Month: November 2018

Life :) - Romania - Scrabble

Centenary celebrations

November 30, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

One of my students is a chemistry teacher at a very good school called Waldorf (I can’t help but think of the Muppets when I see or hear that word) and she invited me to the school’s celebration of Romania’s centenary, which took place this morning. She gave me precise details about the two buses I needed to take, and stupidly I never looked on a map to see exactly where the place was. If I had, I’d have known it was almost right next to the apartment block of one of my students, and I would have walked or biked there. As it was, I went too far on the first bus (I didn’t realise it was only a five-minute ride) and had to call her. Um, what do I do now? I walked back to the stop I should have got off at, then took the second bus, and I got there just in time, or la țanc (an expression I picked up two weeks ago, meaning “in the nick of time”).

Inside the school, a drummer, one of the older pupils, gave everybody a rousing welcome. My English student led me upstairs into a hall, and a couple of hundred kids, most of them dressed in traditional Romanian attire, formed a spiral. (I didn’t have any clothing along those lines, and was concerned that I’d stand out in jeans and a plain white shirt, but I was fine.) The national anthem was sung. It was a good job the words were projected on a screen: “Deșteaptă-te, române!” is about as far as I get otherwise. The singing, sometimes accompanied by guitars, was lovely. After a video explaining the unification in 1918, some more songs and some readings, we joined hands for a hora, a traditional Romanian dance. I said “Am două picioare stângi” (“I’ve got two left feet”) but I managed, just about. (If you’re uncoordinated, or “unco” as some Kiwis say, you can say in Romanian that you have two left hands.) The kids filed out, to the beat of the drum once more, and I met some of my student’s colleagues, including Bogdan, the history teacher. He was the only man amongst them, although supposedly two other male teachers weren’t in attendance. Downstairs we ate bread covered in pork fat and red onions (some of the traditional food can be interesting) and that was that. In a funny way I felt quite privileged to be there. I could quickly tell that it was a good school; the kids behaved extremely well.

Otherwise things haven’t been so great: I’ve picked up a cold once again. Let’s hope it passes reasonably quickly. I spoke to Dad last night; he’s been having a terrible time with migraines. He said the only saving grace was the interminable spell of rain, which would have put the kibosh on a lot of activities, migraine or not.

The 100th anniversary of the unification is on 1st December, the day after tomorrow. The market stalls are all up in the square; they’ve been painted white unlike the last two years. Tomorrow they’ll be up and running, with the pleasant waft of chimney cakes and mulled wine. Outside my window is a sea of blue, yellow and red. I doubt I’ll see the parade because I’ll be working on Saturday, but I should get to see the lights being switched on and the fireworks, which last year weren’t until 11pm.

On Tuesday morning S and I had a text conversation while I was at Piața Badea Cârțan, the big market. She said, isn’t it wonderful that your job allows you to start the day in a marketplace among the vegetables and cheeses, and I said, yes it absolutely is. I’m certain that the fundamental change in lifestyle has been hugely beneficial to my wellbeing. I’m a different man. (Heck, I sure look like a different man. It’s nine months since I had a haircut.) It would take a helluva lot for me to go back.

Scrabble. I’ve played four games in the last 24 hours. Last night I started with a shocker. I couldn’t get anything going at all. Just one of those games, and I went down in a heap, 283 to 418. My opponent played extremely well; she seemed to actually know words. Perhaps that’s what happens when you’ve played 9000 games. The next game went considerably better: I found an early bingo, my opponent hit back with two of his own but I made RITZ for 69 and that was enough for an 83-point win. I had TOASTER on my (toast) rack towards the end, but I couldn’t find anywhere for it. After the game I realised that of course it has an anagram, ROTATES, that would have gone down. Everything seemed to go right for me in game three. Four bingos and a 536-332 win, just four points off my record game score, which happened way back last New Year’s Eve. I’ve played one more game (so far) today, a 390-all draw. After an early bingo I held a three-figure lead, but my opponent slapped down a trio of bonuses. I continued to score well, without seeming anywhere near another bingo, and I still had my nose in front as we entered the endgame, but my opponent put down EXEC (which I hadn’t seen) for 45 and I was perhaps fortunate to have an out-play that allowed me to escape with a draw.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Unashamed

November 26, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

When I met up with S on Friday I felt pissed off: my work day had been just about wiped out by last-minute cancellations. I asked her if she could help me write a short contract to give my students, starting in the new year. I knew what to say; she just needed to ensure that the Romanian was right. “Pay for lessons in advance, in blocks of five. If you cancel within 24 hours or don’t show up at all, that counts as a lesson. End of.” But a bit more politely. S surprised me by saying that a contract might not be such a good idea. Romanians are unashamedly late and unreliable; perhaps I just need to get used to that. Hmmm. It’s hard, because where I come from, cancelling an appointment half an hour before the start because you’re “not in the mood” (yes, I’ve had that) is laughably bad form. This weekend I took stock of what S said, and realised that my cancellations are running at the same 15% or so that they always have – it’s just felt as though I’ve had more recently because they’ve come in flurries. And heck, when I came here I didn’t know whether me teaching idea would even be viable. It certainly has been. I’ll finish 2018 with more contact hours than a schoolteacher would get in a year.

