by I’ve just been watching a YouTube video on tipping in the US. It was already way out of hand when I visited in 2015. Waiters, who for some bizarre reason are exempt from minimum-wage laws in states that have a minimum wage, behaving like performing seals, and all that unnecessary time-consuming awkwardness. But at least then I paid cash for virtually everything and didn’t have to cope with the guilt-inducing touch screens that have proliferated since then, often at places where people aren’t providing a service at all – they’re just doing their jobs. My cousin who lives in the US said he was once so appalled by the service at a restaurant that he manually entered a $0.01 tip on one of those screens. The solution to all this “tipflation” is obvious – stop tipping entirely, pay staff what they deserve, and incorporate that into the price of the food or whatever else you’re providing. In an otherwise good video, they got one thing badly wrong: they said the word “tip” stands for “to insure promptness”. No it doesn’t. It doesn’t stand for anything; it’s just a word. Not every short word has to be an acronym. Incidentally, I often use “tip” in my lessons as an example of an English word with several meanings.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open during last night’s snooker, where commentators gave their tips as to whose cue tip would be the steadier and who would be tipped out of the tournament, his career perhaps headed for the tip. The semi-final between Shaun Murphy and Mark Selby went to a deciding 19th frame; I only found out the result (Murphy won) when I got up this morning. After reading and grocery shopping, I met the English lady in town. After a lesson on Tuesday in which I struggled to teach pronouns to a beginner student, because they work differently in his native Romanian, I suggested that we sit down together and get a handle on these damn Romanian pronouns once and for all. Every solo attempt I’ve made so far to properly learn them has ended in failure. So we had coffee in Piața Unirii and we went through the accusative and dative pronouns. The third-person accusative pronouns are gender-dependent but the third-person dative ones aren’t, and that’s just the start of it.
We had mild weather today and it was busy in town. Some tourists are now making their way to Timișoara, perhaps to see what the “Capital of Culture” fuss is about. I was struck by a young couple carrying backpacks and dressed in clothes of every colour of the rainbow; not so long ago that was commonplace, but now there’s a certain drab conformity in what young people wear.
I had a good session of tennis this evening. Domnul Sfâra, now 88, was there. My partner commented on how good his reflexes were for a man of his age. The diminutive Domnul Sfâra was on the other side of the net, and we won 6-2 6-2.
After 32½ hours last week, I’m expecting something lighter this week.
