by It’s a foggy Saturday morning in Timișoara. Normally I’d be working now, but both the kids I’m supposed to be teaching are apparently sick. It’s been a little disappointing this week, with five cancellations and only 19½ hours of lessons, although with a plethora of new students the immediate future is rosier. The lowish volume didn’t stop my work week being interesting. On Tuesday I went to the nearby Universitatea de Vest for my first session with a teacher of Romanian and linguistics. She said it felt quite strange to be a pupil rather than a teacher. We had a great chat about all matters language-related. If she has time I’d really like her to give me some Romanian lessons. That evening I had a two-hour lesson with two new students: sisters who are both studying medicine. They were at very different levels; I’d put the older sister at a solid 5 on my 0-to-10 scale, while the younger one was at a 1½ so I communicated with her mostly in Romanian.
Thursday was a slightly strange day which didn’t finish until 11:15 pm following a late-night session with my student who once lived in Milton Keynes (she’s at level 9, almost fluent, so how do I help her?). Yesterday I had four lessons. In the morning I had a new student who surprised me when he said he was 47. He looked 55 at least. He then said that he’d inadvertently taken ten years off. We then talked about numbers – he struggled to hear the difference between “thirty” and “forty” when I said them. With my eleven-year-old I did a session on maps and directions. One of my maps included a pub, and I remarked that the boy’s surname was Cîrciumaru, which means “publican” – a cârciumă is a pub. (Under the spelling reforms of 1993, the letter “î” was replaced by “â” except when the letter was the first or the last in the word, but personal names generally kept the old spelling. As for place names, you’ll see both old and new.) Romanian surnames can be quite interesting; last night’s lesson was with a chap whose name was Tărbuc, which is some kind of fishing net.
Last Sunday I caught up with S. We had a lovely late afternoon and evening. We spent some time in the art museum which was fascinating when I think about it, and then just wandered through the botanic park on the way to the Timișoreana restaurant in the square (the prices had shot up since I last visited when my parents were here in June) and finally to my place. She says she needs to escape the fake corporate world before it’s too late, and would like to be either a university lecturer or a high school teacher, even though either of those (particularly the latter) would result in a loss of income. Of course I’ve been there, and for me the need was even more pressing. At least she seems to have found some success in that artificial environment, which I rarely did. We discussed books. She said she’d lend me The Handmaid’s Tale after I’ve finished reading a biography of Charles Darwin. She’ll be back in Timișoara again in a week.
This morning I made myself read about the likely fate of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist who was brutally murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. It’s very hard even to comprehend. Seriously, where do you even start? Yesterday Donald Trump (finally) said something about the murder being “bad” and “sad”. WTF?
In much brighter news, this morning I had my first-ever draw in ISC Scrabble. It was a 13-minute game, a bit shorter than I usually play, so whenever I found a play that scored a decent amount I generally slapped it down. I got some high-scoring tiles early on, and used them to open up a useful lead, but my opponent found a fantastic nine-letter bingo (OUTRaNGED) using the OU that I’d just played, which greatly reduced my advantage. When he was able to score well with the second blank I thought I’d had it. I was lucky that he didn’t have a winning out play (I don’t think). The best he could do was block my winning play, and by playing out I could only tie the scores at 387 apiece. It also tied my best-ever score without a bingo. I had just four seconds left at the end, while he had over five minutes. Maybe I’ll be as fast as him when I’ve played 21,000 games, as he has done. Prior to that game I’d won seven games out of eight.
The Red Sox have stormed into the World Series with a 4-1 win over the Astros, thanks in part to a stunning game-deciding catch in the fourth game, one of several breathtaking catches in the last few days. Their opponents are still unknown: the series between the Brewers and the Dodgers has gone right to the wire, with the deciding seventh game being played in Milwaukee tonight.
