Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Springtime pics

April 26, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is Anzac Day and my sister-in-law’s birthday.

I’d just gone out to withdraw 1990 lei from the cash machine, or bancomat as they call it here, and guess what. I saw my bike. It was chained to a nearby lamp-post, with a slightly more sturdy combination lock than the one I had. Then I bumped into Bogdan. He thinks that someone in our block, “the bloke with the beard on the sixth floor”, took it. He said he’d chat to the guy. I asked him not to involve the police. I never thought I’d see it again, and it’s so weird that someone from my block decided to pinch it. It didn’t get much use over the lockdown period, so perhaps he figured it was abandoned.

I didn’t think I’d ever get into poker again. It is engrossing, it does exercise my brain, but there’s so much I can’t do when I play poker. I can’t enjoy the sunshine. I can’t read a book. I can’t answer a FaceTime call when I’m playing a tournament. Heck, last week it was even stopping me from sleeping. Tournaments are the worst for having your hands tied. It was all fine over the winter months and the lockdown, but with the improving weather (and maybe even potential bike rides!) I don’t know how much of this I want to do. I got in three tournaments today. I won small prizes in two (single draw and badugi) while Omaha hi-lo once again eluded me. My bankroll is $652.

Lots of tennis this weekend. Yesterday we played three-and-a-bit sets of doubles. Today there were just three of us so we played two-against-one in rotation; singles in that format gives you a real workout. I really had to scramble. It was great stuff, and the weather was just perfect for it.

Spring and the loosening of restrictions have brought seemingly the whole city out to the parks. The many flowerbeds, mostly full of tulips in a multitude of colours, are a big attraction. Here are some pictures:

Gearing up for an anti-lockdown protest. From late March.
This rusty motorbike still has its old Ceaușescu-era number plate
Central Park
Poker

Making deep runs

April 25, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a weird week to navigate, with two late-night poker tournaments interspersed with lessons. It’s also been beautiful outside. Springtime in Timișoara is hard to beat.

On Monday I had a short prelude to what would await me: four lessons plus a single draw tournament where I took a nice big fat stack to the final table but was unable to capitalise as I finished fourth for a modest profit of $13. Then Tuesday came. My birthday. The SCOOP single draw (with a buy-in of just $5.50, it drew a whopping 3295 entries) started at 7:05. The last of my day’s lessons was due to finish at 7:30, but I managed to move it forward 15 minutes. You can enter late, even ridiculously so if you want, but being a bounty tournament you give up so much value by doing that. I wanted to get started ASAP. I was soon dealt the nuts and knocked out an ultra-short stack, but I mostly hung around my initial stack or just above until I eventually made some headway. I got moved to a table with someone running red hot to my left (he would go on to finish fourth), and that was a bit awkward. I also went card dead for ages and had to stay patient. I watched my opponents like a hawk as I folded hand after hand. A big moment came when a loose player fired out a large bet after the draw and I had no choice but to call with my 97, knowing that I’d be on the wrong side a fair amount. That time though he had a 98 and I chipped up to 80,000 when I’d have been down to 21k had I lost the pot. Other big moments were to follow. I was building a healthy stack but couldn’t pick up the bounties, but then I called an all-in out of position with a nut draw to try to change that. I cursed as I paired my deuce, but my opponent paired his three as he drew to only a ten. In another hand I got a pat number five – a true colossus – and eliminated someone who had a pat 87. When we got down to three 7-man tables with chip stacks now in the millions, my birthday was ancient history. It was the second-longest – 7½ hours – and perhaps the most absorbing tournament I’d ever played in. The end, for me, came at quarter to three. My queen didn’t come close to cutting it and I was out in 18th place for a profit of $80.

There was more to come. Wednesday night was badugi time. My student was happy to move my early morning lesson from Thursday to Friday, and if she hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have played. You just can’t teach if you’re going to be utterly buggered for your lesson. Teaching is one of those jobs that actually matters. The $11 tournament, which got 1305 entries, started at 9:15 in the evening. Badugi on PokerStars is normally played eight-handed. Eight is great: people play too loose in the early positions, and if you’re disciplined those players are a source of value. This tournament, for some reason, only featured six-handed tables, which I figured would reduce any edge I might have. The levels, only ten minutes, were pretty damn fast considering we only started with 35 big bets. I haemorrhaged a third of my opening stack in the first ten minutes and half-expected a quick exit, but I recovered. I was on a tricky table with experienced players, so I played tight in the hope that I could get moved somewhere slightly more opportune, and luckily that’s what happened. From that point I ran well, no question. I won many pots at showdown that I expected to lose. Unusually, I was never in real danger of elimination for the next five hours, and for a brief moment I soared into second place. Just like the night before, the major prizes beckoned. In the end, things all went pear-shaped rather quickly. With 23 players left, I was suddenly pretty short, and there were no pay jumps until 17th, so I had to make something happen. At 2:45, just like the night before, I was next out for a $49 profit after doing battle for 5½ hours.

