Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Travel time taking its toll

January 28, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last week I had 33 hours of teaching – that’s on the high side, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is exceptional is all the time I spent walking or biking or bussing or tramming to lessons, and I guess that’s why I feel exhausted, a bit like during those few months in Wellington in 2016 when I had that flatmate who drove me into the ground.

Dad sent me a link to some truly wonderful photos of Naples, a city he lived in for a time as a boy, while his father was stationed there. I would like to visit one day. The photographer did well to gain access to the interior of so many homes, and their residents. I get to see the insides of people’s homes here in Timișoara, and at times it can be a fascinating experience. Today I had my second lesson with the ten-year-old boy. I could see into the next room, where a row of two-foot-long (at least) Romanian-style sausages were hanging over the back of a chair. The boy said his grandmother, who also lives there, had made them. On the way out, I saw one of the apartments on the floor below had various religious iconography pinned to the door, with some sort of obscure coded message written in chalk. This was an old apartment block. The expensive new blocks aren’t fascinating in the slightest: inside those clinically white places, you’re met with English signs saying LOVE and HOME and GOOD VIBES ONLY and other equally ghastly decor-shit. SHOOT ME NOW.

Today’s match between Nadal and Kyrgios was a treat. Good job for the spectators, who had paid an eye-popping amount to witness it. That third set, which Nadal won in more than 70 minutes, was the most gripping I’ve seen for a while. I couldn’t quite see the end – as Nadal attempted (and failed) to serve out the match, I had to set off in the rain for my lesson. I warmed to Kyrgios a bit during this match. He will have gained more fans than he’s lost during this tournament, I feel, and for the first time I thought that maybe, just maybe, he has it in him to convert his extraordinary talent into a major title or five.

I was awake just before 4am, so I turned on the TV to see Simona Halep break Elise Mertens in a captivating game to lead 6-4 5-4, and then serve out to love. I then went back to bed.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

Supporting the underdog

January 25, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

Latest news from Dad. His never-ending headaches have finally ended. They won’t dog him for the rest of his life as he’d feared, and it seems the culprit was his tooth after all. Being headache-free (apart from the odd ones he always gets) has given him a new lease on life. That’s the good news. The less fantastic news is that he’s found blood in his urine and will be having tests, and who knows what they will turn up.

Old age. I often forget that Dad is five months short of seventy. Today I bumped into the elderly couple who live on the sixth floor. She had just been to the dentist. She showed me her teeth – she’s one of the several million Romanians who have none of the ones that sprouted naturally. This time they told me their ages – she’s 79, he’s 88. He told me that in the fifties and sixties, people used to stroll up and down what is now Piața Victoriei: it sounded like an Italian-style passeggiata. Now he said it’s full of gypsies and people who don’t care. The lift was out of order, so they had no choice but to painstakingly climb the stairs.

It’s been a tiring but productive week of lessons. On Tuesday I had my five-kilometre walk from the end of the tram line to Urseni to meet the 12-year-old girl. It was quite a trek, even if he road had been sealed since Google went there, apart from the last little bit. After the lesson her father took me into town (he was driving that way anyway), and in future her mother will pick me up from the last tram stop. I enjoyed the lesson – it made a refreshing change to teach a girl, after having a string of boys who play computer games endlessly and dream of being YouTubers when they grow up.

After my lessons today with the Cîrciumaru family, I was glued to live score updates from the first-to-ten fifth-set tie-break between Roger Federer and John Millman. Federer won six straight points from 8-4 down; Millman will surely be devastated. I wasn’t too happy either – I’m kind of over Fed now, and would have liked the gritty Aussie to have pulled off the upset on home turf (he did shock Federer in the US Open in 2018). I did a rough calculation in my head of the chances of a Federer comeback from 4-8 (which is a deep hole for anybody, even Federer), assuming both players are of an equal standard. The “answer” depends on how big advantage you think the server has on each point, but it’s somewhere in the region of 1 in 18. Obviously, if you drop the “equal standard” assumption and instead assume Federer has some kind of edge (probably a psychological one due to his vast experience), his chances go up, but I wouldn’t go any higher than one in a dozen.

