by Tomorrow is my last day before I go away. It looks like being a complicated, tiring day. Six lessons, interspersed by stuff that I would like to have done on Friday or yesterday when the city simmered in 40-plus-degree heat. I’ve ordered some made-in-Romania baby shoes (gender-neutral-ish, I hope) as a present for my brother and sister-in-law who will pick me up from Stansted, but who knows if they’ll be delivered tomorrow and whether I’ll be home at the time they deliver them. If not, I’ll have to find some other present and save the shoes for when I go over again in October, assuming I can do that.
Yesterday I had a long Zoom chat with my cousin in Wellington. She paints a very different picture of New Zealand from the one I get from my parents. None of the anti-Maori diatribes. Her eldest son is now in his second year at Canterbury. Number two can’t be far behind.
Poker. After going 42 tournaments without a top-three finish, this weekend I got the whole set of medal positions in just five attempts, for a profit of $102. I had two long, absorbing heads-up sessions, both in no-limit single draw. My third-place finish was in five-card draw, which is just like single draw except you’re trying to make good hands instead of bad ones. At one point this morning I was playing four different tournaments, each of them with different rules and at very different stages, all at the same time.
I’ve also watched The Big Short this weekend. I saw Margin Call at the Penthouse in Wellington all those years ago, and it’s hard to say which I like more. The bailout, the “too big to fail” aspect (there’s a film with that title too), and the fact that hardly any of those bastards went to jail and basically nothing changed as a result of the Global Financial Crisis, was a great tragedy.
Time to pack now. I leave Timișoara on Tuesday lunchtime.
