by Yesterday I had my first meaningful face-to-face interaction since October. I met up with my long-term student couple at their modern-looking place in Sânandrei, a picturesque village about 10 km from here. The husband picked me up, and had an unbearable (to me) music station on the radio of his BMW. When I got there, the same station was playing on their 60-odd-inch TV. Shoot me, please. Perhaps they sensed something, because they switched it over to some traditional Romanian music, and then wall-to-wall Christmas music on a loop. Then Andreea gave me the happy news that she’s three months pregnant with a girl.
They’re a normal couple, and normal people scare me slightly, or at least trigger me. Wedding photos are always a toughie. Soon there will be baby photos too. I’d eaten before I left, so I didn’t fancy all the food they brought out, although I tried bits and pieces anyway – salată de boeuf, sarmale, and various prăjituri (cakes). Then it was time to drink. Palincă, or țuică, the distilled stuff that’s made from plums. They gave me some to take home. I’ve now got four bottles of homemade highly alcoholic liquid lying around, two of which look like water and the other two like pee. I really appreciated them inviting me over, but it was nice to get home. Maybe I’ve become so unused to socialising now that almost any amount of it is too much.
Răzvan told me he’d deleted his Facebook the moment the new year started. Good on him. It’s poison. I feel like I’m the only person on the planet not to be hooked by Facebook. When I moved here and I briefly toyed with it because I thought it might help me find work, but I soon found it creepy and a chore. The magnet for me worked the other way – I was repelled, or repulsed, I suppose. And it’s not like I didn’t try. Over the years I set up several accounts but couldn’t make myself actually do Facebook. I think for me it’s simple – I’m not normal. I’ve never ever, not since I was a little boy, had the need to interact with a large group of people all at once, and that’s the whole point of Facebook. (I don’t think this blog counts.) I hated sending emails to groups at work. In fact I couldn’t stand work email full stop. And now I have virtually no work email – isn’t that great?
I now have Netflix. Are they spying on me? What can they determine from my preferences? Or my avatar? The first thing I saw was, naturally, The Social Dilemma. In fact that’s why I subscribed to Netflix. My 13-year-old student had watched the documentary, and if I watched it too I could ask him (hopefully) thought-provoking questions about it. It was well worth watching. I found it telling that parents who work in social media don’t let their kids near the stuff. I used Twitter to inform myself during the early days of Covid, and before and during the US election (I received but hardly ever transmitted), but now I don’t use social media at all. I have WhatsApp, but I only use it like a text message; I’m not in any groups (and I would hate to be). I can get by fine without all of this, but I must be in such a small minority as to wonder if I have something badly wrong with me. I’ve now just seen White Christmas, the episode at the end of season two of Black Mirror. About as disturbing as I expected.
PokerStars use every hook imaginable to entice players into their quick-fire games and quickly generate rake for the site, but I’m not biting. My luck at the tournament tables hasn’t so far transferred to the cash tables where I’m running like total arse (over, admittedly, just a few hundred hands which is nothing). My bankroll is $128.
