Life :) - Tennis

Middle Sunday

July 8, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

My father is making a quicker recovery that he or any of us expected, and maybe, just maybe, my parents will come over in the autumn. I don’t want to put any pressure on Dad though. Just flying all this way and back will take a lot out of him. But right now Timișoara is full of life and sound and flavour and colour, and I wish Mum and Dad could be here to experience it. In short, I miss them.

There’s both a jazz festival and a traditional music festival going on at the moment. Every year the performers from the traditional music festival announce themselves by parading up and down the square, and past my window. It’s a beautiful sight, and sound. Last night I checked out the festival, but I got there late because I’d been watching tennis, and didn’t have the greatest of vantage points. Too many advantage points, you could say. The singers and musicians and dancers mostly come from nearby countries, but my favourite act was from Colombia. (In Romanian, they spell this as Columbia, with a U, and the more I think about it, the more it would make sense if we did the same in English.) Colombia as a country sounds awesome, by the way. Tonight I’ll pop along to the last night of the show in plenty of time (no tennis!) and grab some food and beer from the numerous stands.

Middle Sunday. In some ways it’s my favourite day of Wimbledon. Unless the first week is seriously weather-affected, as it was in 1997 and on a couple of other occasions, there’s no play on that day, and that gives me a chance to catch up on all the other stuff.

Yesterday I saw quite a few matches, or chunks of them at least. Access to a stream was just about mandatory. The Tour de France had started, so only one channel on Eurosport showed the tennis, and they have a horrible habit of chopping and changing matches at will, and often at crucial stages.

The first match I saw was Sam Querrey against John Millman. Querrey loves the grass, and something about his playing style made it look all too easy. I never liked watching Pete Sampras, partly because he rarely seemed to have to work for his points, and Querrey is in a similar mould. The American had greater weight of shot, but Millman competed admirably, and took his opponent to two tie-breaks, the second of which was 10-8. The final score (a straight-set win for Querrey) didn’t do justice to the closeness of the match.

Then I dropped in on Elise Mertens’ draining encounter with Wang Qiang. They were in the midst of a gripping second-set tie-break, which Wang eventually squeaked 11-9 to level the match. Half-way through the third set, figures of 107 total points apiece appeared on the screen. This was to highlight how evenly matched the players were, but I was thinking, 214! That’s a huge number for two and a half sets. And very few of the points were cheap. No wonder they were so tired. Mertens played slightly better on the big points in the final set, and just held on for the win. This was an absorbing battle.

Mertens would play the winner of Kiki Bertens and Barbora Strycova. As fun as it would have been for the commentators to deal with Mertens and Bertens squaring off, I wanted to see Strycova win, which she did. I saw her play (and win) in New York in 2015, and I enjoyed her playing style which comes from being relatively short. She can’t rely on big shots; she has to scamper and craft points. Bertens, who has all the weapons, wasn’t at her best, and after a tight first set, Strycova won quite comfortably.

I think I like watching the shorter players in general, on both the men’s and women’s sides. Next up was Diego Schwartzman, a top-25 player despite being only five foot seven. He played a fantastic match against the much bigger Matteo Berrettini, generating surprising power on his groundstrokes. He was also deadly accurate. Schwartzman led by two sets to one, and had three match points on Berrettini’s serve in the fourth set. Berrettini, who wasn’t exactly having a bad day either, saved them all, took the ensuing tie-break 7-5, and then won a series of close games at the start of the fifth. Berrettini, leading 4-2 in the decider, came up with a couple of howlers on his serve to almost let Schwartzman back in, but again he was able to serve his way out of trouble. It was a shame the little guy lost by the finest of margins having played so well, but it was a terrific match, lasting over 4¼ hours.

I got back from the music festival to see another little guy by tennis standards, Dan Evans of Birmingham, complete his match against João Sousa. Evans (five foot nine) went down 6-4 in the fifth, and his reaction as he dumped a backhand in the net after chasing down Sousa’s drop shot on match point was priceless. The No. 1 Court crowd had obviously been treated to a fantastic match.

I expect that’ll be the most tennis I’ll watch on one day for a while.

