Month: May 2019

Uncategorized

I thought this happened to other people’s dads

May 30, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I called my parents to find out Dad’s result. Surely it would be fine. According to the specialist, there was a “90-something percent chance” that his bowel polyp was benign. Dad thought he’d have already heard if something was up. When I got through on FaceTime, Mum had just had a haircut. Her hair is now shorter than mine, and Dad said it looked a bit mannish. Then came the news. “I’ve got bowel cancer,” Dad said. “You won’t be seeing us this summer.” Mum had already cancelled their flights to the UK, scheduled for next Monday.

I hadn’t prepared myself for this news. I thought he’d be clear, but Dad’s life has been put firmly on hold. None of us know where this will lead. Yesterday I looked up some statistics from the NHS: 77% of male bowel cancer patients survive the first year. So, you’re saying there’s practically a one-in-four chance that my dad won’t see out the next 12 months?! My instincts are that he’s caught this early and it’s entirely curable, but as yet, we don’t have the slightest clue. News like this forms a line in the sand. If I see a timestamp on an email or a text message, I’m thinking, was that before or after I heard about Dad’s diagnosis?

Seventy, or thereabouts, seems to be a black spot for cancer. Mum’s eldest brother D died of lung cancer a month before his 70th birthday. Another of her older brothers, M, had just made it to 70 when he died from cancer of the oesophagus. Her younger brother G, who has survived his mishap following his bowel cancer operation, turned 68 in April. G may now need kidney dialysis. Dad will be 69 at the end of June.

I was very much looking forward to spending time with the family. The plan was to go Wales for Mum’s 70th birthday next month, and then for my parents to come over to Romania around 1st July, where we’d spend a few days exploring the cooler north of the country. Meeting my parents off the plane or train is such a lovely thing. But that’s all gone out the window. I might end up making a solo trip to that part of Romania instead, and then travelling to Montenegro by train in August. I’ll have to see.

Life goes on. Teaching is much the same, which is a good thing. The wet and stormy weather – in its fifth week, with no end in sight – is still baffling everybody here, and the pubs and bars and restaurants in the centre of town are losing out.

There have been some engrossing matches already at the French Open, which is a nice escape from everything else. I particularly enjoyed last night’s match between two Frenchmen, Benoît Paire and Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Paire won in the end, 6-2 6-2 5-7 6-7 (6-8) 11-9. I was impressed by the court coverage and creativity of both men, and the match showed why it’s generally a bad idea to leave a match early. I bet plenty of people headed for the exits after the second set, and missed a treat. It also showed me why we don’t need tie-breaks in the final set, least of all on clay, where breaks of serve are more common. But sadly we might be witnessing the last-ever major tennis event without final shoot-outs.

After yesterday’s bombshell, everything is now up in the air.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

My best decision: the world of work

May 25, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I had a Skype lesson with a very pleasant woman who speaks well but loves to say “of course” when she’d be much better off with a simple “yes”. It’s a common problem. In our first lesson we discussed the difference between “I smoke” and “I am smoking”, and I asked her if she smoked. “Of course,” she proudly proclaimed. C’mon, this is Romania, dammit! Her job involves making short films. She showed me one of her creations, which was all about Transylvania’s legends, and asked me to check the subtitles. One of the words that appeared in a caption was “landshave”. I was baffled. Landscape? Something about mowing the lawn? The penny dropped the next morning. It was missing a space between “lands” and “have”.

Then it was off to the other side of Iulius Mall for a four-hour stint with the Cîrciumaru family. The mother still only spoke English on rare occasions. There’s no convincing her of the importance of actually speaking the language. It’s rather frustrating. Teaching the boy is starting to get easier. Maybe he’s a bit more comfortable with me.

From there it was a short bike trip to see the 7½-year-old boy. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Faster and faster. Supercharged Simon Says. Throwing and catching. His card collection. His pen collection. Various forms of bingo. Glorified snakes and ladders. Games of luck that, unfortunately, he can’t always win. Vain attempts to read to him. All in all, he’s a nice boy, though.

