Tourists

As we hit October and the leaves turn, I miss the view I had from my city-centre window even more. This morning I spoke to Mum and Dad. Only 18 days till I see them in the UK. They’ve now booked their flights to and from Romania; they’ll be here from 5th to 10th November. I wish they could have come for longer. We discussed the war in Ukraine, the stampede at a football match in Indonesia that killed 125 people, and how the UK seems to have slammed into reverse.

It’s been an interesting day. Yesterday I bumped into Mark (the guy who teaches at British School) as he was getting winter tyres put on his car. We agreed to catch up today. He heard about a guided tour of the Fabric area of Timișoara, where I happen to live now, taking place this afternoon. We had to sign up; I gave the tour people my phone number and said there’d be two people coming. Mark trekked over to my neck of the woods, and some other teachers from British School also made the trip. Not for the tour, but just for drinks. All nice people, from what I could tell. One of them, a smoker, had run a marathon – 42-point-something kilometres – in under four hours that morning. Mind-boggling for me. Mark then decided he’d rather stay at the bar than bother with the tour that was scheduled to take 2½ hours in a language he knew about a dozen words of. Then my phone rang. It was the tour guide. Why aren’t you here? Sorry mate, we’ve kind of got to do this. So the two of us joined the group. The guide could speak English, but conducted the tour in Romanian, so I interpreted for Mark, probably pretty badly because I got lost at times myself. We learnt about the large Jewish contingent that lived in the area, and how nationalities weren’t really a thing 200-odd years ago in Timișoara – your religion basically was your nationality. The guide stopped at buildings along the way – the CEO of the wool factory lived in this one, an internationally renowned violinist lived in that one – sometimes pointing out architectural details that I had missed. Then Mark had had enough so we paid the guide and left.

By that point it was just about time for me to go to tennis anyway. There was a new guy this evening – a teenager who had just taken up the game. Although his forehand was good considering his lack of experience, he was struggling to get any sort of serve into play. We increased his number of serves allowed per point from two to infinity, and still he struggled. Hardly surprising, really. You either need a coach or to practise yourself with a bucketload of balls. A game situation with everyone watching, even if it’s a casual game, is the worst of all.

Hopefully this week I can finalise my new-look teaching room, or close to it. I may even put some pictures of it on here.

I played in four poker tournaments last night. I cashed in three despite making bad starts to all of them, in one case losing 97% of my initial stack (!), but couldn’t convert my big comebacks into big finishes and only made a modest profit. My bankroll is $1015.

An active day

It’s been an active day for me: 19 km on my bike, a spot of hiking, and some tennis. At 9am I met my teacher friend on the outer edge of Dumbrăvița, then I went with him and his dog to Nădrag, just over an hour’s drive away. There we walked along a track to the top of a ridge, then descended quite steeply until we followed a stream back to the car. That all got my heart rate up, and as always, my Doc Martens did the business. This evening’s tennis was doubles. I partnered a woman I first met at yesterday’s session. She’s a decent player. Three years older than me, she lost her 68-year-old father to Covid in 2021. She said he had nothing wrong with him before he was struck down by the disease. I wanted to ask her if he’d been vaccinated, but thought better of it. There are trees overhanging two corners of the court we play on. Normally they don’t cause a problem, but occasionally a high ball will bring them into play. Tonight I had to practically thread a backhand through the branches, golf style.

Yesterday I had two English lessons and one maths. In the maths lesson I went off on a slight tangent (not literally; trig is still to come) when I explained that three 8-inch pizzas for the same price as a 16-inch pizza is a bad deal. In one of my English lessons we finished off one of those skyscraper games, though this time a longer version involving international buildings instead of only American ones. I had a huge lead from our first session, but ended up winning only 36-33 and could easily have lost. That comebacks are possible is a good sign for the game. It still needs the odd tweak here and there, and a little something extra which I haven’t figured out yet.

I spoke to my brother again last night. There’s only so much you can say about nappies. Both he and his wife were tired. There are a lot of things I hadn’t thought about. When does the colour of a baby’s eyes become fixed? Today I wondered whether my nephew will be left-handed; both his parents are, as is his paternal grandfather. (I’m right-handed, but play tennis left-handed. Just like Rafael Nadal.)