I’ve watched bits and pieces from Melbourne. My favourite match so far has been the one between Tommy Paul and Grigor Dimitrov. Paul was up two sets but Dimitrov came storming back and served for the match in the fifth, only for Paul to break back and play an absolute blinder in yet another deciding tie-break. There have been so many.

And Serena is out, beaten by Wang Qiang 7-5 in the third set, while Coco Gauff had another massive result in beating last year’s champion Naomi Osaka in two sets.

Language teaching - Life :)

Big nu-nu

January 20, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I managed 30½ hours of lessons last week, and I might soon have more work than I know what to do with. I’m starting with a ten-year-old boy tomorrow, my Syrian student has a mate who I’ll be seeing for the first time next Saturday, and this morning a woman called me asking if I would give lessons to her twelve-year-old daughter. Once I’d found a gap in my diary I agreed, and then she sent me the location via WhatsApp. I’d say it’s a little out of my catchment area, meaning it’s in a village outside the city, far from any reliable public transport, down a dirt track uncharted by Google Maps. I’ve got a tram ride plus a long walk in store on Tuesday. (I do have my bike, but it’s become very slow of late.) This might have to be a one-off.

Tonight I had my rescheduled lesson with Ammar. He wanted to practise writing and I asked him to write a short essay about a family member he admired. He chose his eldest brother (he’s one of eight, as I found out). I had a go too, and I wrote about my grandmother. In the middle of my attempt I realised it was the eighth anniversary of her death. I often wish she could visit me.

Today I did my shopping at Kaufland. I immediately got into trouble. I entered, looked for one of their wheeled baskets, saw they didn’t have any, and went out the in door so I could get a trolley from outside. Big no-no (or, should I say, nu-nu). Suddenly I had security guards opening all the pockets of my backpack. They eventually let me go. Take two, and I realised how important it is to have the Romanian names of fruit and vegetables down pat at this particular supermarket. Other stores have numbered buttons, but at this place you have to scroll through an alphabetical list, usually with people waiting behind you. Cabbage is varză, so you have to scroll almost to the end, where you’ll find them next to the aubergines (vinete, which believe it or not is vânătă in the singular). Carrots begin with M in Romanian, swapping places with mushrooms (they start with C, as do onions). I’ve been here long enough that this seems totally normal.

It has been a tragic week in Timișoara. Four children were killed in a house fire, close to where I’ll be having my lesson tomorrow with the new boy. Their mother was working at the time – she said money was too tight not to – and she left the children, all aged under seven, in the hands of their 14-year-old brother who lit the fireplace in the younger children’s bedroom.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The skis and ski-nots

January 19, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

This week has been pretty work-heavy and I’m OK with that. Today I had my 100th lesson with Octavian – he’s my third student to rack up three figures. My number of students (to date, since I arrived here) are rapidly closing in on that mark too – I got a call this morning from the mother of a ten-year-old boy who, on Monday, will be number 99. I was supposed to see Ammar (number 98) this evening, but he called me at the last minute to say he couldn’t make it. We’re meeting tomorrow instead. This morning I did meet the IELTS-obsessed Victor (number 97) for a 2½-hour session which he wants to make a regular Saturday fixture. We spent the first hour on a long essay he’d written – I can’t fault his commitment. As for Ammar, I’d like to ask him about his journey from Syria, but I don’t want to pry.

In my fourth winter here, I’ve learnt that Timișoara people can be divided into two groups – those who ski and those who don’t. It’s hardly an even split – skiing is beyond the means of most here – but the people I get to teach aren’t “most”, and among them, skiing is a status symbol. Like most status symbols, skiing comes in levels. Hiring skis and boots for an occasional weekend is one thing, but becoming an accomplished skier with all the latest gear and spending weeks at a time in some Austrian chalet requires a whole other magnitude of moolah.