Knackering stuff, and a case of what might have been. A spade instead of a club here or there and who knows. I played well though in both tournaments, taking my opportunities when they presented themselves, and that’s all I can really hope for. Together with the triple draw the previous week (not my best game, but I acquitted myself OK), I made $164 over the three SCOOP tourneys I entered, and my bankroll is now $647. If I’m really going to build on that I should master another game, or at least try to. I enjoy Omaha hi-lo and that’s my obvious choice, but it’s just so complex.

On Thursday, when I had a break in the afternoon, it was great to just wander in the park and not worry about anything. Next time I’ll post some pictures of Timișoara in spring.

Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - Music - Poker

Years that end in one

April 19, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ll be 41 the day after tomorrow. Yikes. Ten years ago today I started that job in Wellington; I only just lived to tell the tale. Ten years before that, I was doing my year abroad in Lyon and Mum came to stay with me for three days. I seem to remember us getting through plenty of pizza and wine. I’d just had a skiing accident (I haven’t attempted skiing since) and I was hobbling around the city. Ten years before that, on my 11th birthday, I was again with Mum, this time a bit closer to home in Bedford. I was taking part in a tennis tournament, and it rained and hailed and even snowed, highly unusual for the time of year. The tennis still went ahead, and I remember I won two of my four matches, just missing out on qualifying for the next stage. When I came back (rather damp) I was greeted by my best friend who was a year older than me; he was getting me all excited about starting at my new school in September. I can’t easily go back a fourth ten years, but I’ve just been looking at picture of our garden from the day after we moved into our family home which was (at the time) totally unsuitable for kids. The grass is knee-high and my parents have been incinerating something in the middle of it. There is washing on the line, and Mum is carrying my baby brother in her arms. Mum has dated the photo exactly to 14/10/81; my brother was eleven weeks old.

Romania’s Covid numbers are still high, but they’re coming down fast; hopefully the effect of the vaccines is starting to kick in. It’s very real here though. A woman cancelled a lesson on Thursday because she’d picked up the virus. Another of my students got Covid several weeks ago but is still compromised – he’s always run down and can’t smell anything. Yesterday some of the tennis players were in shock when they learned of someone’s death from the disease. At some level (minor for me; utterly devastating for many others) this is affecting us all. It’s maddening because so much was preventable. I have day-by-day figures since the pandemic started, but for Romania as a whole and for Timiș, my local area (hence the graphs). The daily new cases in Timiș (population around 700,000) for each of the 30 days of last June were 00200 01000 01100 00111 00020 01003. We had about as much virus as New Zealand at that point and could have ring-fenced Timiș or something a bit wider. Everyone could have had a great summer in the park or at the pool or at the pub or any other P-word, but no, they had to go to Greece or Turkey or the Black Bloody Sea (couldn’t think of anywhere worse in the height of summer, not that I’ve ever been there). How many deaths worldwide have been caused by stupid unnecessary travel? Well, officially there have been three million deaths, so I’d say at least three million.

On the subject of cutting back on travel, I read quite a moving piece in the paper about a Welsh sheep farmer in his early seventies who has remained single all his life and has never been out of the valley. He even eats the same dinner every day. But he wants for nothing. I thought it was lovely, and runs counter to everything that we’re told, to want more, bigger, better, to have big ambitious goals, to even strive for happiness. Yes, we must achieve happiness. You can’t just be content anymore. Do people still even use the adjective content, other than in negative contexts like “I’ll have to be content with that”? I remember at a young age asking my grandmother (Dad’s mum) what the purpose of life was. She said to be content.

I’ve just been listening to Out of Time, the REM album, which came out in 1991 (of course, it ends in one). A great album, and one of the Youtube commenters said that Low, Near Wild Heaven and Endgame are an unbeatably beautiful back-to-back triplet of songs. I have to agree.

