by Just before I got to this afternoon’s session with the four twins, a slightly wizened older guy asked me for the time. Două fără cinci, I said. Five to two. On most of my bike ride I’d been pondering ChatGPT, cryptocurrency, NFTs (whatever the hell they are; perhaps they stand for nothing fucking there), TikTok, people jetting off to ghastly Dubai (the 16-year-old girl I teach is about to do that), a World Cup in Qatar, and Saudi Arabia’s insane Line megacity proposal. They all seem part of the same sinister juggernaut. It was refreshing to see someone a million miles from all of that, someone without so much as a phone. In fact there are a lot of phoneless “what time is it?” people all over the city, a place that operates on two speed settings. You often see both speeds cheek-by-jowl, for instance at Piața 700 which is a bustling outdoor market flanked by kiosks selling various burgers and snacks and cups of coffee. Probably cigarettes, too. Beggars hang around there, then clamber on the tram, then hang around somewhere else that’s full of people. But just metres from the market and kiosks are five glass office buildings, all housing management consultancies and other multinationals. The difference is striking.
On Saturday morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. My maths lesson with Matei got cancelled, so I had a look at the car market at Mehala on my way (sort of) to my English lesson with Octavian. I didn’t get anywhere near actually buying anything, but at least I got an idea of what’s out there. I’m only prepared to spend €4000 (£3500; NZ$7000) – absolute tops – and it needs to be something easy to maintain. The big selling point appeared to be the number of airbags a car has.
Next to the car market was the normal Mehala market where I got my bike from. There are loads of tools for sale; in fact before big hardware stores like Dedeman became commonplace, markets were just about your only option if you wanted to buy tools. These markets have a very Romanian feel about them; there’s always the unmistakable waft of mici.
I watched some of Boris Johnson’s lengthy hearing into all those socially undistanced gatherings that took place during the pandemic. As an English teacher I found myself seeing past his probable lies to focus on his upper-class pronunciation of certain words. Necessary, with only three syllables – nothing between the s and the r. Circumstances with a reduced third syllable. Transcript with a long first vowel. Room with the same vowel as foot. These are all features that I don’t have in my fairly nondescript standard British English, and they scream “I went to the right school”.
In this morning’s lesson, my student suggested that the pandemic was all a media beat-up. He was amazed to hear my view that more should have been done to stop the spread initially.