After watching the darts last weekend, I dipped into some old footage on Youtube. First I watched the tail end of a 1984 semi-final involving Jocky Wilson. Back then, you could smoke and drink on stage. In fact it was almost compulsory. Jocky Wilson smoked and drank a lot. At the end of the match, which he lost by a whisker, Jocky collapsed as he tried to congratulate his opponent. Eight years later, and they’d banned the on-stage drinking, supposedly to clean up the sport’s image. As a little boy I remember darts was always on TV, but by 1992, perhaps due to the game’s seediness, they only showed one tournament. I watched the ’92 final live at my grandmother’s place; my brother and I were staying the night there. My brother wanted to watch the Crufts dog show, which was delayed by this marathon darts match that Phil Taylor won, famously beating Mike Gregory in a sudden-death leg. I then had a look at the 2004 BDO final, which I didn’t see because I’d just moved to New Zealand, I had more important things to do like find a job, and I doubt I couldn’t have seen it anyway in Temuka. Judging from the decor and the crowd atmosphere, it could easily have been the eighties, but the 2004 final was won by the one and only Andy Fordham. He must have been at least 30 stone, and his arms were thicker than my legs.

I had a good chat with my brother this week. They were about to buy some more hens; their current stock has been depleted to just two. He said they’ll get ex-cage hens that have been pecked to within an inch of their lives and have never seen the sunlight.

Family - Language teaching - Other sports

Dad, darts and a damn good student

January 14, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

Four lessons today. The last, with Ammar, a new student in his mid-twenties, was the most interesting. Ammar arrived from Syria in 2012. Since then, he’s found a Romanian girlfriend, picked up the local language to a standard I could only dream of, and studied medicine. His English is very good too (on my 0-to-10 scale, I’d put him at an 8) and he now wants to sit the IELTS so he can practise in the UK. He’s altogether a smart guy. His parents live in Malmö in Sweden. We’ll be meeting again on Saturday.

I spoke to Dad last night. He was much better. Maybe his headaches were really one big toothache, though that seems far-fetched. Their visitors were my US-based cousin whom I met on my trip there, and his wife. Dad said he was begging for them to leave. They’d been over for my aunt and uncle’s golden wedding celebration.

The BDO darts final was a good spectacle in a lively atmosphere. Both players were ripping into the treble 20 at the start, Jim Williams went two sets up, and I thought he might power to victory with a three-figure average. The critical moment of the match, looking back, came in the deciding leg of the third set. Wayne Warren needed six. Sounds simple, but it’s awkward. Two, double two? Straight down for double three? He chose the latter option, hit the single, but checked out on single one and double one. Miss that and he would probably have been 3-0 down in sets. Instead it was 2-1 and he could breathe. In the end, Warren’s performance in legs he started was decisive – his throw was never broken after the long intermission at three sets all. That included the 11th and final set where he zoned out at times, and was outscored, but he put all his energy into the legs in which he threw first. The match finished at quarter past midnight my time, so I was happy it didn’t stretch any further. Warren, the winner, is 57. Peter Wright, the winner of the more prestigious PDC title, is a couple of months shy of 50. Suddenly I don’t feel so old.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

Lost in the fog

January 13, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a very foggy weekend. The fog lifted for a time yesterday, but otherwise we’ve been blanketed in the stuff. Today is one of those negative days we get relatively often here, where the temperature stays below freezing all day.

This was the beer factory around noon today.

I had a half-hour chat with Mum on FaceTime this morning. I spoke almost exclusively with her because Dad wasn’t in a good state at all. He had a tooth out on Thursday and will now also need a root canal. (What horrible images the mere mention of “root canal” conjures up.) The pain from his extraction kicked in as the anaesthetic wore off, but now he’s also suffering from the severe headaches he’s been plagued with for the last six months. Predictably, Mum’s sympathy level was zero. She told me that at some point today or yesterday they had visitors, Dad didn’t want them to come over, but when they did he seemed to cope reasonably well, so he’s probably fine and it’s all in the mind. The same old selfish bullshit. Dad did show his face for a matter of seconds, then went back to bed. If this continues, they might have to reconsider their plans to come to Europe this summer, in which case I’ll be booking a trip to New Zealand.

