by I went to the immigration office this morning after my lesson, but I didn’t get very far. There were five people in a queue, inches apart from each other. They wore masks, and the entrance door was open so ventilation was good, but I might have been there for hours. Time is so often the real killer. So I turned round and went home. I wanted to ask what exactly I need to do to ensure I can stay in Romania after the end of the Brexit transition period, but as I was basically expecting a don’t know, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I’ve had no luck emailing them or phoning them.
The Covid numbers are coming down here, but aggravatingly slowly, and they could easily shoot back up again after Christmas. If everyone was like me, staying out of everyone else’s way as much as practically possible, we’d now have a handful of cases every day, not a handful of thousands. It’s frustrating. But the fact that most people aren’t at all like me, for better or worse, is something I came to terms with ages ago.
They’re making the UK (or should I say England) Covid rules up as they go on, and I’m glad I’m here and not there. My student in Barcelona told me that things are stricter in Spain; you can’t move freely between say Barcelona and Madrid. But you can still happily get on a plane! Her boyfriend’s family are from Peru, and he’s flying there for Christmas. First to Amsterdam, then 12½ hours to Lima. You need a mask and a plastic visor and a negative Covid test and this and that, but just ugh.
During last night’s lesson there was a march to the cathedral steps for the anniversary of the Revolution that kicked off in Timișoara on 16th December 1989. “Libertate!” “Mai bine mort decât comunist!” I gave my student (who’s 38 and at least remembers the fall of communism even if he was too young to understand the whats and whys) a bit of a running commentary. Talking to Romanians about communism never ceases to be fascinating. Then we went through his translation of a difficult article from Romanian into English, before doing some work on prepositions, which are a minefield in both languages. For instance, I just got an alert in Romanian to say that Emmanuel Macron had tested positive for coronavirus. But the Romanian said “cu coronavirus” which usually corresponds to with in English.
I finally bit the bullet and deposited $40 on PokerStars. What’s it like these days, I wondered, ten years after I played regularly. I had to open a new account under their Romanian licence. The name “plutoman” was already taken, and adding numbers to the end looked kind of meh, but luckily they allow special characters, so taking a leaf out of Marc Bolan’s book I stuck an umlaut on the o: “plutöman”. (Not to mention Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, and a whöle bünch of others.)
Things have changed for sure. They’ve tried to Roulettify things a bit, to attract new players. The new big thing is the Spin & Go, a quick-as-a-flash three-person hold ’em tournament with a random prize for the winner. Most of the time the winner will only get back double the buy-in, but occasionally it’ll be bigger, and very very occasionally it’ll be in the thousands, even for a buy-in of a dollar or less. When you make your first deposit, they drip-feed you some free low-value Spin & Go tickets over a period of a few days. When you fire up one of these things, wheels spin like on a fruit machine (or the pokies, to go all Aussie or Kiwi) to tell you what the prize will be, then you start playing. It’s best to play maniacally. Anything half-decent and go all in. I spun the wheel four times yesterday. Once I got lucky and the prize (for a 50-cent stake) was $5. Despite playing atrociously on one hand when we were heads-up, I lucked out and claimed the five bucks. In another game I shoved with A-10 on the very first hand, both the other players went all in too, and I won, but the prize was only a $1 ticket. The other two times I bombed out. I can see how the little wins you get, and the sheer speed that everything happens, would make this format like crack for some people, but I’ll stay away once I run out of tickets.
No more health news from Dad. He’s had his 18-month check-up but hasn’t had the result yet. I hope he can get the blood in his urine (which is painless, and probably caused by his prostate) checked out ASAP.
It’s a lovely winter’s day here.