It seems the UK has returned to some sort of normal after a fortnight of wall-to-wall royalty. The Queen was an amazing woman without doubt, but some of the response was beyond ridiculous. Cancelling hospital appointments because they clashed with the funeral? Utterly ludicrous. Then there was the clampdown on anti-monarchy protests. An expression of a totally legitimate point of view. As I said a couple of posts ago, it’s not only woke that’s gone mad.

I had a crappy poker session on Friday night. Knowing that I had to get up the next morning didn’t help my decision-making; perhaps I shouldn’t have played at all. My bankroll is currently $999; it was $1026 at the start of the month.

A blank canvas

Not an awful lot to say, except that I spoke to my brother on Friday. His wife was holding their son on the fifth day of his life. Fifth day, with a whole world of possibilities stretching out before him, quite possibly until the end of this century. Everything is still on the table. There’s something amazing, almost thrilling, about that. There’s so much we don’t know, however, about the world he will experience. The signs don’t look good. In my nephew’s first few days on the planet, Putin has stepped up the threat of nuclear war. Will my nephew have anything like the opportunities his parents and (even more so) grandparents had? His own place to live? Readily available jobs? Any jobs? Will jobs as we know them even exist in 2045? Presumably we’ll still need builders and plumbers and electricians. Hopefully teachers, too. But perhaps not taxi drivers or paralegals or actuaries. Or even surgeons. The really good news for my nephew is that he has eminently sensible and financially secure parents. That will give him a huge advantage.

This morning I went to the fruit and vege market that sells local produce and is open just twice a week. On the way back I saw a old woman with a walking stick picking figs from an overhanging tree. I hadn’t realised that fig tree – or any fig tree – was there, but then I haven’t been to that market and come back that way very often since I moved to my new place. I asked her if she wanted some help but she preferred my money instead. I then picked a juicy fig.

This evening I had my first lesson with a ten-year-old boy. We had a conversation, read a few pages of George’s Marvellous Medicine, then did a matching exercise of opposite adjectives. He said he was happy to come back. (His mother told me he was apprehensive before tonight’s lesson.)

I didn’t mention that ten days ago I watched the men’s final of the US Open, between Carlos Alcaraz and Casper Ruud. The new generation. A great match, and 19-year-old Alcaraz (the winner in four sets) looks like being a superstar in the making, if he hasn’t already got there. I was hoping Ruud would win, as looked likely when he twice held set point in a long 12th game at the end of the third set. The match really hinged on those moments. Alcaraz had played a succession of marathon matches to reach the final and looked tired, but when he escaped and dominated the tie-break, he could make a dash to the finish line.

Tiresome talk

I played tennis tonight. We’d booked the court till eight, and it was getting pretty dark by then. Seeing the crows fly overhead made me miss living in that part of town. Where I am now is fine, but being in the centre was quite magical, especially at the beginning.

Yesterday morning I had a Skype conversation with my parents before cycling to Dumbrăvița for my lessons. What started out as a pleasant chat about the little one morphed into anti-woke diatribe by Dad. I find the whole thing, on both sides, extremely tiresome. I’m not woke in the slightest and I find some of the newfangled linguistic innovations jarring to say the least, but it isn’t something I can get worked up about. Sure, it all seems a little odd to me, and I imagine it seems a great deal odder to someone 30 years older than me, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Dad was likening the woke movement to flat-earth or anti-vax, which is a false equivalence because those fly in the face of well-established facts. Being requested to call someone “they” instead of “he” or “she” might annoy you; being opposed to vaccines actively kills people. What I find interesting is the most vehemently anti-woke people are those least affected. It’s like my parents’ regular complaints about all the Maori words on the TV and radio. Perhaps it has gone too far – I don’t live in NZ anymore so I don’t really know – but Mum doesn’t meet a Maori from one year to the next, and the last time I checked she didn’t even know what a koha was.

Something Mum complained of yesterday was the majority having to “kowtow” to minorities. Well Mum, being in the majority does give you significant inbuilt advantages which you’ve probably never even taken the time to consider, and giving some of that back once in a while to those less fortunate seems pretty reasonable to me. These sorts of discussions aren’t easy for me – although I get on well with my parents, we don’t really inhabit the same world. (My brother’s world is closer, so he probably doesn’t have the same issues.) My parents are about to buy a brand new electric car. Dad recently sold a painting for something close to what I’ll spend on my next car if I buy one. We’re orders of magnitude apart. (On the subject of advantages, as an immigrant to Romania from a richer country, I have certain privileges here. It’s important to be aware of them.)