On a not totally dissimilar theme, today there was a blessing at the yet-to-be-completed monster cathedral in Bucharest. I saw the half-finished monstrosity when I visited two years ago. The final bill will be something like £100 million. In such a poor country it’s an enormous, and very sad, waste of public money.

More positively, buildings are being renovated all the time in Timișoara. There are a lot of them, and limited funds, so it will take a while. Today I saw this beautifully restored building near Piața Unirii. The picture doesn’t quite do justice to it. It’s on quite a narrow street; this was as much of it as I could get in the frame without doing anything fancy.

Today I sold my bike. That was my first bike, which I bought in March. I put it on OLX (Romania’s equivalent of TradeMe) this morning and within 2½ hours it was off my hands. I got the same 200 lei I paid for it, although I had to cough up a 20 lei fee. That’s a pretty good outcome.

Scrabble. I’m trying to learn some seven-letter words, which are extremely important for bingos. Eights are equally useful, and very occasionally you’ll even play a longer bingo. One of those occasions for me was yesterday – the nine-letter MENTIONER, through TI, as a 94-point double-double. That’s one of my best plays to date. Anyway, the sevens. Some people prefer to study alphagrams – seven-letter strings in alphabetical order, which they can map onto the correct word, such as ABEITUX for BAUXITE. This seems a terrible way for me to study. My brain doesn’t work like that. So instead I’ve been studying six-letter “stems” made up of common letters, such as ORNATE, and then coming up with mnemonics for the letters that combine with the stem to produce valid words. For instance, the mnemonic I use for ORNATE is “I’d pinch curving bums”. Any of the letters in that phrase can be added to ORNATE to give a valid seven. The first letter (alphabetically) is B, and that combines to make BARONET and the rather obscure REBOANT. Add C and you get ENACTOR. Adding D will give you TORNADE, which is another word for tornado. (Ashburton had a pretty impressive tornade last week.) The next is G, which makes NEGATOR. And so on, up to V, which gives VENATOR. I had to find a method that was an least vaguely interesting, or else I’d give up.

Three lessons scheduled (!) for tomorrow.

Language learning - Life :) - Scrabble

Apprehension

November 23, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I haven’t written for a while. I just haven’t had a whole heap of news. Last week somebody flicked the big black switch marked “WINTER”; it was going to happen eventually. Now the wooden sheds are being put up in the square in preparation for the Christmas market. Everything is now coming around for me for a third time. S and I decided to see Sibiu’s world-famous-in-Romania Christmas market the weekend after the centenary celebrations. We’ll head over there on Friday 7th December – two weeks tomorrow – and come back on the Sunday. I must admit I’m quite apprehensive about spending a whole weekend with S. Although come to think of it, I’d be apprehensive about spending a whole weekend with almost anyone.

Last weekend S and I wandered around the area just on the other side of the river from where I live. We stared at and talked about the beautiful buildings – she knew some of their history – and ended up in Scârț, the fantastically bohemian bar with all the communist memorabilia on the walls. As S said, Romania has got to stage where it feels it take the piss (just a little) out of its communist past. When I got back home my sinuses flared up, and I suffered two hours of horrific pain. Even when the pain had subsided I felt knocked for six, and the next day I wanted to do absolutely nothing. Unfortunately I’d sort of committed myself to seeing Fantastic Beasts 2, the ninth or tenth (or whatever) Harry Potter film. Not my cup of tea even if I was feeling 100%, but we saw it in 3D, and that made it kind of fun. The best part was getting to speak some Romanian on the way there and back.

I speak Romanian whenever I can, except with S, because her English is that ridiculously good (she hates me telling her that). I will insist that we speak Romanian for at least part of the trip. You might think I’d be almost fluent by now, but I’m an awful long way from that. My student at the university asked me how I’d say simple phrases like “She washed her car” and “The film we saw last week”, and I felt all at sea, because of the pronouns which are still a mess in my mind. “The big blue building was destroyed in the war” or “The weather will be foggy tomorrow” pose no such problems.