The first full week of 2020 was a light one on the work front: only 19½ hours of lessons. While some of my students are probably gone for good, others were on holiday mode and will be back this week. I also started with two new students and have a third beginning tomorrow, so things are looking up. The guy who started yesterday seemed obsessive about IELTS and all things related to CEFR levels. I’ll try to expose him to as much real-life English as I can; just doing IELTS practice tests will only get him so far.

We’ve got the men’s BDO darts final this evening. The whole set-up has been chaotic and unprofessional at times, and the BDO as an organisation look like they’re dying on their feet. Plus the move from the Lakeside, which gave the tournament a pleasant eighties feel, hasn’t helped. But the ramshackle train is about to clatter to its destination, and two Welshmen have made it to the final. Wayne Warren (aged 57, so there’s hope for us all) beat Scott Mitchell 6-3 (a 49-year-old farmer) in the first semi-final. Mitchell led 2-0 but Warren turned it around in a pretty even encounter which could have gone either way; Warren just hit the double more often in those crucial fifth legs. It was a very watchable game. The other semi was closer on the scoreboard – Jim Williams (35) beat his older Belgian opponent Mario Vandenbogaerde (awkward spelling) 6-4 – but it didn’t captivate me in the same way. The play was slower, there were fewer big finishes, and it was getting late for me. They also showed the women’s final where the popular Mikuru Suzuki retained her title. Women’s darts has had a big boost – Fallon Sherrock hit the headlines when she beat two men in a row in last month’s PDC world championships – but the BDO insist on still having a women-only tournament, with insulting “woman-sized” match lengths (first to just two sets, except the final which is first to three).

I’ve just started My Brilliant Friend, the first in a series of four novels by Elena Ferrante. It’s based in a poor part of Naples during the fifties, and is so far a very good read. Dad spent some time in Naples as a boy in the early sixties, and I’ll give the book to him the next time I see him, whenever and wherever that is. I’d like to visit southern Italy one day – I could perhaps take the train to Bar in Montenegro like I did last summer, and from there I could take a boat across to Bari in Italy.

Books - Language teaching - Other sports

Rabbiting on

January 6, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

With the new year has come some proper winter weather; on Friday we topped out at minus two. Lessons are starting up again in dribs and drabs, and after each drib or before each drab I’m spending some time on my English book. Who knows if it’ll come to fruition, but I’ve painstakingly been through both physical and online dictionaries to find words, phrases and expressions that Romanians misuse or overuse or don’t use at all, or simply don’t know. I recently got my hands on a better-quality bilingual dictionary, published by Oxford. It’s much better than anything else I’ve seen, but it’s still got one or two oddities. For instance, the R section kicked off with an entry for Rabbit. That’s with a capital R. Rabbit was a phone service that was rolled out in the UK in 1992. You could only use your phone in special hotspots, mostly located in cities. In other words it was hardly better than a payphone. Rabbit survived about as long as a real one does, but apparently you can still see Rabbit hotspot signs in British cities today. That’s pretty cool. But how this ever made it into an Oxford dictionary, let alone one published in 2009, is beyond me.

I’ve just finished Me Talk Pretty One Day, a book by David Sedaris. It was well-written and funny, but I found it somehow lacking it substance. Comedy is great, but there needs to me something behind the humour. Reading that book, which I still enjoyed in parts, made me think I could have a go at this book-writing lark one day. Maybe I could use my language-based book as stepping stone. The best line in Sedaris’s book, before I forget to mention it, referred to his voracious appetite for cassette-based audio books while living in Paris. “Someone who reads a lot of books is a bookworm. Well I was a tapeworm.”

