by It was amazing in New Zealand. I’d wake up after a good night’s sleep (or even after a less than stellar night’s sleep) and feel refreshed. Now I’m back in Romania and I’m constantly tired. Yesterday I had to apologise for yawning in a lesson. I’ve mentioned this and two people have given the polluted city air as a reason. Could it also be the warm weather here? (Yesterday we broke 30.) What about the screen time? Or maybe it’s all the talking I have to do in my job? But back in 2018, say, I had busy work weeks one after another – often having to yap away for hours on end – and didn’t feel nearly as tired as I do now. Perhaps I was still energised by the relative newness and excitement of my lifestyle change. This fatigue seems to have coincided with my move to this apartment 16 months ago, so maybe it’s something about being here. Though my sinus problem doesn’t help, I can’t really blame that because it didn’t exactly go away in NZ where I felt much less tired.
On Friday I took a look at a car – a 19-year-old Dacia – just off Piața Bălcescu. It was just after lunchtime and the square was chocka. That made up my mind for me. There’s no way I could handle the stress of a car right now. For getting around the city, a car would be more of a burden than anything – and just think of all the added bureaucracy – so I’m going to wait until March before looking again. I should be pursuing two wheels rather than four; my latest old city bike has just about had it. The uneven roads and paths in Timișoara require something more robust, and it is slightly ludicrous that my main mode of transport – the thing I rely heavily on – dates from when I was in primary school.
Tennis. I was back on the court this weekend for two sessions of singles against my usual opponent. When you’re fatigued, singles will make you feel horribly exposed. Yesterday, something wasn’t right with the guy at the other end, and I led 6-0 6-2 2-2 when our time ran out, tiredness and all. Tonight though was an entirely different matter. I won two close games to start, then I lost seven games out of eight as he hit a deep purple patch that left me floundering despite not even playing that badly. From 3-6 0-1 he went off the boil just enough, and I came back to win the second set 6-2, at which point the heavens opened.
Lessons have been interesting. Many of my students have looked at my photos from NZ and expressed disappointment at the lack of pythons and crocodiles and spiders as big as your hand. A parrot? Telling them it can rip your wiper blades off does little to impress them. There’s also been a general sense of bafflement at the whole snow thing. Most Romanians simply don’t get that there’s another side of the world where seasons are reversed. One student asked, “Are they aware that we have Christmas in winter?” Oh yes, and most of their Christmas cards even depict winter scenes. That made him even more confused. “What about daylight savings?” Yep. I resisted the temptation to talk about Australia’s time zones that include half-hour offsets and some-do-some-don’t daylight savings.
Yesterday I worked with the top-2%-ers in Dumbrăvița. First I had two hours of maths with Matei who spent time with a Spanish family in Toledo over the summer, just like I did in France at a similar age. His family now have a conservatory which they’ve filled with exotic plants. Matei has got himself a record player and he played a few bars of Kanye West for me. I’d like a record player too (they call it a pick-up here), though certainly not to play even one bar of Kanye West. After Matei, I had two hours with Octavian who spent seven weeks combined in the UK and America (his pronunciation hadn’t improved as much as I’d hoped), then my first one-hour session with his six-year-old sister who knew more than I bargained for.
