by I gave a Skype lesson on Friday night and then played my cousin at Words with Friends for the 27th time. It had just gone eleven, and I had two blanks on my rack, when I could no longer concentrate on the game. What a remarkable sight and sound it was to see 30,000 people stream past my apartment block, armed with air horns and whistles, at that time of night. I gave my cousin a running commentary. Earlier I’d gone down to Piața Operei to see it relatively empty, and I wondered where everyone had gone, but they’d set off on their march through the city. Last night I spent some time in the square on a fifth consecutive night of protests, this time with the intent of joining them on the march, but the demonstration which had drawn a great crowd fizzled out at around ten. What’s happened? Have the people given in? Very bad news, I thought. But when I got home I read that the new prime minister had announced on TV that the government would repeal the new law, and in the last couple of hours they have done just that at an emergency meeting. It seems they have yielded to what has been very intense public pressure. But corruption is insidious in Romania and the people must continue to fight.
The protests were fascinating for me in many ways. I had an interesting time trying to decipher some of the banners and to understand what the hell they were chanting. I got some insight into Romanian culture. I was surprised how motivated younger people were to attend the protests when so few of them voted in December’s elections. I was also encouraged by how peaceful the demonstrations were and how many parents brought their children along. Seeing four-year-olds shout “de-mi-sia, de-mi-sia” (“resignation”) amused me. And visually, the protests were very impressive.
You could say that the low voter turnout was what caused this mess. As far as I can tell, the older generations voted PSD as they’ve always done, while the younger ones didn’t vote at all, and so the PSD got a thumping great share of the vote which allowed them to do pretty much what they liked, such as pass laws that decriminalise corruption. But then I don’t know how free and fair elections are in Romania.
I spoke to my parents this morning. My dad had just got back from a sailing trip in the Marlborough Sounds with two blokes both called Graeme. He seemed to enjoy the road trip there and back more than the rather claustrophobic few days on the boat. (The main road has been blocked since the November earthquake; now you have to go via Murchison, a town that has done quite nicely from the diversion, making for a seven-hour journey each way.) Mum had spent a few days in Moeraki with my aunt. I recently had a chat with Dad while Mum was at golf. He still finds his existence in that household plagued by unnecessary stress.
One of my previous students texted me earlier today to say that she won’t be wanting any more lessons from me because we couldn’t understand each other well enough. I’d already written her off. It was more than the language barrier, although that didn’t help. For whatever reason we just didn’t click. My Skype student now wants ten hours of lessons a week from me, starting tomorrow. Maybe she’s lonely.
I did find a word, LovELIER, with my rack. That low-scoring bingo helped me to a 401-344 win and an 18-9 lead overall. I was lucky with the blanks and S’s, although the high-scoring tiles I drew towards the end were more of a burden than anything as I had to quickly offload them. Having one blank on your rack is a huge asset; it effectively gives you 26 different racks and a much better chance of making a bingo or other high-scoring play. You have time in a game to go through the alphabet and consider each of the possible letters in turn. Having both blanks is even better, not least because you know your opponent won’t have one. But there are so many combinations with two blanks – 351 if I’m not mistaken – that you certainly can’t consider them all, and finding a bingo can be surprisingly difficult even if there are many available.
I’m thinking of getting into Scrabble reasonably seriously, despite all the things I don’t like about the game (all the silly words you have to commit to memory, mostly). I recently played a game of WWF where I had HIDEOUT on my rack, but nowhere I could see to play it. After giving up and playing a shorter word I realised I could have played the seven-letter bingo by attaching the O to the end of HOB. In Scrabble parlance, you’d say that HOB takes an O as a back hook. That kind of thing interests me. Learning all those stupid bloody words doesn’t, but maybe that won’t be a deal-breaker. We’ll see.