My work day isn’t over yet. Soon I have another Skype lesson with a guy in the UK who will become a father any time now. Yesterday I had just two lessons, including a tricky one with two boys aged 15 and 12. I met the younger boy, and we entered the older boy’s room. He was in bed. At 4pm. The 12-year-old was glued to his phone. I said out loud, Why am I even here?! What’s the point? Between us we read nine news stories from the “funny” archives, but the comedy clearly didn’t work on them. I gave them a crossword, then we just talked, and I was glad to see the clock roll around to 5:30.

My job does have its awkward moments, but honestly I wouldn’t change it for the world. On Wednesday I had a lesson with a 17-year-old girl (who will be taking IELTS) and her father. We concentrated on speaking. I asked the girl to tell me about the best decision she’d ever made, and she mentioned her choice of high school. I then said that my best decision was to live and work in Romania. She was amazed by that (she has every intention of leaving the country), but I would say it’s true.

It’s just about the end of May, in more ways than one. Theresa has had to navigate some very heavy seas since she took over the helm in 2016, and her captaincy hasn’t been up to it. I’m just worried that whoever takes over will be like the captain of the Costa Concordia a few years back, and people will be wishing they could have May back, a bit like how some people view George W Bush in the Trump era.

The weather has been shocking. After Saturday night’s storm, we were hit by another, more intense one the following night. As soon as the cathedral clock struck eleven, all hell let loose and people outside began to panic. We’ve had more torrential rain and electrical storms this week.

I must get going; the Skype lesson starts in a few minutes.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble - Tennis

Dribs and drabs

May 20, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I had a lesson with the 17-year-old girl, and then had a half-hour wait while some family member delivered her nine-year-old half-brother for my lesson with him. I was scheduled to see the boy immediately after the girl, but they had made a detour to a phone repair shop on the way. I told the girl that I won’t stand for that kind of crap from her family. Lesson first, phone second. Got that? During my lesson with the boy, my phone rang. My parents were FaceTiming me. Obviously I couldn’t answer. This frustrated me because the lesson should have been over by then. After we finished, I called my parents back from nearby Parcul Dacia. It was a pleasure to show them the park – a hive of activity on a sunny Saturday lunchtime, with games of football and four table games in full swing. Dad is still waiting for the results of his colonoscopy. We talked about the books that Mum had ordered for my birthday. They’ve been coming in dribs and drabs. When she read out the titles to me, I told her it sounded like a horse race commentary. Nobody’s Boy coming up the outside; Chasing the Scream bringing up the rear. I’ve made a start on A Death in the Family, which admittedly doesn’t sound a lot like a racehorse.

I’ve managed to pick up a cold, after what had been a good run by my standards. Last night we also had a thunderstorm, so I didn’t sleep a great deal, and I’ve felt sapped of energy today.

I failed to mention that ten days ago I had my first knock of tennis for two years. I wasn’t up to much, but the exercise did me good. If the weather plays ball I’ll book myself in for a session on the wall next to the courts in Parcul Rozelor. In 2014, after an extended spell off the court, I did some long wall workouts using the squash court in our apartment block. They were a great help.

Scrabble. I’m on a winning streak, and my rating is now tantalisingly close to 1500. A lot of that might simply be dumb luck. Yesterday I won all five of the games I played fairly handily, playing eleven bingos to my opponents’ one, but I did draw eight blanks. My favourite play of late is CHIRPED, a 60-point double-double. No bonus, no parallel play, no big X or Z spot, just a good old-fashioned word. I’m still trying to learn words, and my attention has shifted to fours. Learning words is like a giant game of whack-a-mole. Every time I learn a new word, it seems another has vanished from my memory.

Uncategorized

Grim

May 14, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Sunday morning my parents rang with some grim news. My uncle G, Mum’s younger brother, was in intensive care. G is less than two years younger than Mum; he came to my brother’s wedding last year in his first trip to this side of the world. Earlier this year he’d been diagnosed with early-stage bowel cancer. He’d responded well to chemo and his prognosis was good. At the end of last week he had an operation to remove the cancer, but it went horribly wrong. My parents tried to explain what had happened. They fitted a stoma bag which came undone and leaked, causing toxic shock and even a heart attack. He was given antibiotics but didn’t respond. Mum thought about making a trip to Palmerston North to see him but he wouldn’t have recognised her. I got an email from Dad this morning with better news – he is now lucid – and I obviously hope he’ll pull through without damage to his heart or kidneys.