I hope I can get back to baby talk in my next conversation with Mum and Dad. Covid was great for my relationship with them, when I look back. It affected everybody, and we were in agreement on masks, vaccines, the lot.

I took second place in a poker tournament earlier today. I was lucky to get that far, but having reached the heads-up stage it’s a bit of a mystery how I didn’t win. I’m still down a little for September, which has been a torrid month. I got absolutely nowhere in any of the three WCOOP tournaments I played.

It’s a boy!

On Thursday lunchtime, with no warning whatsoever, I got a message from my brother: “Baby boy”. I just about fell off my chair. Then there were some pictures of the baby looking rather bashed about, as indeed he had been, then the name. We’d never even discussed names, but it’s exactly what I would have chosen. Fully 75% of his great-grandfathers were blessed with that timeless name, which is also my middle name.

His head wasn’t in the right position, so he needed a rather primitive and barbaric-looking forceps delivery, poor little chap. Though he managed to avoid being born on September 11th, he was born at 9:11 in the morning. He weighed 7 lb 11 oz, in other words slap-bang on the average. Mother and baby stayed overnight and went home the next day.

My mum is well chuffed. Her sister’s kids have been pumping out grandchildren for her at a dizzying rate – she now has thirteen of them – and now Mum’s finally got one. For our family as a whole, this is something really quite special. A wonderful oasis of hope. Yesterday I got a lovely photo of my brother holding his son who looked much less battered than the day before; I liked it so much because I could see in my brother’s eyes what he was thinking. I have a miraculous piece of life in my arms. I’ll readily admit to a certain amount of envy too. It’s an experience that, in all probability, I’ll never have.

I’ll get to see my nephew in under five weeks when I make another trip to the UK. I hope I get many more opportunities after that. Kids are quite wonderful, even if (especially if?) (only if?!) they’re not your own. In the last few years I’ve spent thousands of hours teaching children, and I feel very lucky to have had that chance. On Thursday, right after I got the news, I had two hours with 15-year-old David. In 190 sessions, I’ve seen him grow from a painfully timid boy who said “I don’t know” almost every time I asked him a question (for fear of getting the wrong answer) into a confident speaker of English who wants to become an airline pilot. His head is screwed on more tightly than either of his parents. Every session we spend a few minutes talking about planes. I often regale him of my experiences as a boy on three-engined planes like the 727 and DC-10, or when I sat in the cockpit of a 737 which my uncle captained. I like to think I’ve made a difference in all the sessions we’ve had together.

Yesterday I played Wordle for the first time in a while. For some reason my nephew’s name is valid in the international version of Scrabble, so I thought it would be in Wordle too. It was, and it gave me the second and fourth letters in the right place off the bat. After my second guess I had three letters. Ooh, but there are dozens of options. I used my third and fourth guesses to eliminate options, but still failed to get the word in six tries. For the first time ever I missed the word, and that’s when I started with my nephew’s name. Calamitous! I hope that isn’t an omen. (You might be able to guess his name now.)

I had a pair of two-hour lessons in Dumbrăvița earlier today, both with teenage boys. It’s pretty soggy here now. I’ve got poker planned for this evening.

Three nights, two monarchs, one dog, zero neighbours — part 2 of 2

I slept better the second night. It rained all through the night and didn’t stop for most of the next day. I read, and we ended up playing a card game a bit like Last Card but with a Hungarian deck which made the whole thing more confusing. “But you said I could play a seven at literally any time. And now it’s the only card I have left. So doesn’t that mean I win?” “Ah, literally any time except the situation you find yourself in now. I should have specified that. Now pick up four.” “Cheers.” If you failed to say “last card”, you had to draw five; that seemed excessively harsh, but then again I was playing with people who had grown up having to queue for four hours just to get a loaf of bread. After our games, of which I didn’t win very many, Florin pointed out a large yellow mushroom that had grown on the side of a tree. He called it a iască galbenă. “You can eat that,” he said. No, you can eat that, I thought. A YouTube video convinced him that it was safe. He chopped it up and cooked it with onion and garlic and other bits and pieces, and we had it as part of our dinner. It tasted fine. Mushroomy, in fact. And none of us suffered convulsions or hallucinations. In between times I had a tour of their extensive garden and all the fruit trees. Florin even described and demonstrated a traditional Romanian outdoor game involving wooden sticks that were pointed at both ends, to be launched as far as possible.