Tennis

Adios Kyrgios

July 6, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents again this morning. Dad is improving day by day. Mum looked pretty zonked after staying up to watch the tennis.

Wimbledon. We’re less than half-way through the tournament, but 208 of the 254 singles matches are already done and dusted. And it will all be back on the telly in a matter of minutes. The headlines in the last three days have all been about Kyrgios and Gauff. Kyrgios is really a fantastic player, with far more finesse than I gave him credit for, and Nadal had to be on the top of his game to eke out a super-tight four-setter. All his tweeners, underarm serves and no-look volleys make him so much fun to watch. But all that magnificent madness is still possible without being a complete arse, which Kyrgios unfortunately is. Mum suggested there’s something toxic about Australian culture that produces Kyrgioses and Tomics – she said she could see it in the eleven-year-old boys she taught in Cairns in 2000.

Cori (or Coco) Gauff is the real deal. Yes, she got sucked in to playing her opponents’ game last night – all those cat-and-mouse rallies involving slice backhands – and was lucky to survive. But heck, she’s 15. People are now expecting top-level performances from her every time she steps on the court. And that was one hell of a dramatic match.

We haven’t had a 12-12 “emergency” tie-break yet. Not in qualifying (though we came very close) and not in any of the many draws either. Most of the so-called serve-bots have now thankfully departed, so maybe we’ll be spared one in the men’s singles, but I still think the men’s doubles is ripe for one.

Something appeared to be iffy with the Hawk-Eye in Wozniacki’s defeat to the very impressive Zhang Shuai. After losing the first four games, Zhang quickly entered “the zone”, and I’m sure she would have won anyway, but that’s hardly the point. Neither does the argument that it’s the same for both players hold water. If Hawk-Eye is giving erroneous output, it’s worse than useless.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis - Travel: Romania

Bike trip

July 3, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just finished a two-hour lesson, the first hour of which my student spent showing me her holiday photos, with commentary almost entirely in Romanian. She also gave me a whole load of tomatoes, cucumbers and hot peppers, that came from a friend of hers.

I spoke to Dad again yesterday. We talked about the crazy month between his cancer diagnosis and his “all-clear”. It’s hard to believe it was only one month. During that month, everything became both longer and narrower.

On Saturday I had no work, and the weather wasn’t stupidly hot, so decided I’d cycle down the track to Serbia, as far as I could while staying within the law. I did 76 km there and back. For me that’s a lot, and I really felt it on the way back. I also caught the sun. I made stops at Sânmihaiu Român and the pleasant village of Uivar. Beyond Livada (“the Orchard”), where people flock to for beer and mici, there was hardly a soul. I had the whole track seemingly to myself. Eventually the kilometre markers were down to single figures, but just past the 2 km sign was a white line and a stop sign. Cross that point and I would enter no man’s land, and likely get a fine and all the bureaucratic hassle that comes with that. I met two other cyclists at the line who told me that no, crossing the line wouldn’t be a great idea. That was a bit disappointing after travelling all that way, but I liked the sense of remoteness and visiting another Romanian village (which, by that stage, was only just in Romania). Also the sheer amount of exercise made me feel good, at least when it was all over. When I mentioned my trip to one of my students, she thought I was crazy for doing it by myself. I guess I just need other people less than other people. (Being on my own was great. I could go as fast or as slow as I liked, and could stop whenever and wherever I wanted.)

Uivar
Uivar
5 km to go
5 km to go
Do not cross
The edge of no man’s land

Wimbledon has started. In fact, half the singles matches have already been completed. We’ve had two quite dramatic days already, with so many high seeds departing in round one. Yesterday saw Nick Kyrgios in action against his compatriot Jordan Thompson. Whatever you think of Kyrgios, this match was batshit crazy, couldn’t-take-your-eyes-off-it stuff. Another match to grab my attention was the last to finish. It was played on No. 1 Court, and pitted Donna Vekic against Alison Riske (whose last name is pronounced simply “risk”, not “risky” or “risqué”). Riske was teetering on the edge in the third set, but battled back to level the score at 5-5. Then, for the first time ever, they closed the roof. The £70 million roof. I dunno, that’s seems a helluva lot for something just to stop people having to come back the next day to hit a few tennis balls. The match could have extended another hour (and by Romanian time it was getting pretty late), but Riske only dropped two further points on the resumption. The biggest story so far, however, has been 15-year-old Coco Gauff, and she’s in action again today.