Last week, just before this all happened, Mum was telling me about G’s son – my cousin – who had just booked a trip to Madrid to see the Champions League final between his beloved Liverpool and Tottenham. He was planning to go for just four days. Bloody ridiculous, I thought, to go all the way from Wellington to Spain (you literally can’t go any further without leaving the planet) just a game of football between a load of foreigners. He’s since told my mum, “that’s nothing now”.

My own dad is having treatment tomorrow. After a check-up on his colon they found a polyp which in all probability is benign, but he’s having surgery to remove it. That has put their trip to the UK next month in some doubt. I’m about to give him a call to wish him all the best.

Yesterday I got (and deciphered) the results of my CT scan, that were of course all in Romanian. There are certainly issues with my maxillary sinuses not draining properly, but there was no indication of what I should do next. I guess I need to see the ENT specialist again; it’ll be good to have a piece of paper to present him with.

We’re in the midst of a spell of ugly weather, probably the longest in my 2½-plus years here. It’s making getting to lessons – for both me and my students – that bit more awkward.

The weather is good for Scrabble. I got in twelve games over the weekend, losing just two. Unusually for me, I won some very close games, three of them by six points or fewer. One of my losses was also by just six points; my opponent was somebody who liked to fish off (or even exchange) a single tile, taking a big points sacrifice, in the hope of drawing a bingo. It’s something I rarely do. In my other defeat I felt I made a big tactical blunder. I had a small lead, but my opponent then played POSTING as a bingo, stopping one square short of the triple word, and setting up a big hotspot for an S, which I didn’t have. On my next turn I set up a second high-scoring spot, thinking I would be able to take one of the two available. But that was extremely risky, because there was no guarantee I’d be able to use either of them. My opponent instead took both (aided by a blank), scored heavily again with his next play, and I was suddenly a long way behind. This is still all a learning process. The good news is I’ve finally got my threes pretty much down pat. That took a while.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Fitting everyone in

May 5, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s business as usual again here, after “normal” Easter, Orthodox Easter (that’s the big one), and Labour Day on 1st May. They call Western Easter “Catholic Easter” which is a little weird to me, coming from a place where Catholics, Anglicans and non-religious people all “do” Western Easter. People often ask me if I’m a Catholic, which they pronounce with the stress on the second syllable and with a “t” instead of a “th”: Catolic. I explain that, well, I went to a Catholic church every Sunday as a kid, but now I only go once a year at the most. I sometimes also say that where we come from, religion is a personal matter.

Anyway, after a bit of a lull (which was nice) I’ve got plenty of work again. Last night I was lying in bed thinking about the coming week (when I worked in insurance, I never did that), and I realised that fitting everybody in at the times they want (or even at times they don’t want) will be an impossibility. Somebody is desperate for a lesson tomorrow because he has a job interview the day after, and accommodating him has thrown everything else out of whack, not that it was exactly in whack in the first place.

Last Monday I had another attack of severe sinus pain. I had moderate pain from about lunchtime, but at around five or six, it ratcheted up several notches. I tried to soothe the pain with ice, and it subsided two hours later. Hopefully I’ll get the result of my CT scan in the next few days.

I’ve got back on the Scrabble horse, and things haven’t been that easy. A lot of tricky racks, bad draws, blocked boards, hard decisions (for me) that led to time trouble, and so on. After a run of 70 games out of 71 where I played at least one bingo (I doubt I’ll repeat that sort of record for a while; it seems so unlikely), I failed to play one in three of my next four. One bright spot was in a game yesterday, where I trailed by 138 but ended up with a 43-point win, without a bingo. The key moment was when I played off two tiles and drew two E’s (from a very E-heavy bag), allowing me to play ENQUEUE for 72. Do I really have enough E’s and U’s for that? Seems I do! I learnt that word early on; it’s one of the 60-odd seven-letter words containing five vowels, and from memory it’s one of only two such words where the consonants are side-by-side, the other being EUPNOEA, which means good (or normal) breathing.

In other news, it looks like I might finally have someone to play tennis with. We’re having our fair share of iffy weather, but fingers crossed our Tuesday morning game (or bash) goes ahead.