I’ve gone off sport these days, but I decided to watch the PDC world darts final on New Year’s Day. The wacky-looking Peter Wright pulled off a bit of an upset in his 7-3 win over the much younger Michael van Gerwen. It was closer and more dramatic than that score might suggest; their averages were almost identical, but Wright played at a more consistent level throughout, and won the majority of those crucial fifth legs. That victory, which came after a perilous path to the final, netted him a cool £500,000. After that I’ve watched some of the games from the BDO, which has moved away from its previous home, the Lakeside. The quality isn’t quite there, and neither is the prize money, but the drama most certainly is. Sudden shifts in fortune and final-set tie-breaks galore. The tennis-on-steroids scoring system is what makes darts (for me) surprisingly watchable.

Last year I managed 1287 hours of teaching, up from 1129 the previous year. I don’t expect I’ll hit those heights in 2020 because I plan to take more time off.

And there’s one thing I didn’t do in 2019 for the first time since 2002. Travel by plane.

Environment - Language teaching - Life :) - New Zealand

It’s 2020 but not everybody can see clearly

January 2, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

My parents called me to say they’d spent the first day of the twenties shrouded in smoke from Australia, with only outlines of the mountains visible on a sunny day. Geraldine is just over 2000 km, or 1300 miles, from the West Island. That’s a long way. By comparison, from here to London is 1050 miles. The fires have long since reached apocalyptic levels. Six million hectares of land have been burnt since the start of the season – an area a quarter of the size of Romania. Hundreds of millions of animals have succumbed, either directly or indirectly. People are fleeing to beaches to escape the flames. Life is happening under a permanent solar eclipse, and it’s happening all over the country, not just in a localised area. Their prime minister has his head either up his arse or in the sand. There’s no rain in sight. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Last night I ate dinner at my normal time and then took the bus to Matei’s place. When I got there at around nine I was greeted with mountains of food that I hadn’t expected at all. At around eleven, people filed out into the garden where they’d lit a fire. Midnight came around quite quickly. As the clock ticked around to the new year, they had Abba’s Happy New Year playing, and that was a good choice: “It’s the end of a decade / In another ten years’ time / Who can say what we’ll find / What lies waiting down the line / In the end of eighty-nine”. Quite prophetic really; the western world changed beyond belief in the eighties. There’s even a line in there about every neighbour being a friend, but we went backwards on that score. By 12:30 I’d had enough, but I couldn’t get away from all the meat and rum and whisky and having to talk and listen. Where do you all get your stamina from? We then had our second short-lived power cut of the night. They’d also had a water outage earlier in the day – they said it gave them flashbacks to the Ceaușescu era. I hoped the power would stay off, but no such luck. One-thirty. They were still going. Eating, drinking, making jokes. Am I really that weird? At this point I’d have much rather been at home than there – It wasn’t remotely close – but I couldn’t easily escape. At around two I finally got away. I mentioned something about taxis, and Matei’s mother called me an Uber. I’d got through the whole of the 2010s without ever Ubering (or Airbnb-ing for that matter), but two hours into the new decade I found myself in the back of an Uber car. When I arrived, I opened my wallet to pay the driver, but apparently Matei’s mum had already paid via her app. As I said, I’d never taken an Uber before. Next time I’ll know. How Uber works, and how Romanian New Year’s Eve parties work, so I can pace myself better. I don’t want to miss out on these experiences. I just want to manage them, and who knows, maybe one day even enjoy them.

We’re at last back in a decade that actually has a name. The twenties. I wonder what, if anything, will be the decade’s defining features. Will there be twenties music and twenties hairstyles and twenties parties? I guess not. Society is so much more divided now. In the UK for instance, comedy, music, TV (four channels!) and culture in general used to unite everybody, even people who didn’t like it. Now the UK, perhaps since it hosted the Olympics in 2012, seems to be culturally dead. Brexit hasn’t helped.