Family - Hiking - Language teaching - Life :)

Some trip pics etc.

June 28, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is Dad’s 69th birthday. He isn’t doing an awful lot, and I can’t blame him. His recovery will take time.

Right now he’s struggling to go to the loo properly, and asked me what my record is for time between visits. When I was eight, I once went 18 days. Then another 16 days. Then 15 days. Or something like that. But the first figure I know is accurate. Yes, back in 1988 I really did go two and a half weeks without a poo. All the prunes, and jars and bottles of this or that liquid from the doctor, just wouldn’t shift it. The pain was excruciating. When I finally went, holy shit.

After last week when I could hardly keep up, this week my load is much lighter. (I’m talking about work now; I’ve moved on from the previous paragraph.) As Dad said (and he’s had four decades of experience) that’s what happens when you’re self-employed. It’s either feast or famine. You can’t win. On balance I’m grateful for the reduced volume; having to trek around the city to give lessons isn’t a lot of fun when temperatures soar well into the 30s.

I’ve watched a fair bit of grass-court tennis on TV. The most compelling matches have been at Wimbledon qualifying. The stakes are just so high. Yesterday I saw Liam Broady (a Brit) in the final round, where the men play best of five sets. Broady was off like a rocket, leading 6-3 6-0 in no time at all, but sadly that was all the time it took for his higher-ranked French opponent Grégoire Barrère to click into gear. For two sets he’d been nowhere. Barrère simply had more firepower – his backhand was particularly pacy – and he reeled off the last three sets. The other match I watched yesterday involved Sabine Lisicki, runner-up to Marion Bartoli in 2013 (what a wonderful match-up that was). Six years is an eternity in tennis, though, and Lisicki has practically zero recent form. I wanted her to win yesterday against Lesley Kerkhove from the Netherlands, and she started almost flawlessly, storming through the first set 6-0. But her level dropped and Kerkhove had just enough composure to capitalise, winning each of the last two sets by 6 games to 4. That was a shame. This morning I hit against the wall next to the courts in Parcul Rozelor. I managed to fall over on the concrete and graze my knee, and hit a woman on the head with the ball. Not my best session. (Normally there’s nobody else there to hit.)

On Monday I had a lesson with Octavian, who will be twelve next month. It’s natural on a Monday to do the “How was your weekend?” thing. After he told me about his weekend, I proudly showed him my photos from 2000-plus metres. His impress-o-meter wouldn’t budge. “Yes, I’ve been there. Yes, I know. You don’t need to show me that!” I slapped my phone down in anger. Look mate, I know you travel business class to Hong bloody Kong with your dad and have been there and done that, but you’re being quite rude. The rest of the two-hour session went absolutely fine.

Here are some pictures from last weekend. I hope you’ll be a bit more impressed than Octavian.

Hut at Cuntu
The hut we stayed in
The generator for the hut
Climbing up Țarcu
We’ve made it!
A typically Romanian structure at the top of Muntele Mic
Chairlifts on Muntele Mic
The creepy reception area of what used to be Hotel Sebeș
Family - Hiking - Romania

All clear! (and trip report)

June 26, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Fantastic news. Dad got the results of his biopsy yesterday and was given the all-clear. No spread to his lymph nodes (I initially typed “nymph lodes” but corrected it). A small, low-grade cancer which he is now free of. The best possible outcome. His next check-up will be in three years. He said the feeling of relief was indescribable.

This morning was my first chat with him since his ordeal in hospital. It was a horrible business, but he couldn’t rate the service he received in Timaru highly enough. His warfarin regime was a complicating factor, but they were on to that, and just as importantly they had the human touch which is all too often missing.

I don’t know what my parents’ plans are now. Maybe they’ll go to one of the islands and do not very much. Dad is still obviously in the process of recovery.