Three poker tournaments at the weekend. I failed to cash in any of them. I played a fixed badugi this evening – that’s a rarity, and I only managed it because tennis was washed out. I had a good, highly aggro player at my table who plays an absolute ton of all kinds of games and must be playing with a nice fat bankroll. I don’t like the way I played my bust-out hand – my opponent correctly broke and outdrew me, when I might have got him to cling on hopelessly to his hand if I’d played it differently. My bankroll is $505, and I’ll be playing two more SCOOP tourneys this week.

Life :) - Poker

Police and poker

April 15, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday the woman in the UK cancelled her 2pm lesson – she misses Romania and is going through a tough time mentally in general. With that extra break in my schedule, I played a $1.10 buy-in satellite into last night’s $22 SCOOP triple draw tournament. Out of 94 entrants, the top four made it through. In the early stages I profited from being at a table of people who were either sitting out or hadn’t the foggiest idea of the rules. If I made any sort of hand I could just keep betting and raising. These players were quickly eliminated, and from then on I needed to win the big pots when it mattered, which I did. At one point I made the nuts against the second nuts. On the final table I found myself in the unusual position of having the biggest stack by far and being able to coast into the main tournament which started at 9:15 pm. As soon as the satellite was over, the police called me, asking me to come in early the next morning to make an official statement about my bike. Damn, this tournament could go on all night and I could be buggered by then. Should I even bother?

In all probability my two-hour battle to win a SCOOP ticket would be for naught; just over 15% got paid. Unlike in the satellite, most of the 1319 players in the main tournament actually knew the rules (though how they played varied enormously), and some of them were high rollers and/or had intimidating badges to say that they’d won SCOOP events in the past. They’d probably played hundreds of the things. By the first break I had a bit more than the 25,000 chips I started with, by the second break I was up to two and a half times my starting stack, and by the third break I had over five times. In other words I was doing pretty well. But when we resumed at midnight it all came crashing down in the space of a few hands. My number four was beaten by number two and that left me crippled, but I partially bounced back. Then, with 72,000 chips in my stack, I got involved in a huge three-way pot with an excellent draw and immediately made the second nuts, but on the last draw somebody clearly made a big hand. If my hand had beaten his, my stack would have been 158,000 and I’d have had an eye on the top prizes. Had he shown the same hand as mine, I’d have had 91,000. But no, he showed the stone-cold nuts and I was left with 24,000. So much can hinge on just one hand, and after that unavoidable disaster I was almost dead meat and unlikely to get a payout at all. I hung in there somehow. The top 215 paid, and as the money bubble approached I went into near-shutdown mode. (Normally I don’t care much about min-cashing, because it’s such a small payout compared to your buy-in, but because I’d satellited in, the min cash was many times my original buy-in, so I was unusually bothered.) There was a player at my table with even fewer chips than me, and he stalled to try and flop over the line and get a min cash. Finally the bubble burst, and I was soon out in 202nd place for a $36 prize. Not quite what I managed in my only other SCOOP all those years ago (second place for a few grand), but at least I got something. My bankroll is now $516. I intend to play two more SCOOP events (directly; no satellites) next week.

The rollercoaster ride (maybe it was more like Oblivion at Alton Towers) finished just before one o’clock, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about my parents (when will I see them again?) and my cousin’s youngest son. I had to be up at seven so I could make that damn (almost certainly pointless) police statement. The city of Timișoara, as I’ve just found out, is split into five police sections, and it seems to be something akin to gerrymandering that places the station (a 45-minute walk from here) in the same section as where I live. Gosh, the statement. I had to start by writing Declarație and underlining it. Then I was interrogated about where and when and what kind of lock and are there cameras and so on and so forth. The policeman dictated the statement for me to write, and I had to pen a page and a half of Romanian. Reședință. Is that with an e or an i in the middle? He asked me to state my reședință, my residence, my home, but where exactly is home? As far as I’m concerned, Timișoara is home now, or the closest thing to it. The cops clearly had no shortage of time on their hands, and that’s got to be a good sign. This city, touch wood, is pretty safe. So I got some useful Romanian writing practice. I was knackered after that, and had a doze at lunchtime.