How do we say years in English? This subject comes up a lot in lessons. Until now I’ve told my students that years in English split into four groups. (1) You say years before 2000 as two pairs of digits, so 1994 is nineteen ninety-four; (2) From 2000 to 2009, you say the year like a normal number: 2004 is two thousand and four; (3) From 2010 to 2019, you have a choice: 2014 can either be two thousand and fourteen or twenty fourteen; (4) From 2020, everybody will revert to the pre-2000 system, so 2024 will be twenty twenty-four. I think that’s accurate. But in the future there’s a chance that the system will retrospectively change itself. A kid born today might be so used to hearing things like “twenty twenty-eight” and “twenty thirty-two” and he’ll say 2009 as twenty oh nine or even twenty zero nine.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Romania

Is Christmas even worth it? And happy new decade

December 31, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve now properly caught up with my family to find out how their Christmases went. My brother’s was draining. Endless eating and drinking and small talk with the in-laws and trying to appear somewhat entertaining. He said he couldn’t relax for one minute. When he spoke to me his wife wasn’t there, and as he gave me the gory details I built up a picture of Christmas from hell. I really enjoyed our unusually long chat though – I’d say it was one of the highlights of my Christmas.

My parents’ Christmas wasn’t much better. A couple of days before, Dad learnt that his main gallery in Geraldine had jacked up their commission to 50% from an already slightly piss-taking 40%. What’s more, the increase came unannounced and was even backdated, how far I don’t know. The woman who “runs” the gallery does so chaotically (to put it politely), and Dad has written her a letter to say, basically, stuff you. So that drew a black cloud over their Christmas. Like always, these things affected Mum more than Dad. My father is able to be philosophical: they will continue to live very comfortable lives even if he never sells another painting again (and hell, a few months ago, we were wondering if he’d even see out the year). But for Mum, it’s a case of “must be successful, must be seen to be successful”. Dad also had his ongoing battle with headaches to contend with, and it’s always a battle he has to fight alone. The weather down in Moeraki wasn’t up to that much either, so all in all it was a pretty crappy Christmas.

I got off pretty lightly, then, with my almost totally pressure-free, family-free Christmas. Tonight I’ll be seeing in the new year (and new decade) at Matei’s place. I’ll take along the unopened bottle of Rakija I picked up in Belgrade the summer before last. Matei’s dad called me to say they’ll be starting at nine, not seven as they’d originally planned, and that’s fine by me.

The 2010s have been a weird, disorienting decade for me. Twenty ten itself, when I still lived in Auckland, wasn’t too bad. I’d made some friends up there, I’d left the toxic world of life insurance behind, I had my tennis, my online poker, my trip to the UK to see my grandmother for the last time, bits of pieces of meaningful but low-pressure work, I was managing. Then came the move to Wellington in early 2011 and my insane step backwards into the corporate inferno. Not one part of me wanted to be there (my job I mean, not Wellington which I think is a great city). Then the beginning of 2012 was just horrendous – my grandmother died, the house of cards (a.k.a. my job) came crashing down, I made the disastrous decision to buy my flat, and so it went on. Whenever I hear one of the hits of 2013 playing on the radio, I want to gag – I picture myself in that office with the music piped through the speakers. The best decision I made was to take a four-week trip around America in 2015. The vastness of the place made me realise that there’s a whole world out there to be explored, and here I am. I still have my ups and downs, but I no longer feel that barrenness, as if I’m driving through a desert and there’s not even a tree to be seen.

Twenty twenty. It feels like a mini-millennium. The Romanian ex-prime minister became the butt of jokes when she called the upcoming year “douăzeci douăzeci” (which literally means “twenty twenty”) instead of the correct “două mii douăzeci” (two thousand and twenty). Even though things have improved for me, I’m happy to see the back of the old decade. The constant news cycle, the partisan politics, the toxicity of social media, the illusion of being connected when we’re in fact more disconnected than ever, the technological advancements that help us buy increasing amounts of crap at increasing speed and not a lot else. And the natural and unnatural disasters that have dominated the very end of the decade.

