by It’s a soggy first day of spring in Timișoara. I’ve just got in on the action by buying a couple of those flowery mărțișoare thingies, purely as souvenirs because you have to, like, know people to give them to. Female people. The guy I played tennis with in December told me this morning that you give them to women, whether you’re close to them or not.
Yesterday was simply a beautiful day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and after the weather I’d become accustomed to in recent months I was practically sizzling in 20-degree heat as the accordion man and the violin man and the statue man did their thing. In the afternoon I wandered across town, as I often do, to get one or two bits and pieces for my apartment. Buying two screws in a large hardware shop, yes two bloody screws, was quite a performance. My purchase, which came to a few cents, had to be bagged and scanned and registered and signed off in their system. Romania generally works on a refreshingly manual basis so all this faffing around with systems took me by surprise. My biggest purchase was a kind of cube that you can sit on. You can buy them in delightfully weird and wonderful colours in a big store called Dedeman, and I got a yellow and red one to brighten this place up a bit. Having students means people actually see the inside of my flat, and that’s a bit of a departure for me. I’m used to having no visitors for months on end; any thoughts of making interior alterations would bring to mind images of bears taking a number two in the forest. Now I might even have to dust! I now also have a large table, which I got delivered from Dedeman ten days ago, set up beside the window.
I got back in time for my Skype lesson which was due to start at five, but five o’clock ticked past and she didn’t appear online. When I called her she told me she wasn’t at home and was about to go to her brother’s party. This isn’t the first (or fourth) time she’s pulled this kind of stunt. In future we need to arrange the whole week’s lessons in advance, with an agreement that she pays me for a no-show if she hasn’t contacted me 24 hours beforehand. This evening I’m due to give two lessons including a two-hour Skype one which may or may not happen. Frustrating, most certainly, but these sorts of frustrations are nothing compared to the feelings of complete emptiness I used to experience in the workplace. And it looks like I now have a sixth student! The future is bright.
After forty games of Words with Friends with my cousin, I now lead 28-11 with one rare and dramatic tie. More details to come.
