by My parents are staying in Moeraki for four days. Just up the coast is Hampden, the village with a great fish and chip shop and a wi-fi hotspot which they called me from last night, luckily after I’d finished work. The morning sky was a brilliant blue, as was their shiny, shapely new electric vehicle. Seeing that sky made me really look forward to getting over there. Five months away. Earlier Dad almost got wiped out in a Pak ‘n’ Save car park. He was pushing a trolley when an old lady went full throttle in reverse, ripping the trolley out of Dad’s hand, and slammed into two cars on the edge of the car park. Dad’s hand was hurt in the process, but a few inches or a split second this way or that and he’d have ended up under the car. Such is our perilous existence. The driver was unscathed (thankfully she was going backwards); it sounds like she wrote off three cars, but it could easily have been catastrophic. The incident was caught on camera; it took 30 seconds for staff to appear on the scene.
Dad has had several narrow escapes now. No such dramas here, though at times it feels like it. On Tuesday morning I went to the immigration office because my residence permit still shows my old address, and getting it updated (which I should have done months ago) might help me with my Barclays debacle. As soon as I got there, a middle-aged man said (in English), “Why are these places so fucking disgusting?” He was Mexican, and with his Romanian-born wife, whom he’d met in Germany, and their daughter. His wife and daughter were summoned to some office or other, and he and I had a chat. He wasn’t a fan of Romania at all. He compared the country to his native Mexico – a similar standard of living, he said, but services like immigration work much better over there. The immigration office is horrible, I agree, but I think I’d rather be living somewhere largely free of drug cartels in a city where I can walk around safely, day or night. Timișoara, touch wood, is a remarkably safe city. At one point, a border police van pulled up outside, and two Middle Eastern-looking handcuffed men got dragged in. The place was very busy, and after hanging around there for an hour, it was clear that I wouldn’t get anywhere. In the afternoon I tried again, and this time I met a Romanian guy of around sixty who told me to use the app instead of wasting hours in the office. He was extremely helpful (bizarrely, he actually seemed to enjoy this stuff) but when I got home and tried to use the app I had more questions than answers.
Yesterday morning I had a two-hour lesson scheduled for eight. I started with him last week, and I tried calling him the night before to confirm, but got no reply. (He’s twenty and a new student – exactly the sort of person liable to forget or just not be bothered.) If he didn’t come, I’d get the “opportunity” to go back to the immigration office. Should I go? Eight o’clock rolled around. He won’t turn up, will he? Then at 8:05 the intercom beep went off, to my relief. It was him. We had a productive session, I got paid, and the “opportunity” to deal with life admin was taken away from me. I wonder how I’d be managing right now if I still had the earthquake business in Wellington to contend with. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
I had three lessons this morning, and I still have three more this afternoon and evening. This is shaping up to be my busiest week for some time.
