by I was about to do my weekly shop, but then I checked the rules and realised I couldn’t until after lunch. Timișoara entered lockdown last night at midnight, and supermarkets are reserved for over-65s between 10am and 1pm. Good decision all round. The sunny early-spring weather had brought crowds of people to the centre, especially in narrow streets like Strada Alba Iulia where you’re all hemmed in. Hospitals are just about bursting at the seams when the new variants are starting to proliferate, so this increase in activity is at exactly the wrong time. There’s been too much “can we get away with it?” and general pussyfooting around, so I’m glad they’ve put the hammer down. I wonder if that would have happened under Nicolae Robu, our old mayor.
Leadership matters more than people think. Would New Zealand have done so well had the 2017 election turned out differently (or should I say, as expected)? We’ll never know, but it’s just a hunch that National would have been all “we’ve got a goddamn rock star economy and we ain’t gonna shut it down”. Team of five million? Maybe. Be kind? I doubt it. NZ’s messaging has been inclusive, not divisive, and that’s gone a long way towards their resounding success up until now. To be clear, I still think National would have handled it miles better than the US or most of Europe.
The British people’s reaction to their disastrous response to Covid is increasingly maddening. The death toll is around 120,000, and tens of millions of Brits aren’t only OK with that, they like what they see. Now they’ve got their vaccines and all is forgiven, if they ever thought there was anything to forgive in the first place. It seems that if you supported Brexit and voted Tory in December 2019, you’ll support the government come what may. And now they’ve got their vaccines that the EU don’t have, so hahahaha in your face! Take that remainers, we’re winning! Who cares about all that death now.
I played tennis twice at the weekend, and it’ll be at least three weeks before I’m back on the court again. In both sessions – four hours – I played with Domnul Ionescu, a man in his late sixties with a smoker’s cough who spat on his hand every second point or so. On the other side was a woman of 30-odd and the bloke I had that singles match with just before Christmas. Petrică, one of the other regulars who must be in his early fifties, couldn’t make it. He’s suffered from a kidney problem for some time, he managed to pick up Covid, and now he needs dialysis.
Four poker tournaments yesterday. All frustrating in their various ways. I cashed in two of them but barely broke even. In the Omaha hi-lo I amassed a nice stack but couldn’t build it up into something imposing. I treaded water for a long time, then when we got down to three tables I min-raised my high-only hand in the cut-off. I was unlucky enough for both the blinds to wake up with A2 and good side cards. I correctly got all in pre-flop three ways because I had plenty of equity (one third, as it happened) but the board ran out horribly for me and I was out in 15th for a small cash. In the single draw I hung around but a big stack on my left kept going all in over my raises and I never felt I had enough to call. Being out of position is horrible in that game at the best of time. I had another good run in the pot-limit badugi, knocking three people out early, but the bounties dried up and at the final table my stack did too. I got a small payout for coming seventh out of 100. Then in the fixed badugi I started OK but couldn’t win the big pots when it mattered, and was out well before the money. My bankroll is $337.
Update: The Romanian authorities have come to their senses and approved the Astra Zeneca vaccine for over-55s. The notion that it was unsafe or ineffective for older people has been roundly disproven, but sadly too many people might already have been spooked by all that bollocks.
This morning Adi Bărar, who founded the highly successful Timișoara band Cargo, died after spending two weeks in hospital with coronavirus.