I’ve played four games of Scrabble this evening, winning three, despite being out-bingoed 5-4 over the four games. In the last game my opponent played strangely, seemingly fishing on every non-bingo turn. He played two bingos, but I might still have won without the solitary bingo I found late in the game. As well as playing, I’m trying to study seven-letter words. In my next post I might describe how I’m trying to learn them.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Heavy stuff

November 12, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Friday night I picked up a cold. Again. It’s not a lot of fun. Last night S invited me to see Luna Amară (Bitter Moon), a rock band from Cluj that have been around a while, at a venue called Capcana (The Trap), only a ten-minute walk from here. I didn’t expect her to have two female companions, and that totally threw me. They communicated in that way that some people do here, mixing English words into otherwise Romanian sentences, because they think it makes them sound so damn sophisticated. It gives them an air of superiority over those who don’t know enough English to be able to do it. For me, a native English speaker who takes words fairly seriously, this kind of speech is at best comical and at worst extremely jarring. We arrived at eight, but the band didn’t start playing till ten. The crowd, who weren’t that young, were restless by that stage. The band weren’t young either, but they certainly put their heart and soul into it. At times I thought the frontman might burst a blood vessel. About 20% of the music was beautiful; the rest was heavy, headbanging stuff. S, it turns out, is a headbanger. For me it was an experience, and what’s the point of living in Romania if I don’t experience things, but I breathed I sigh of relief at around 11:30 when it was all over and I could go home. I wonder what S thought of me.

Today I haven’t felt like doing much at all. Eight games of Scrabble – six wins, two losses – might have been the highlight. I won the first five games to extend my winning streak and reach my highest rating yet, which seemed slightly inflated. The run came to an end with a fantastic game in which my opponent got off to a flying start and played very well throughout as far as I could see. I did my best to claw my way back, and towards the end I was in position to slap down SHOREmAN for what would probably have been a game-winning bingo, but my opponent blocked it and in the end I fell 46 points short. The next game was one of those horror shows that I experience from time to time. Getting stuck with a Q and nowhere to play it, being sure I had 24 bingos on my rack (containing a blank) but being unable to find any of them, and at times seeing absolutely nowhere to play. My total was abysmal as I went down 260 to 394. In the final game I drew both blanks on my opening rack and immediately bingoed, and later drew all four S’s, but only scraped home by 15 points.

I taught 28 hours last week. In some of my lessons with kids I saw both spoilt-brat syndrome and pushy-parent syndrome, simultaneously. A funny moment came with Matei, my ten-year-old student. I asked him to answer a series of “What if…?” questions, one of which was “What would you say if you could address the whole world?” Matei simply said, “Donald Trump sucks.” My lessons with adults were generally enjoyable.

Mum has been on a golfing weekend in Alexandra. That gave me the rare opportunity to talk to Dad. We talked for more than an hour. He told me how it really is. Mum gets wound up by certain people at the golf club, as she did at school in the UK, as she does pretty much wherever she goes. She’s unable to just let it all wash over her or take a back seat; she must get fully involved. Apparently the looming golf trip (and having to be with those people) dominated their recent trip to Moeraki and made the whole thing miserable. Then last week Dad received a final bill for the MG that he’s having restored. The figure was less than Dad expected and he thought Mum would be pleased when he showed it to her. Au contraire. Last week Geraldine had a decent fall of snow. In November. He showed me the mountains covered in the white stuff when we spoke on FaceTime. Timișoara has continued to be bathed in sunshine. Weather, like so much else in the second decade of the 21st century, has ceased to make sense.

Talking of bills, I did a double take last night when I saw the rateable value on my near-worthless Wellington apartment had risen by nearly 50%! You couldn’t make this shit up. I’ll have to appeal or do something.

Anybody reading this blog – and I know there are many thousands of you out there – please read this article from last weekend’s Mail on Sunday. Especially if you have any experience in dealing with autism. It’s horrific and will probably make you angry as it did me, but it gives you some idea of what a shitshow the treatment of mental health problems has become in the UK.