So early on Saturday morning I was off into the mountains. My student picked me up in his less-than-roomy Volkswagen Up! (That’s not me getting excited; the car is actually called an Up! with an exclamation mark.) We switched cars in Dumbrăvița into something a bit more spacious. Just as well, because there were five of us, complete with bags. It took 2½ hours to reach the foothills of Muntele Mic (“the Small Mountain”). We met the other four people in the group (a family) and from there we trekked to our hut at Cuntu. Great name.

The hut was very basic as you’d expect. We then set off for Țarcu, the main goal of our trip. We’d only gone a couple of hundred metres when it began to tip it down. It only hailed. We sensibly aborted our mission and scuttled back to the hut. Our second attempt was a success. It must have been sixish when we reached the summit. There’s a weather station up there, manned by well, a slightly unusual man who went by the name of Tintin. I guess that isn’t what his birth certificate says, but you never know. Tintin gave all nine of us cups of tea. He spoke surprisingly good English, and spat out every UK-based cliché imaginable to me.

When we got back down to the hut, it was time to eat. That was the lowlight of the trip. My student told me beforehand that I should bring tinned food. I assumed that meant there would be some way of cooking it, but no such luck. I was just starting my second tin of cold pork and beans when I started to get unbearable sinus pain. It’s bad enough when it happens when I’m by myself, but being in a group makes it that much worse. I lay down in bed, then a few minutes later I was physically sick; a mixture of the cold slop I’d eaten and nervousness caused by being with all those people.

By about 10:30 I was back in the world of the living, and I joined the others who were playing cards. I should mention that they were all Hungarians, not Romanians, although most of them could speak English at a pretty good level. As for the Hungarian language, it’s so unlike anything else. Most European languages are related in some way or another – they’re all branches of the Indo-European tree – but Hungarian isn’t even part of the same forest. It might as well be Chinese. We have the English phrase “it’s Greek to me” but I would have understood more if it was Greek. The card game was called the Hungarian equivalent of “cross”, used a special and hard-to-decipher 24-card Hungarian pack, and was basically a more complex version of euchre, played two against two. I was all at sea, especially at first, as I struggled to read my cards, let alone decide what to do with them. It was fun though, in a strange sort of way.

I slept surprisingly well. The other three people in my room were all called Zoltán, and apparently one of the Zoltáns moved me three times during the night because of my snoring. We had breakfast (no cold beans for me this time) and left just after nine. We tramped back to the cars and then went up Muntele Mic, which is popular for skiing. That took less than half an hour. Back down below was the resort, which in all honesty was ugly. The ugliness was capped off by an abandoned communist hotel, a monstrosity from which anything of value had long been stripped. We decided to enter the dark, dingy building and climb the stairs to the first-floor rooms. It was quite creepy. Then it was back on the road. Our driver raced along at 170 km/h on the motorway; none of the others in the car even batted an eyelid.

I was back home at around 4pm on Sunday. Was I glad I went? Yes, absolutely. As much as I love Timișoara, I really wanted to escape the city. Was I fit enough? Yes. One guy had problems with his feet and was 20 kilos overweight, and he still somehow made it to the top of Țarcu. But was I prepared enough? Hell, no. My student invited me at short notice and with three busy days I had very little time to prepare. I was able to get a sleeping bag and a poncho and that was about it. Next time, I’ll definitely bring some better food. I hope there is a next time; walking and climbing uneven ground does wonders for the body, and being among nature is great for the mind. Plus I get to meet new people.

This is a big post, sorry, but with the fantastic news from New Zealand it’s been a pretty big day. Next post: trip pictures.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Romania - Travel: Romania

Scaling new heights (and Dad’s operation)

June 21, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Tuesday one of my students invited me on a hike this weekend, with him and about half a dozen of his mates, to the top of Țarcu Mountain, at an altitude of 2190 metres. I shifted and cancelled this weekend’s lessons (it was hard to do that at short notice) and accepted his invite. We’ll be staying at a hut on Saturday night. I know it will be beautiful up there and I really want to get away and also explore more of Romania, so saying yes was an easy decision. I’m still (as always in these situations) apprehensive, though. Will I be equipped enough? Fit enough? Waterproof enough? Then there’s all the social stuff. My student is Hungarian. So are all his mates. I can’t speak a word of Hungarian. (It’s amazing really that even the Hungarians can speak Hungarian, it’s so complex and unlike anything else on the planet.) But it has the potential to be a great experience and a whole lot of fun too. Part of the whole point of living in Romania is to have these sorts of experiences. I had a gap in my schedule this afternoon where I ran around the mall trying to find a sleeping bag and other bits and pieces.

