to win that game, and grew in confidence from there. My serve improved, my defensive game was solid, and I took out the first set 6-1. I then won the second by the same score. I was ready to go home but, unbeknown to me, we’d booked the courts for two hours. I was getting tired. I fell behind 3-0 in the third set (sensing my tiredness he played some judicious drop shots), I drew level at 3-3, and then the clock ran out on us.
Yesterday it was time for doubles, this time on a hard indoor court in some university complex. The court was cramped to say the least: only about seven feet separated the baseline and the wall, there was a similar distance between the sideline and the wall, and even the ceiling made a high lob an impossible shot. I played with the language school guy. From what I could tell, our opponents worked for Radio Timișoara, or at least one of them did. My partner was quite competitive. He would never shut up, and it was hard to know what he was saying, in Romanian or English, in such an echoic building. He loved high-fives and other tactile gestures, all the stuff that drives me mad. We played four sets in all, losing three to one, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-2. In the fourth set we appeared to have some momentum as we led 2-0 with a point for 3-0, but we just ran out of steam.
The score of the matches was, frankly, the least important part. The real purpose for me was meeting people and speaking some Romanian. All those hours I spent thirty-odd years ago hitting against a wall or playing in the (very cramped) back yard with my parents are still paying dividends now. After the doubles match three of us went for some beers in a nearby bar (outside, where it was about 4 degrees). Our remaining opponent had taken his car. I mentioned Romania’s zero-tolerance drink-drive policy. My partner said, yes, but he’s got connections in the police. I wanted to say corupția ucide or corruption kills, but thought better of it. I think if our opponent had drunk a lot rather than just two beers he still might have been in trouble with the law but who knows? Corruption is rife in Romania, no question, and when incompetent people are given positions of responsibility because of who they know, and when backhanders allow people to jump the medical queue ahead of more deserving people, then yes, it does kill. My only question is whether the situation in America, where they’ve elected a totally incompetent billionaire to be president, is any better.
I really need to find an apartment and a few more students.