by Last weekend we had a flower festival that brought people out in their droves, even if the weather was kind of meh or however they say that in Romanian. The Philharmonic Orchestra played on a stage in Piața Operei (the other end of the square where I live) and they were bloody good. Since the long weekend the weather has gone from meh to persistently wet.
Some good news: my Skype student is back, after I’d almost given up on her. My faith in humanity has been partially restored. The bad news is that she’s as unreliable as ever. I didn’t have any lessons as such with her last week, but on Tuesday I spent two hours reading a pair of old academic texts on sociology that she sent me at short notice, and another two hours going over them with her on Skype. I worked 7½ hours that day out of a total of just 11 for the week including a lesson I’ve got later this morning (I feel safe to count that; I trust him). I still need more work. I’m extremely bad at making connections, promoting, marketing, all of that stuff. Online seems a waste of time. I have a website and a blog now (yes another blog) that I regularly update, but I’m buggered if I know how you’re supposed to get people to see it. I’ve even created a Twitter page which now has, wait for it, twelve followers, but I find it really hard to be arsed with social media. Communicating with dozens of people all at once doesn’t appeal in the slightest, and as for Facebook, I find that as creepy as all hell and have to force myself to check my account every other day or so. My friend who I saw in London last month has over 500 Facebook friends and nearly 1000 Twitter followers (how?) so he clearly doesn’t have any of the problems I do.
I still also need to meet more people. It’s tough. The problems I faced elsewhere in the world haven’t magically gone away here. To make and keep friends there’s obviously something that you’re supposed to provide socially that goes beyond a cup of tea, an inoffensive chat and maybe the odd joke, but in 37 years I still haven’t figured that out and I probably never will. The guy I played tennis with in December, who called me on a regular basis back then, now wants nothing to do with me or so it seems.
Next week I must get out a lot more, as I said I would last week but the public holiday and busy Tuesday and crappy weather and general lack of motivation on my part intervened. Teaching is great and I bloody love Timișoara, but my experiences here could still be so much fuller and richer and better.
Here are some pics from the long weekend. Hope you like them!