Dad. That’s the big news. The operation went about as well as it could possibly have done. I haven’t managed to speak to him since Monday’s op: the reception on the top floor of the hospital is patchy at best. Mum has been very impressed by the staff at Timaru; they’ve looked after him very well. He had a big feed at Mum’s birthday dinner, which he described as being like the Last Supper. It was his final opportunity to eat anything solid. We now anxiously wait for the results of his biopsy.

I’ve got a tricky-ish day in store tomorrow (but even the trickiest days are miles better than life insurance ever was). Two hours with Mr I Don’t Know’s mum, followed by two with Mr IDK himself, then 90 minutes with the 7½-year-old boy, then a final hour with a new boy of just five. Definitely a challenge.

Family - Language teaching

Mum and Dad and fish and chips

June 13, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents on FaceTime this morning. I had a good chat with Mum on the last day of her sixties, while Dad was out to get fish and chips. (That made me think. Why has fish and chips always been a Dad thing in our family? Is it like that in other families, just like with barbecues? Mum would never and will never go inside a fish and chip shop, or make fish and chip phone orders, or doing anything fish-and-chip-related except eat them. It also made me think that although Romanian food is lovely at this time of year, I could still just about murder some cod and chips.) Mum was tired, and wanted nothing to do with the birthday dinner she’ll be going to tomorrow at my uncle and aunt’s place. There are good practical reasons to avoid something like that; with all those people, Dad could pick up a cold, delaying his operation which is scheduled for Monday. We all just want the whole thing over with. If the surgery is successful, my parents plan to go to one of the islands and not do a whole lot.

Mum looks very good for 70. She has always kept fit, and I guess she has reasonably good genes. She shares her birthday with Steffi Graf (who will be 50 tomorrow) and Donald Trump (73).

Work. So far this week I’ve had loads of it. Fourteen lessons on the first three days, including six on Tuesday. The only way to handle Tuesday’s workload, and lack of preparation time, was to give three people exactly the same thing. It was an especially tiring day, with a 10:15 pm finish, and having to trek across the city in the baking sun, both for one of my lessons and to pay my rent. Tomorrow I’ll be starting with a five-year-old boy. Heaven knows what that will be like.

There’s not much else to say, except that I miss having my parents here, and I hope it won’t be long before I see them. Fingers, toes, and everything else crossed for Monday.

Life :) - Tennis

No stopping him

June 10, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

So Rafa has won a twelfth French Open title. So predictable but still so ridiculous. The first seven games of his final with Dominic Thiem were spellbinding. When Thiem broke out of the blue to snatch the second set, I thought, now then. Remarkably (or perhaps not; this is Rafa we’re talking about), Thiem won just two more games in the match, although the 6-1 score in the fourth set did an injustice to a very high-quality and enjoyable set of tennis.

Thiem’s two-day semi-final with Djokovic really had me on the edge of my seat. I rushed back from my lessons yesterday to catch the resumption of a match that had just about everything, including crazy weather conditions. The right man won, but he oh so nearly didn’t. He played a nightmarish four points from 5-3 and 40-15 in the final set, and was impressive in the way he bounced back to win against an all-time great.

On the women’s side, Ash Barty steamrollered her way to a very popular win yesterday. Her semi-final against 17-year-old Amanda Anisimova (who, make no mistake, is already the real deal) would have been crazy to watch, with more twists and turns than even the most twisty turny interclub matches I can remember playing or watching. Surviving such an encounter might have made her more relaxed for yesterday’s final.