In the evening we were joined by metallic blue fireflies – licurici – and other flying insects. Călin and I then watched the start of the semi-final between Casper Ruud and Karen Khachanov. It didn’t start until 10:15, and by this point the crickets – greieri – were chirruping away. We only watched the first set which finished in most extraordinary fashion. At 6-5 in the tie-break, they played out a 55-shot rally which Ruud eventually won to give him the set. That exchange even outdid – by a single stroke – the one that Djokovic and Nadal produced in the final of the same tournament nine years ago. Ruud went on to win the match in four sets, and will play Carlos Alcaraz in tonight’s final.

After another decent sleep, it was my last morning there. I gathered some peaches that had fallen from the trees near the house, and also picked some apples, then we had a late breakfast. Florin made mămăligă, which we ate topped with smântână and crumbled cheese, along with eggs. Soon it was time to go. Călin and I carried our bags down to his car, stopping once again and Neluțu and Mariana’s place where we had coffee and more cakes. We left at around 12:30. It rained heavily during the first half of our trip back, but then it cleared. We got back to Timișoara at 3pm, and in the evening I played tennis. I hope I get the chance to escape from the city and return there one day, because it is a lovely spot. I managed fine with having to speak Romanian all that time, but listening to it became quite tiring. Florin is both talkative and softly spoken; that makes for an exhausting combination. I learned several new words that I will probably soon forget, such as izmă, a type of mint, and zămătișă, a regional name for that crumbly cheese we ate on the last morning.

I now need to recover from eating all that rich food. This morning I spoke to my parents, then went to Dumbrăvița to give Matei a maths lesson. He’d only just received the results of a so-called checkpoint test that he sat back in May; he’d done rather well. This morning I showed him that a parallelogram really doesn’t have any lines of symmetry. I’ll give my brother a call tonight. My sister-in-law is just about ready to pop, though it’s now highly unlikely the baby will be born on September 11th. Both my brother and his wife are more royally inclined than me, so if it’s a girl I wouldn’t be too surprised if they call her Elizabeth. It’s a nice name after all, and it’s versatile: Liz, Lizzie, Libby, Beth, Betty, Bessie – the possibilities are almost endless.

I’ll put up some photos of my trip in my next post.

Three nights, two monarchs, one dog, zero neighbours — part 1 of 2

It was beautiful up in the hills, breathing pristine air, though it is nice to be back too. I find it hard to relax in somebody else’s world, even one as magical as that.

Călin picked me up at 1pm on Wednesday, and after spending some time on the motorway, we ventured into more remote territory. Brad, which I’d been to before, was the last place of any real size, and before long we were wending our way through villages like Zdrapți, a blast of consonants which sounds more like something an angry farmer would say than any sort of place name. We reached the village of Blăjeni, then stopped at our final destination of Sălătruc which is barely a hamlet. It wasn’t quite our destination because we then had to haul our bags up a hill. Florin (from tennis) met us at the bottom, and half-way up we stopped at some “neighbours” – Neluțu (the local handyman) and Mariana – who plied us with coffee, țuică, and beer. Florin and his wife Magda bought their traditional Romanian house as a holiday home in 2009. It sits on more than three acres (so they don’t have neighbours exactly), with views of the surrounding hills, and is endowed with all manner of fruit trees. It’s very basic, but it does have a fully functioning loo and cooking facilities.

For dinner we mainly had crenvurști which a type of sausage, in this case containing goat meat, and plenty of beer. Then it was ping-pong time. They had a table just above the house, and Florin rigged up some lighting because it would soon be getting dark. Table tennis is popular in Romania, and I thought I might get thrashed, but I didn’t do too badly. Neluțu joined us, and the four of us men were all of a similar standard. I started with a 22-20 win against Neluțu, then I had a 21-19 loss, then a 21-19 win – the close games kept coming. After the final ping had been ponged, Călin managed to get enough of a connection on his phone so we could watch the start of the US Open match between Francis Tiafoe and Andrey Rublev. Only the start though – it was getting pretty late. Bedtime. Călin and I shared a double bed, though we each had our own sleeping bags. Magda supplied us both with earplugs and I certainly needed them because Călin’s snoring was an eight-hour-long seismic event. With the noise and not being able to pee without waking everyone up and the occasional visit by the resident King Charles spaniel, I didn’t sleep too well.