Before I go, I’ve just watched a brand new three-hour documentary about Romania’s rocky 30-year path since the downfall of communism. It taught me a lot, and best of all I was able to watch it with Romanian subtitles.

As for the highlight of 2019, that’s very clear. All clear, in fact. I got out of bed on 25th June, a nondescript Tuesday morning, to find an email from Dad to say that he’d been cleared of bowel cancer. It was like a miracle.

Language teaching - Life :)

Saying yes to everything

December 28, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Christmas Day was cool. I spent it at my ex-student’s parents’ flat on Take Ionescu. She’s 70, he’s nudging 80, and they’ve lived there ever since the block was built in the early seventies. Besides the țuică and sparkling wine, there was so much rich food – all kinds of sausages and ribs and venison rolls and sarmale and salată de boeuf (which doesnt actually contain beef) and two bowls of soup and other tasty bits and bobs that I can’t even remember. And then biscuits and chocolate cake. Would you like some of that? Yes, please. In between I spoke, and listened to, lots of Romanian. The listening bit in particular was tiring – it’s tiring enough in any language. Her mother talked a lot. Her father rather less, although the first thing he asked me was what I thought about Brexit. What’s “total shit-show” in Romanian? By the evening he needed a lie down, and I soon made tracks. I tried to speak to my family on Christmas evening, but my parents were in the wops, my brother was probably busy with his in-laws, and my aunt only ever picks up the phone in a narrow early-morning window.

Boxing Day didn’t start well. I had a lesson in the morning, and it was one I’d rather forget. Perhaps it had been coming. My student is an ice-cold single woman in her early forties. She’s a manager who reminds me of a boss I had way back in the dark days. (Also, I have lessons with a younger, much warmer woman who works at the same company, and she’s not a huge fan of my older student’s managerial style.) At the start of the lesson she told me about her non-Christmas. She’d received multiple Christmas dinner invitations but had declined them all. And there was me thinking I was antisocial. Anyway we chatted for a bit and then I brought out Bananagrams. Being the festive season, I thought she might like to try a game. I opened the yellow bag, the letter tiles fell onto the table, and unlike most people, she didn’t help me turn them face down so we could start. No big deal. But it was clear she really resented even the idea of playing. I tried to encourage her, but before long I gave up. I then said I was disappointed that she refused to participate. This, looking back, was a mistake, but I the level of pushback I got from her was greater than anything I’m used to from people over the age of ten, and I didn’t know how to react. (Mostly my students politely complete the activity or exercise or game I give them, I then ask them what they thought of it, and we repeat it in a later session, or not, depending on whether they liked it.) We descended into an argument where she accused me of being “strange” as well as inflexible – a bit of a joke considering our lessons are always scheduled to suit her, not me, and I’m constantly doing things that she wants – and then I told her I was glad she wasn’t my boss. Yes, I could have handled things differently, and honestly I felt sick afterwards.

After that debacle, it was off to some friends of Matei’s parents in Dumbrăvița for more food and drink. It was just what I needed to get my mind off what had happened in the morning. More shots of țuică, or maybe palincă – I can’t tell the difference – and then it was time for some WTF: weird-tasting food. I had piftie, jellied meat known in English as aspic, which in this case was made from pig’s trotters. When I spoke to Mum this morning, she said that aspic was quite a common dish in New Zealand in the fifties. After that I tried icre, or roe, from some fish or another. From there I was back into my comfort zone with salată de boeuf and cuts of meat. I mostly spoke English, with bits of Romanian and even (on one occasion) French thrown in. The hosts have a 20-year-old daughter who goes to Imperial College, London, and was back home for Christmas. I had quite a good chat with her. University life in 2019 sounded much the same as in 1999, just with a whole load more dosh involved. She pays £190 a week in rent. I know this is London, but holy moley. In my final year in Birmingham (2001-02) my weekly rent was forty quid.

So I’ve experienced some real Romania in the last couple of days. Bloody awesome. And I’ll be seeing Matei’s parents again on New Year’s Eve.