Films

Phew…

November 7, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

When I switched on Romanian TV this morning and saw that the Democrats had taken control of the House after all, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was awake at 3am for some reason, and I had a look at Fivethirtyeight’s live blog. For the midterms, the site has been expressing probabilities using fractions rather than percentages, to stop people from freaking out over small changes of a percentage point or less. But on election night itself that didn’t work: the Democrats’ House probability plummeted from 11-in-12 to 2-in-5 in just 20 minutes. Full freak-out mode, in other words. Shit, Trump is going to carry on unchecked, and with the Republicans’ majority in the Senate boosted, they’ll probably get that health care bill through now, which will hurt and kill people. At that point, a tweet from Nate Silver was posted on the live blog, saying that the election night model was too sensative to early results, which were probably from rural areas that generally skew red. When I switched off my laptop I still feared the worst. In the end it isn’t the blue wave that some were predicting, and the American electoral system is so awful that all outcomes are somewhat depressing, but at least it’s a start. The most pleasing aspect was the turnout: the highest in the midterms for half a century, even if it’s still terrible by British or New Zealand (but not Romanian) standards.

Plenty of work again, in what it is yet another week of beautiful weather. Yesterday I had five lessons, including a slightly strange one last night: my student who is in his early forties and was born and bred in Timișoara said he hated the city. My views are quite the opposite. All the beautiful buildings, all the parks and green spaces, all the markets brimming with produce and life, all the trams clattering by. None of it is perfect, but I think I like that. Timișoara is a bit mad, a bit random, full of seams and fuzzy edges, at least once you get outside the god-awful central-Auckland-like angularity of Iulius Mall and its environs. And my job allows me to really be part of Timișoara. Right now I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else. (Of course if I’d been here all my life, I might feel different.)

Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes, the film was awesome. God, what an amazing band Queen were. Such talent across the board. What a fertile mind Freddie Mercury must have had. But after the film I couldn’t help but think how mainstream music has become such unbearably crap. It’s almost all meaningless pap. Last night I used Queen’s Bicycle Race in one of my lesson; he’s a keen biker and I’d spent a good deal of my day on a bike, so it seemed a good choice.

Books - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Social life – what’s that?

November 5, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

After last week I was absolutely knackered. To be honest I still am. I had 30½ hours of lessons, which is a healthy rather than a ridiculous total, but it was my biggest week since April. With more work comes more exercise: the most convenient way for me to travel to my “off-premises” lessons is by bike.

On Friday night I joined S for drinks to celebrate her recent purchase of an apartment. After my experience, why entering the property market should be a cause for celebrating is beyond me, but I got to meet some of her work colleagues and we ended up at the Bierhaus where we tried some locally-brewed craft beers. S invited me to play board games last night, but I had two more lessons yesterday morning and after that I felt extremely sluggish so I said no. Normally I might have agreed, but tonight I’ll be seeing the film about Bohemian Rhapsody (which has the makings of a treat) with S and some of her friends. Three social events in a single weekend are one too many for me. Whatever happens with S, it’s great to have a semblance of a social life in Timișoara at last. I’m planning on joining S on a trip to Sibiu, either for Romania’s centenary on 1st December, or the following weekend. Either way, we’ll be there for the amazing (from what I’ve heard) Christmas market.

Interesting moments keep cropping up at work. One of my female students is a 23-year-old in her final year of a medical degree. Sometimes I also see her younger sister, who speaks English at a very basic level, at the same time. One time, when both sisters were in attendance, I did a lesson on directions, because the topic seemed appropiate for both of them. At one point I talked about pubs. “Is there a good pub near here? How do you get to the nearest pub?” The older sister then said that she didn’t do pubs, and could we please make the destination a church instead? She’s a devout adherent of the Pentecostal church.

After yesterday’s lessons I read a few chapters of The Handmaid’s Tale (S had given me a copy) and played eleven games of Scrabble, winning nine. I am improving, without doubt. My last game had just a 12-minute clock but I coped with that without too many problems. My next step (and it’s a big one) is to learn the words. I need to have the threes down pat and get a handle on their front and back hooks. I got my fingers burnt in a recent game by not realising ADRY was a word (why would it be?), and voilà, my opponent was able to hook an A onto the front of DRY and make use of the triple word square in the endgame, leaving me a-high and a-dry. I lost that game by three points. I get down plenty of bingos, but the vast majority of those are words I know from everyday life, and at some point I’ll actually need to study them in a way that isn’t a chore, if such a method exists.

Yes, the Red Sox are so-called world champions for the fourth time this century. Great city, great fans, you can’t say they don’t deserve it. What an incredible season they had.

The midterm elections take place on Tuesday night, my time. The Trump factor has focused the world’s attention on them in a way I’ve never seen before. According to Fivethirtyeight, one of my favourite sites, the Democrats will take the House but the Republicans will keep the Senate, so long as there isn’t a systematic polling error in one direction, which you can hardly discount.

Sodding Halloween, which shouldn’t be within 5000 miles of Romania’s borders, is mercifully over. It’s 4th November and it’s T-shirt weather here.