by I’ve just been to get my 15 litres of drinking water, as I do every fifth day or so. The wells – about 90 of them dotted around the city – are a microcosm of Romanian society. There’s often a queue, there are usually old ladies (babe, the plural of babă) sitting on the benches nearby, and this time there was a young guy on a quad bike pumping out manele, a controversial genre of Romanian music.
My brother. He’s now officially first-class. Last night he got confirmation of his top-drawer BA degree in business management. I must say I’m impressed with his discipline and application throughout the whole process, and what’s more, how much he enjoyed it. This from someone who had zero interest (if I’m being kind) in his schoolwork. He may even decide to do a master’s. It helped that he had completed a number of leadership courses in the military, so he could skip through the early stages, and his degree was all paid for by the army. (Not to pour any cold water on what my brother has achieved, but in my day roughly one student in a dozen across the UK got a first. Now it’s one in three. There’s some grade inflation for you.)
That lesson on Monday with the 17-year-old girl. I’m still thinking about it. I spent most of my time wondering, what am I dealing with here? Not who, but what, for she hardly seemed human. It’s been the same every time with her, except during the could snap in January which briefly humanised her. She’s the latest in an increasingly long line of students I’ve had from so-called Gen Z – young women, mostly – who live curated lives on Instagram. They aren’t living, they’re performing. How exhausting must that be?
It’s a mild, if grey, Leap Day. I still clearly remember the dread I felt eight years ago today when I came through Wellington Airport after flying from Timaru, knowing that I’d soon have to face my flatmate. Last night I got thinking: wouldn’t it be nice to reform the calendar? Just tweak it ever so slightly. The 28/29 business in February, when all other months are 30 or 31, doesn’t make much sense and messes up a lot of statistical comparisons. If it was up to me I’d make the months 31 30 30, 31 30 30, 31 30 30, 31 30 31. Nice and easy to remember. (Yes, that adds up to 365.) I’d add the Leap Day, which would be a worldwide holiday, to the end of June. And that’s all. Oh, apart from fixing Easter to the first Sunday in April. Even my modest changes would cause major tech headaches, dwarfing what we saw with Y2K, and social media would be dripping with anger, mostly from those with birthdays such as 31st March. Saying that, if the orange blob is re-elected I wouldn’t entirely discount him from introducing a reformed calendar, right around 1st Trump 2027.
Here is a great video from City Nerd, an urbanist YouTube channel. I really like this guy’s sense of humour. In the first five minutes of this video – a must-watch, I’d say – he explains the Gini coefficient of income inequality. (Integral calculus, yay! Not that I was ever fantastic at that.) In the rest of the video he looks at the North American cities with the highest and lowest Gini coefficients. Interestingly, he says that 190 million Americans – nearly 60% of the country – live in urban areas with over a million people. For comparison, that figure in Romania is a little over 10%.
Before yesterday’s maths lesson with 14-year-old, six-foot-one Vladimir, I had a 20-minute phone chat with his mother. I couldn’t get her off the line. Neither could I convince her that her son is actually pretty good at maths. Her expectations are stratospheric.