Family - Poker

The signs are there

April 13, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents this morning. Yesterday they went to Timaru for my uncle Graeme’s 80th birthday celebration. He’s the father of my cousin who lives in Wellington. He’s suffered from a lung condition for decades and has also had prostate cancer. In 1999 another of my uncles – one of Mum’s older brothers – came to stay with us in the UK, and my parents asked him how Graeme was. In his typically vivid way of speaking, he replied: “He’s got one foot in the grave and another on a bloody banana skin!” Well he died in 2014 at age 70, from cancer of the oesophagus, while Graeme is still going.

My cousin had travelled down with her three sons to celebrate her dad’s big eight-oh. Dad was intrigued by the youngest boy, aged 12½. You know, I think he might have a problem. Apparently he was obsessed with the cat, and was totally uninterested in any of the people present, except when he gave Dad a big bear hug out of the blue. He didn’t really talk. Dad thought he might be autistic, and he could see shades of me in how he behaved. I know my cousin recently took him out of the expensive school that his elder brothers also went to, and she wouldn’t have done that without good reason. So much time has gone since I saw him face-to-face, so I haven’t seen him grow into a near-teen, but he was always different from his brothers who were high achievers right from the start. My cousin kept a spreadsheet of all the words they knew by the age of two: the eldest one had a sizeable vocabulary, only for the middle boy to surpass that by his second birthday. She didn’t bother with the youngest one, though, because he’d hardly picked up a single word. The one thing that does stand out for me is the time I saw him at football practice. He often sloped off to the side, uninterested in the game, the whole idea of competing in a team seemingly alien to him, just as it was to me at that age.

I really did have problems, but they were largely masked by my capability at school; as a little boy I was unusually capable at reading and maths. Throughout my teenage years and beyond, I sort of got by. Few friends to speak of, but I muddled along in my unobtrusive way. Unlike my brother, I wasn’t much trouble. (Because of him, I flew under the radar a bit.) My parents thought I’d “sort myself out eventually”, and on the surface I did. I got into a quality university, came out with a good degree, got a good job. None of it was particularly easy, but I managed it. I could fake it for just long enough to maybe get through a one-hour interview, but in the job itself I couldn’t fake it. I might be expected to go out for drinks on a Friday night, four hours or more in a packed bar, and I’d just be itching to escape. (Covid must be a godsend for some people.) Or, even harder, I’d need to build up relationships with colleagues over months and years. I survived, in the only way I knew how, by keeping a low profile, but trying to keep that going just about killed me.

My problems might have seemed small, but they have affected me hugely. My ability to earn money and live comfortably, my ability to have fun, my ability to find a partner and have a family, all massively compromised. I came up with my online name “plutoman” when I lived on Pluto Place (what a name), but for me it worked because I was always on the outside, and mostly irrelevant. (At the time, Pluto had just been downgraded from a planet to a lump.) I liked “plutoman” (anagram of “not a lump”, by the way) because the “man” ending has always been slightly amusing to me, and the word then has lots of those nice friendly letters in the middle of the alphabet.

Living in Romania has been a breath of fresh air. I’m no longer living a lie. In this evening’s lesson I could play a video, make faces and wave my arms about, and that was absolutely fine. I really hope my cousin, a super-high achiever herself, recognises her youngest boy’s condition, or at least looks into it (maybe he’ll grow out of it – who knows) and doesn’t try and push him into jobs or university degrees or anything that could make his life unnecessarily stressful.

I played another poker tournament – single draw – this morning. Barely a dozen hands into the tournament, my 3000 starting stack had shrivelled to 200-odd as I called a shove with a pat 98 only to be shown a 96. So that was that. But no, I built my tiny stack up to over 4000, only for that to whittle down, and in the end I was the victim of a suck-out (my pat 97 got outdrawn) and that really was that. There were a couple of spots where (in hindsight) I was too tight. So much of this game is knowing your opponents.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

Bikeless, and the joys of tennis

April 12, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday, just after I wrote my last blog post. My bike was no more. It had been nicked. It was locked to the banister leading to the basement – not in my flat where the fumes from the glue on one of the tyres made me sick – but no matter, my cheap bike was gone. After that I walked many, many miles, to Decathlon (50 minutes’ walk from here), the police station (45 minutes; almost certainly a waste of time, but I got to practise my Romanian there) and the market at Mehala (45 minutes). Add all those times together, then double that. I didn’t find a suitable bike at either Decathlon or the market, which is where I picked up both that bike and my previous one. So I’m bikeless, which is a pain. I’m also pretty tired; I played a fair few sets of tennis over the weekend.