Not knowing what breakfast options there were, if any, I’d brought along some cereal, which I ate with yoghurt. Shortly afterwards, plates of meat came out. I should have known. I’ve been in Romania long enough. We had blue sky, and after breakfast Călin, Florin and I went in the car part-way up the mountain, then headed off for a walk in the sunshine. The views were breathtaking – everything was crystal clear and reminded me of those long-ago trips around the South Island. Every minute or so, Florin pointed out a plant, giving its name, and saying how it could be used in a tea or as a remedy. There was plenty of oregano, which he called sovârv. It’s commonly used in tea here. There was also a lot of sunătoare, or St John’s wort, which is also used in tea here but could be bad news if I ever have it because of its reaction with the antidepressant I take. The plants were buzzing with flying insects of all sorts. Magda didn’t come with us – she preferred to stay inside and read or paint. She’s been learning to paint, and at some point she stumbled across one of my father’s books. She was surprised to find out that he was my dad. On the way back, we stopped again at their neighbours’ place. This time Mariana had prepared a plate of cakes and filled eggs.

Back at the house, Florin showed me the scythe and other traditional farming tools that they had inherited. Then it was barbecue time. Mici, pork chops, and more of those sausages. The pièce de résistance was the gadget that Florin called a disc that sat on top of the barbecue and was used to fry chips. Neluțu and Mariana joined us, and all in all it was a tasty meal. I was pleased that everyone happily tucked into my plum crumble afterwards. We also had țuică, then more beer than I could face. I had to say no at times. More ping-pong, and by this point I’d heard that the Queen was in a critical condition. By the end of our games, someone had messaged me to say that she had died. The end of an era. I’m a long way from being a royalist (I’m basically agnostic on the whole issue), but she had been such a constant – dare I say comforting – presence, that it felt very weird that she had suddenly gone, even at her great age. And on the new prime minister’s third day in office. Our resident dog’s breed had been thrust into the limelight all of a sudden. (It was named after Charles II, who was a major dog fan.) Royalist or not, I’ll certainly always remember where I was when the news broke.

The intrigue awaits

I haven’t really been following the US Open, but early this morning I saw the end of the quarter-final betwen Nick Kyrgios and Karen Khachanov. Kyrgios dominated the fourth-set tie-break to take the match into a rip-roaring fifth – these two players don’t mess around – but he dropped serve in the opening game of the decider after playing a tweener, and Khachanov was able to cling onto his service games despite a low first-serve percentage. The Russian, who was allowed the compete under a neutral flag, won the final set 6-4 to make the semis of a grand slam for the first time. The match finished at 1am local time. With Nadal and Medvedev out, there will be a new men’s grand slam champion no matter who wins. Kyrgios said he was devastated at losing; the draw had really opened up for him.

I didn’t have a great time at the virtual poker tables last night. I bombed out of the WCOOP single draw after an hour and a quarter. I’d been hovering at or just above my starting stack for a while, but then called a huge bet, which I probably should have folded, with my big but sub-monster hand. I was shown 85432, the fifth-best hand in the game. That all but ended my participation. My saving grace was that I’d qualified via a satellite, so it only cost me a dollar or so. I’ll hopefully try my hand at a couple more of these WCOOP thingies.

As I mentioned last time, Britain now has a new prime minister. It’s surely a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. In Boris Johnson’s leaving speech he compared himself to Roman or Greek gods, one or the other. It was all about him. He’s an egomaniac, pure and simple. He became more and more Trump-like during his time in office. Like Trump he was desperate for the power but had no interest in using it in a positive way, and he seemed totally devoid of empathy. And just like Trump, we might not have seen the last of him. But now, Liz Truss. Seriously. She appears to know bugger all about anything, and has already filled her cabinet with sycophants who know the same amount – a bunch of I’m-all-right-Jack climate-change deniers. A torrid winter is around the corner, and Britain will probably muddle through it and come out the other end in one piece, but it will be despite the country’s politicians, not because of them. I hope this lot get dumped out at the next election.

