by I meant to post this on Sunday but the internet on this laptop slowed to a trickle. It’s back to its world-famous-in-Romania lightning pace now, which is just as well because without decent internet I struggle to do my job properly. My internet woes sent me into a mad panic yesterday so I tried to relax a bit by heading to the pool (the temperature was in the low 30s). Going to the pool, or the ștrand as they call it here, is quite a popular pastime. It’s not as if we have a beach here. It’s a bit hard to say ștrand. At the start of the word you have to shtring together a bunch of consonants à la John Key with his “shtrong and stable”, but with a Romanian-style rolled R thrown in for good measure. Ștrudel and albaștri (the masculine plural form of “blue”) likewise require tongue gymnastics for me. For 17 lei you get to lie on a sun lounger and listen to slightly annoying music. I positioned myself as far from the speakers as I could get. The pool is great though. I met two English women there, probably in their fifties. One of them introduced herself as Marilyn but her friend called her Mazz.
FaceTime. Presumably it’s called that because the person on the other end can see your face all the time. That can be a bugger, especially when that person is my mum. She likes to comment on the chubbiness of my face. For some reason that’s where the weight goes, and I probably did put on a pound or two last week from all the plum crumble I ate. The previous weekend I picked about eight kilos of plums, from a tree-lined street not too far from Mehala market.
Today I had my 30th lesson with Matei. He made a couple of inspired guesses in the Millionaire game before getting greedy and bombing out on the half-million-pound question. Then he thrashed me 5-0 in Last Card. Yesterday was the start of his new year at school. His school is number 24. When he lived in Bucharest, he went to number 56. I imagine this fantastically creative naming scheme harks back to the communist era, when they wouldn’t have wanted anybody to stand out. There still would have been a number 1 though.
Two pieces of brother-related news. One, he got whisked off to the Caribbean at two hours’ notice to help with the fallout from Hurricane Irma. I’m guessing it’s the British Virgin Islands. Second, his wedding has been set for 26th May at the Royal Citadel in Plymouth. That’s a pretty awesome location for a wedding if you ask me, not that I’m the best person to ask. It should be relatively inexpensive too. If he’d married the last one I dread to think what it would have cost. She’d have wanted all the bells, whistles and gongs, that’s for sure.
Last week I received the sad news that Out of Sync, a Wellington-based group where adults on the autistic spectrum meet up once a fortnight, is coming to an end. Although I’ve never had a diagnosis, I went to the group from 2011 until the end of 2015. When I first went it was bloody great: eight or so slightly unusual folks pinging wildly from one conversation topic to the next, like a demented pinball machine. After a distinctly uncomfortable Monday at work, I could relax for a couple of hours. Then the numbers grew, new facilitators took over, and before long it had changed beyond all recognition. It had become a sort of workshop, with rules and pre-arranged topics. The higher-functioning members of the group got sick of being treated like kids, and a lot of them quit. But it still gave autistic people the chance (often the only chance) to meet others in a relatively safe environment, so it served a purpose. Next Monday will be the last session. The email I received cited general dissatisfaction with the group, the fact that they would need to move yet again, and the big one, reduced funding. That New Zealand, second in the OECD in X and third in Y, can’t afford to run a group like that is all kinds of wrong.