We’ve had a lovely weekend of spring weather, but after another fine day forecast for tomorrow, it’s predicted to turn to custard (as they say in Shangri-La) in a big way. I played tennis on both days, and today was really quite wonderful. In a flashback to pre-smartphone world, people on the sidelines were watching other people play, commenting, applauding. Bravo, Viorica. It was like being back at Belmont, circa oh-five. Somebody was following a handball game on his phone, but that’s OK. I played my first set for several months with Petrică. Last year he wanted to hit any and every ball; he was a pain to play with, honestly. Since then he’s had Covid, and he definitely isn’t the same man. In today’s set I took more than my share of shots. I served the first game, which we won after seven deuces. We then proceeded to lose the set 6-1, without ever getting to deuce again. I didn’t exactly set the world alight with my play either; I hit so many forehands out over the baseline. As it happened, that marathon first game wasn’t the longest I was involved in. In a mixed set, my partner served a game that went ten deuces, plus or minus one. The highlight of the early evening might have been Domnul Sfâra, who is probably 86 now. He just watched; it was great to see him again.

On Thursday morning I got some encouragement from my 13-year-old student. To illustrate a key difference between English and Romanian, I gave him an example of a Romanian sentence, adding “I hope I’ve got that right”. He said that of course it’s right, and I definitely shouldn’t be worrying about my Romanian. That was nice coming from him; I expect someone of that age to be more honest than somebody older.

Poker. I’ve been struggling to play much, but I got in four tournaments today. The first was Omaha hi-lo. I had a reasonable run but was out in 52nd, with the top 35 paying. Next was single draw (well, they overlapped). I was fortunate to chip up as I called my opponent’s shove with a nut draw and hit my monster to beat his strong hand. Then, very briefly, I had a big stack. I lost almost half of it when my 50th-best hand clashed with my opponent’s 49th, then soon after I made a terrible fold. Against the same aggressive opponent and with a bounty in play it was just awful. I thought I was dead and buried (and deservedly so) after that, but I got a reprieve when someone seemed to misread their hand. I made the final table where I was out in sixth. Pot-limit badugi next (again they overlapped), a less dramatic tournament but a similar result as I finished seventh. A bit disappointing not to hit one of the top prizes, but those little wins come in handy. After tennis I tried a tiny-buy-in satellite to tonight’s Omaha hi-lo SCOOP. I doubled up on only the second hand as I flopped quad kings, but it was all downhill from there. Having a maniac on my left most of the time didn’t help. My bankroll is $484.

Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Other sports - Poker

No Shangri-La for me, but at least I can stay

April 7, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

My apartment here in Timișoara has been sold. The agent told me on Monday. Luckily I can stay here, and I certainly want to for the time being. Then that evening I got a surprise knock on the door from the elderly couple on the sixth floor. They’d heard this place was for sale and were interested in buying it. I had to tell them that it had been sold hours earlier.

On Sunday I played tennis again with the smoker in his late sixties who coughs and spits his way through the game. We talked vaccines, as we all do right now, and I expected him to be one of Romania’s many anti-vaxers. He just fits the profile. But no, he’d been pfully Pfizered and was quite vocal about all the “idiots” who refuse the jab. I shouldn’t have been so quick to pigeonhole him. When he started smoking, probably half a century ago, practically all men in Romania smoked. And it’s really hard to give up!

I had a good chat with my cousin in Wellington on Monday. It’s funny dropping in on Virus-Free World. It sounds like some mythical land, a Shangri-La. They’re about to introduce a trans-Tasman bubble with Australia. Fingers crossed that doesn’t all blow up in their faces.

Last weekend the Boat Race took place. I didn’t watch it; I didn’t even know it was on. It was one of those things I watched as a little kid, hoping Cambridge would win, because I was born there and lived just down the road, and because I thought their duck-egg bluey-green colour was way cooler than Oxford’s boring dark blue. But Oxford always bloody won. Last Saturday’s race was interesting because Covid restrictions it took place on the Ouse at Ely, just around the corner from where I grew up, instead of on the Thames, so Cambridge had home advantage of sorts. And they won both the men’s and women’s races.

In my last post about everything becoming too big, I totally neglected to mention the Ever Given, the gargantuan quarter-mile-long cruise ship that was wedged in the Suez Canal for six days, blocking about 12% of all global freight. We’re bursting at the seams here.