I’ll be off into the mountains, or sort of, just after lunchtime. Călin, one of the friends of the tennis crew – he works as a taxi driver – will pick me up. The drive will take about three hours. I’ll be staying three nights in a village called Blăjeni, near Brad. All the pictures I see of the area look extremely bucolic and beautiful. I’ve been given a list of food not to bring; yesterday I made a plum crumble and a pizza to take along. There are a load of unknowns around cooking and eating and sleeping and whatnot, but that all adds to the intrigue, I suppose.

What’s in a name?

Any day now I’ll be an uncle. They’re keeping everything a surprise. Even on the subject of names, I’ve heard nary a whisper. That strikes me as a little odd, because names matter. They’re part of one’s identity. Take, for instance, Nina Nannar, one of the reporters on the local news when I was at university. She was teased mercilessly at school over her name (what were her parents thinking?) but when she got married she found that her identity was so wrapped up in her name that she kept the Nannar! My brother also has alliterative names, and though they don’t make it to anything like Nina’s level, they give his name a don’t-mess-with-me simplicity. As for my name, I lack double initials, but my first and last names are close alphabetically, so I know my place (so to speak) even when the sorting is done by first name, as seemed to be common in my employee days. My full first name has a high letter count. When I was little I thought it was great (Look! I can write my whole name!), but later all those letters just became a pain. In Romania, middle names garner a bit more attention, so all my ID cards and bank cards and various bits of paper have my (much shorter) middle name on them too. Sometimes I wish that could have been my first name instead. But in truth my name is fine; my parents chose well.

I had a chat to my brother last night. He was pretty peeved by our parents’ lack of enthusiasm at their upcoming trip. “If they’re only going to spend a few days with us, what’s the point? It’s been four years. I don’t think they give a shit, honestly.” I’m more inclined than him to give them the benefit of the doubt. They aren’t young anymore, and Dad has been spooked by Covid. My brother is still bitter about my parents emigrating to New Zealand in the first place, and that’s something I don’t really get. We were grown men (23 and 22) by that stage. My brother had even been to Iraq. They could do what they liked. And Mum’s teaching at that same school was making her stressed and unhappy. Another ten years of that and I’d dread to think.

My teaching room now has yellow walls. There is no Resene in Romania which is just as well. That must be one of the biggest rip-offs in NZ. Their stores have play areas to encourage customers to browse even longer at vastly overpriced tins of paint on shelves where they pretty much spam you with eleven near-identical hues of ochre called Omaha Sands or some other crap. And several hundred dollars later, you’re out the door, ready to paint the dream. Anyway, there were two only yellows available to me, an insipid one and a bright one. I went for the bright one, fearing it would be sort of tennis-ball shade, but it’s about what I was aiming for, so that’s nice. It took a while, though.

Tennis. Only one session this weekend because the courts were soaking on Saturday following a heavy downpour. We started a bit earlier though, so we got two hours in before the light faded. Last weekend was interesting; there was a woman who lives in Sydney with her boyfriend and was back for a short time in her native Romania. I played with her against Domnul Sfâra, who isn’t far off ninety (!), and a teenage girl. My partner hadn’t played much. In a slightly comedic set we got to 4-4, at which point Domnul Sfâra asked if we could play a tie-break. We did, and when we reached 8-8 the old man asked to come off the court. We persuaded him to stay for what might have only been two more points, and we eventually lost the tie-break 11-9. Another funny thing (in a different set): that teenage girl managed to a serve four aces in a single 16-point game.

I’m going away the day after tomorrow. It’ll be somewhere near Brad. I’ve had to cancel and rearrange lessons, which is always a pain, but seeing some new scenery and getting to speak Romanian for three days straight will make up for that.

Poker. I played some tournaments on Friday and Saturday and got absolutely nowhere. Tomorrow I’ll have a go at the $11 WCOOP single draw. The structure could be better, but I’ll try my best in what probably won’t be a star-studded field.

In the UK, I’ve just heard that Liz Truss will be the new prime minister. Man the lifeboats.