I had no real luck on my return to the ENT specialist last week. He looked through the images from my CT scan; the images are “slices” taken at 5-millimetre intervals. He confirmed that my brain was, visually at least, OK (!). As for my maxillary sinuses, the left one especially was visibly full of gunk but he had no solution other than painkillers for the times I get the worst attacks. I was hoping for more than that. He didn’t recommend surgery because it’s actually fairly major, is far from guaranteed to solve the problem, and there isn’t anyone in Timișoara qualified to perform it. I’ve started a “pain diary” where I simply shade hourly cells in an Excel spreadsheet, darker grey representing greater pain. There are no white cells except at night, and sometimes not even then.

A few words about Scrabble. I feel I’m playing OK. I still don’t know enough words yet, and I’m still relatively slow, but I can sense continual improvement. After a run of 15 consecutive wins, my rating on ISC reached the dizzy heights of the 1500s, but I hit then hit some stormy weather for a few games when I couldn’t stop my opponents from scoring heavily, and I dropped below 1400. I’m back in the low-to-mid 1400s after a few comfortable wins, including one last night where I scored 551, six points shy of my record.

It’s hotting up here, and I can detect the sweet smell of tei as I type. The forecast on my phone is showing sunshine icons and temperatures with an initial three, stretching out as far as it goes.

Family - Life :) - Tennis

Better news from Dad

June 7, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

There’s been some much better news from Geraldine in the last few days. We now know that Dad has a low-grade cancer and he’s caught it early. We all hoped that was the case – he has no symptoms, after all. He’s not exactly out of the woods yet, and a huge ordeal awaits him in ten days’ time, but it’s still one hell of a relief. In March he had a stream of blood when he went to the loo – a one-off, but scary enough for him to ask questions. (A lot of men would have just let that slide.) That might not have been cancer-related at all, but an effect of the Warfarin he takes, so perhaps the heart valve replacement he had in 2005 didn’t only save his life back then, but also 14 years later. Perhaps. Until he has the op, we won’t really know.

Yesterday I watched Simona Halep’s match against Amanda Anisimova. Just wow. Both the last two years Simona reached the final of Roland Garros, and I met Mum and Dad on the evening of the match. The results weren’t the same, and neither were the places I met my parents (in 2017 it was at the airport; last year it was at the train station) but it was beginning to feel like a routine. This Saturday though, there will be no Simona in the final and my parents won’t be here either. That’s a bit sad.

Some things still have that lovely early-June feel about them. The strawberries, the cherries, the apricots, the big juicy tomatoes that make me wonder how I ever eat those crappy imported tomatoes at other times of year. And the smells. Blindfold me and earplug me and I’d still know I was in Timișoara. The most distinctive smell of all is the tei, or lime trees. Temperatures are starting to nudge 30, which is normal at this time of year, but the rain shows no sign of abating. Some houses in Timiș County have been flooded.

I’ve had five cancellations this week, so I’ve managed to watch more tennis than I’d bargained for. I get less pissed off by cancellations than I used to. Yes they’re annoying, especially at the last minute, but they give me the chance to recharge my batteries.

Family - Life :) - Tennis

Matter of fact

June 2, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my brother just after we found out about Dad’s cancer diagnosis. My brother was at the tail end of a three-week stint in North Carolina; he’ll be flying back to the UK tomorrow. His living quarters looked like a public loo, with pipes and shiny paint and bits of zinc.

We remarked how matter-of-fact Dad seemed about his situation. No despair, no blind optimism either, no mention of fights or battles, none of that ridiculous notion that cancer can be beaten by pure strength of will. My brother is thinking of travelling to New Zealand later this summer, but I’m not sure I see the point at this stage. At any rate, we won’t have much idea of Dad’s prognosis until after his operation in two weeks’ time.

Dad showed me on FaceTime some diagrams showing six types of bowel cancer surgery; his will be the least severe, with the smallest section of bowel to be removed. That is at least something.

There’s no let-up to this wet and stormy weather. Matei’s grandmother, who is in her mid-70s, said she could never remember anything like this. Dad informs me that after a very pleasant May, the temperature is now rapidly dropping in Geraldine.

The French Open has reached its half-way point. There have been so many great matches already. It was quite a dramatic day on the women’s side yesterday, with Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka both going out. Simona, after a bumpy ride in her first two matches, cruised through to round four.

Simona is also the name of my next student; our lesson starts in an hour.