I played a single draw poker tournament this morning, or at least attempted to. My connection to their server kept cutting out. It was hopeless. I only saw about dozen hands in the times I sporadically reconnected. After blinding way down and busting out, I contacted support asking what I could do to mitigate the problem (I had no internet issues other than with their server), and if they could refund my small buy-in. They got back to me pretty quickly and, to my surprise, refunded my buy-in as a “goodwill gesture”, though with a big dose of “this is your fault”. This didn’t happen to the others at your table, so you can’t blame us. It reminded me of the time I got a wisdom tooth taken out and was in agony during and after the extraction. The anaesthetic didn’t properly work, and I was up all night bleeding and in excruciating pain. When I went back to the dentist, whom one of my work colleagues accurately dubbed “the Indian Butcher”, he strongly suggested that it was my fault because my experience “doesn’t usually happen”. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to get a refund, but I don’t know how to prevent being disconnected again.

Coronavirus - Family - Life :) - Poker

Getting away from big

April 5, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s a sunny early April morning, though a little chilly for the time of year. It’s twelve days since I had the vaccine, so I’m over half-way from probably being protected from severe disease. I read that many in the UK (where vaccine take-up has been impressive) felt a sense of euphoria when they got the jab; it was the most exciting thing they’d done all year. I felt something similar: when I got out of the vaccination centre the sun was shining, spring was in the air, and a world of possibilities was maybe opening up again.

A week later, I had a similar experience. Last Wednesday morning, when I was completely free following a jam-packed work schedule the day before, I went to the immigration office armed with paperwork: the Article 50 form, an updated rental contract, confirmation of public health insurance, bank statements, and some other bits and pieces that I’ve forgotten. The guy who had previously been a bit of a twat was very nice and gave me the green light. He even complemented me on my Romanian. He said I’d need to wait five weeks for the wheels of bureaucracy in Bucharest to turn, after which I’ll receive a residency card of some sort. (I initially thought he said “three to five days”, not “thirty-five days”: my Romanian could still do with some improvement.) So that’s fantastic. But what to do I do next? Buy a place to live, what and where and when? My UK-based student said I should I buy a flat in a new apartment block, but those sterile hospitally new blocks (and the areas they’re located, and the kinds of people who live there) depress me, and the last thing I need is to live somewhere depressing, even if it’s a “good investment”.

The latest lockdown ended on Wednesday night, and that meant I could play tennis again. At the weekend I played twice. (One of the sessions I only managed because someone cancelled a lesson at the last minute.) My social life has been nonexistent seemingly forever, so it was good to get back out there, meeting people, exercising, speaking Romanian. It’s a lovely setting with (right now) white magnolias in bloom. Some of the other players follow all kinds of other sports, and one of them was giving live score updates from his phone. “It’s 25-17,” he said. Hmm, sounds like rugby. “Now it’s 25-18.” So it can’t be rugby. Turns out it was handball.

Last Monday a student and I talked about the pandemic and how it has thrown some of the problems of modern society into sharp relief. One of them is the tendency for everything to get bigger while at the same time less meaningful. Destination weddings that last five days, World Cups in bloody Qatar, kids’ sixth birthday parties where their whole class is invited, ever-expanding malls where you can blow big money on big crap. That morning I’d been to a supermarket so big that I couldn’t find a damn thing. Where are the sodding light bulbs in this place? My student even mentioned that apples have increased in size, and yes, the ones you buy in supermarkets are twice the size of those that grew on our trees when I was a kid, and have about 10% of the taste. One nice thing about my life and work in Romania has been escaping big; no more millions or billions or talk of market share.

Don’t get me wrong, big isn’t always bad. Big gives you economies of scale and more options. That’s why I play poker on PokerStars. They’re the biggest, so they offer games that their competitors don’t. Unfortunately I can’t play very often, so at 4:40 on Sunday morning I decided to do something dumb. I lay awake in bed. Hey, isn’t there a poker tournament starting about now? So I got up and played it. Two hours later, having built up a healthy stack at one stage, I was out in 17th place with the top 11 getting paid. Ugh. I slept for another two hours and got up at nine just in time for two more fruitless tournaments. I felt washed out for the rest of the day. I must stop doing that. I’m going through a bit of a barren patch; my bankroll is $456. This month there’s SCOOP, a big tournament series that normally takes place in May, but this year they’ve moved it forward a month to catch more people staying at home before the Covid situation improves. My only previous SCOOP tournament was eleven years ago and it went quite well, so on that basis I definitely want to give this year’s SCOOP a whirl.

