by The vagaries of the Julian calendar, the spring equinox and phases of the moon mean that today is Orthodox Easter Sunday. Sometimes it falls on the same day as what they call Catholic Easter (and what I would call “normal Easter”), sometimes it’s a week later, and sometimes (like this year) it’s a whole month later. Easter is big in Romania; I’d call it a tie between Easter and Christmas for which is most important here. Last night the tennis-playing couple (who live next door but one) gave me some salată de boeuf which, despite its partially French name, contains chicken rather than beef. They also gave me an egg painted the traditional reddish-brown using red cabbage, and invited me to “knock” it with another of their painted eggs. The “knocker” said Hristos a înviat (“Christ has risen”), then the knockee became the knocker and said Adevărat (“really”). Although I was unaware that it was a game, apparently I won because my egg remained almost unscathed through all the knocking.
At quarter past midnight I was woken up by the Easter vigil service at the cathedral. A huge throng of people with candles spilled out in front of the cathedral as a sermon played over the loudspeaker, much of which I actually understood. I wonder how many of those “vigilantes” picked up Covid. There have been services and processions and bells ringing out all this long weekend. I missed my first two Romanian Easters because I went to the UK. Then last year the restrictions meant that everything was far more muted. That leaves 2019, and I think I must have slept through the vigil service that year because I don’t remember seeing it. My blog posts from two years ago aren’t helping me. Just like last year, the Easter market has gone by the board, but they’ve Easterised the end of the square where I live, as in a normal virus-free year.
I still watch John Campbell’s informative Youtube videos on coronavirus, but I’m less dedicated than I was. After I watched one of his videos last week, Youtube suggested that I watch a different one from a American medical doctor and religious nutcase, called “Why I’m not taking the vaccine”. It had three times as many views and likes as Campbell gets (and he gets a fair few), and it attracted a long stream of comments saying that the deep state are trying to force us to take the vaccine and I’m not having any of it. I’m defiant! Six hundred thumbs up. Many commenters referenced the Bible. No Covid vaccine! Matthew 7:25 says so! I really doubt that the Gospel of Matthew said anything about vaccination or herd immunity. (I picked that verse at random; it happens to be about floods and storms, not a pandemic, but I’m sure you could find a connection there if you really wanted to.) Covid has been an eye-opener. I knew we had fake news and echo chambers, but here we have millions of people, some in positions of authority and influence, willing to dispense with the truth even when it comes to matters of life and death. I’ve even seen this in my own brother. A supporter of Brexit and the Tories, he’s happy to divorce himself from the reality that the British government have done a breathtakingly shitty job that has cost many thousands of lives unnecessarily, just because it’s his team. It’s become just like football.
I’m two-thirds of the way through Inocenții, a Romanian book that one of my students bought me for Christmas. It took me a while to get going, mainly because the language is hard. But I’ve made some headway finally. It’s all about a woman’s childhood in Brașov in the sixties, the early Communist period. The book is full of humour, though it certainly has its dark moments too. I’ve been jotting down words I don’t know, including some that I’ve come across before but forgotten, so I can look them up later. I think it’s the sixth Romanian book I’ve read.
Poker. Lately I’ve been playing tournaments exclusively. I’m at a bit of a standstill, with a run of tournaments in which I’ve either just missed out on or just made the money. I’ve been persevering with Omaha hi-lo, with little joy. Unlike the other games I regularly play, I can’t hand-read in Omaha hi-lo. That’s partly because the tournament buy-ins are tiny and people play any old junk, even hands that are real disasters like the 9993 that someone raised pre-flop with this morning. My bankroll is $661, although I expect that to drop a few dollars when I play the fixed badugi this evening. Pessimistic I know, but that tournament with its eight-minute levels plays like a turbo, especially in the early stages, and most of the time you’ll fail to make the money no matter what you do.
Update: As expected, that tournament was a waste of time. The game is played with three draws, but if I’d had ten I still wouldn’t have hit anything. Bankroll now $655. (I don’t exactly risk much of my bankroll in these tournaments.)
I’ve gone back to the dictionary part of the book I was writing, after losing heart when that Romanian teacher decided she had better things to do than help me. I’m now on the letter R, and I hope I can make some more progress this week.