I’m about to give my cousin in Wellington a call. Her eldest son has just started university in Canterbury (amazing how time flies) and he’s already found himself a girlfriend. Must be nice. For me, there’s no doubt about it, that first year was tough.

Coronavirus - Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Poker

Our only way out

March 29, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had no side effects at all from my much-maligned (totally unfairly) Covid jab. A slightly sore arm for a day, and that was it. I know others haven’t been quite so lucky, but c’mon people, get the damn vaccine. It’s our only chance of getting out of this.

My conversations with Mum and Dad revolve around when, where and how we can meet again. It’s already been ages, to the point where I’m struggling to piece together the timeline of what has happened since. I do know the dates, but my whole concept of time has been warped. Dad’s cancer, my trip to Bosnia, a few months which passed for normal, then Covid, the new normal. A little over two calendar years, but what’s that in lockdown years?

Today I felt quite angry. We could have eradicated this virus by now, but modern society – greed, entitlement, selfishness – hasn’t allowed us to. All over the world, apart from New Zealand, Vietnam, South Korea and one or two others, the wrong kinds of politicians have made the wrong kinds of decisions, and they still are.

Last week was my biggest for work in a while, with 36 hours of lessons, plus all the putting together of worksheets and what have you. When I’m locked down, I’m happy to take all the work I can get. Yesterday I had that 90-minute session with the young couple who are learning English from scratch, and it’s quite tiring having to speak a weird mixture of Romanian and English. One of the very nice kids I teach said he’ll be off to Egypt in a few weeks with his parents. Seriously, right now you can shove your pyramids up your arse. The bloke in the UK gave me a one-hour Youtube video of Romanian stand-up comedy to watch. That’s got to be one of the hardest things to understand in a foreign language. Shushushu zhuzhuzhu dududu. Ha ha ha ha ha! Um, I don’t get it, Toma.

Poker. I haven’t had much joy since I last reported. On Thursday I paid the price for my terrible passivity in a pot-limit badugi tournament. I was really kicking myself for failing to shovel chips into the pot. Today I had a similar spot and played much more aggressively. I got knocked out, but did the right thing I’m sure. My biggest problem continues to be how little I can play. My bankroll is $464.

Coronavirus

My first shot

March 25, 2021 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had my first Astra Zeneca jab this morning at eight (well it was half-eight when it actually went into my deltoid), and right now I’m feeling fine. I was a tad nervous, not because of the needle or any potential side effects from the vaccine, but because of all the admin and forms and other associated faff which tends to stress me out. After leaving home I realised I’d forgotten to fill in the declaration form (we’re still in lockdown, so you need that every time you go out the door) so I had to rush back for that. When I got there just before eight, a queue of 20 or so people had formed outside. Then we all piled in. Though their system worked well, they did a really bad job of ensuring that we didn’t ironically contract the virus moments before being vaccinated. Just ugh. I had to declare on a form that I was taking antidepressants, then as soon as I produced my passport they started speaking to me in English. I got things like “you move there”. Please speak Romanian, I said. The woman who gave me the jab seemed lovely. She said she’d worked in America. Then I sat around for 10 or 15 minutes before getting my certificate. Congratulations, you’re vaccinated. It’ll take three weeks before I get protection, then I go back for my second dose on 19th May.

Our lockdown has just been extended for a second time. It was due to end last Sunday, and on Saturday the local council voted not to extend it (or rather, they didn’t get enough of a majority to prolong it). But Bucharest stepped in and sanity prevailed: we got a three-day extension. Today they’ve confirmed that a further seven days will be added. I use the word lockdown, but it’s nothing like the lovely tranquillity of one year ago. We sometimes get a blissful lull in traffic, but most of the time there’s a steady flow. It is extremely quiet in the late evening though. In the meantime there have been anti-lockdown protests right in front of my window. Lots of noise and flag-waving, and on one occasion someone burned a mask, but the turnout has never got above 150. I do find the flag business weird. Show patriotism by letting your fellow citizens die.

No lack of work at the moment. Five lessons on Monday and six yesterday. I’m grateful for an easier day today (just two lessons). It’s been a beautiful spring day. I took this snap from the rose garden this afternoon. If you look closely you can even see the moon.