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.

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I thought this happened to other people’s dads

May 30, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I called my parents to find out Dad’s result. Surely it would be fine. According to the specialist, there was a “90-something percent chance” that his bowel polyp was benign. Dad thought he’d have already heard if something was up. When I got through on FaceTime, Mum had just had a haircut. Her hair is now shorter than mine, and Dad said it looked a bit mannish. Then came the news. “I’ve got bowel cancer,” Dad said. “You won’t be seeing us this summer.” Mum had already cancelled their flights to the UK, scheduled for next Monday.

I hadn’t prepared myself for this news. I thought he’d be clear, but Dad’s life has been put firmly on hold. None of us know where this will lead. Yesterday I looked up some statistics from the NHS: 77% of male bowel cancer patients survive the first year. So, you’re saying there’s practically a one-in-four chance that my dad won’t see out the next 12 months?! My instincts are that he’s caught this early and it’s entirely curable, but as yet, we don’t have the slightest clue. News like this forms a line in the sand. If I see a timestamp on an email or a text message, I’m thinking, was that before or after I heard about Dad’s diagnosis?

Seventy, or thereabouts, seems to be a black spot for cancer. Mum’s eldest brother D died of lung cancer a month before his 70th birthday. Another of her older brothers, M, had just made it to 70 when he died from cancer of the oesophagus. Her younger brother G, who has survived his mishap following his bowel cancer operation, turned 68 in April. G may now need kidney dialysis. Dad will be 69 at the end of June.

I was very much looking forward to spending time with the family. The plan was to go Wales for Mum’s 70th birthday next month, and then for my parents to come over to Romania around 1st July, where we’d spend a few days exploring the cooler north of the country. Meeting my parents off the plane or train is such a lovely thing. But that’s all gone out the window. I might end up making a solo trip to that part of Romania instead, and then travelling to Montenegro by train in August. I’ll have to see.

Life goes on. Teaching is much the same, which is a good thing. The wet and stormy weather – in its fifth week, with no end in sight – is still baffling everybody here, and the pubs and bars and restaurants in the centre of town are losing out.

There have been some engrossing matches already at the French Open, which is a nice escape from everything else. I particularly enjoyed last night’s match between two Frenchmen, Benoît Paire and Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Paire won in the end, 6-2 6-2 5-7 6-7 (6-8) 11-9. I was impressed by the court coverage and creativity of both men, and the match showed why it’s generally a bad idea to leave a match early. I bet plenty of people headed for the exits after the second set, and missed a treat. It also showed me why we don’t need tie-breaks in the final set, least of all on clay, where breaks of serve are more common. But sadly we might be witnessing the last-ever major tennis event without final shoot-outs.

After yesterday’s bombshell, everything is now up in the air.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

My best decision: the world of work

May 25, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I had a Skype lesson with a very pleasant woman who speaks well but loves to say “of course” when she’d be much better off with a simple “yes”. It’s a common problem. In our first lesson we discussed the difference between “I smoke” and “I am smoking”, and I asked her if she smoked. “Of course,” she proudly proclaimed. C’mon, this is Romania, dammit! Her job involves making short films. She showed me one of her creations, which was all about Transylvania’s legends, and asked me to check the subtitles. One of the words that appeared in a caption was “landshave”. I was baffled. Landscape? Something about mowing the lawn? The penny dropped the next morning. It was missing a space between “lands” and “have”.

Then it was off to the other side of Iulius Mall for a four-hour stint with the Cîrciumaru family. The mother still only spoke English on rare occasions. There’s no convincing her of the importance of actually speaking the language. It’s rather frustrating. Teaching the boy is starting to get easier. Maybe he’s a bit more comfortable with me.

From there it was a short bike trip to see the 7½-year-old boy. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. Faster and faster. Supercharged Simon Says. Throwing and catching. His card collection. His pen collection. Various forms of bingo. Glorified snakes and ladders. Games of luck that, unfortunately, he can’t always win. Vain attempts to read to him. All in all, he’s a nice boy, though.

My work day isn’t over yet. Soon I have another Skype lesson with a guy in the UK who will become a father any time now. Yesterday I had just two lessons, including a tricky one with two boys aged 15 and 12. I met the younger boy, and we entered the older boy’s room. He was in bed. At 4pm. The 12-year-old was glued to his phone. I said out loud, Why am I even here?! What’s the point? Between us we read nine news stories from the “funny” archives, but the comedy clearly didn’t work on them. I gave them a crossword, then we just talked, and I was glad to see the clock roll around to 5:30.

My job does have its awkward moments, but honestly I wouldn’t change it for the world. On Wednesday I had a lesson with a 17-year-old girl (who will be taking IELTS) and her father. We concentrated on speaking. I asked the girl to tell me about the best decision she’d ever made, and she mentioned her choice of high school. I then said that my best decision was to live and work in Romania. She was amazed by that (she has every intention of leaving the country), but I would say it’s true.

It’s just about the end of May, in more ways than one. Theresa has had to navigate some very heavy seas since she took over the helm in 2016, and her captaincy hasn’t been up to it. I’m just worried that whoever takes over will be like the captain of the Costa Concordia a few years back, and people will be wishing they could have May back, a bit like how some people view George W Bush in the Trump era.

The weather has been shocking. After Saturday night’s storm, we were hit by another, more intense one the following night. As soon as the cathedral clock struck eleven, all hell let loose and people outside began to panic. We’ve had more torrential rain and electrical storms this week.

I must get going; the Skype lesson starts in a few minutes.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble - Tennis

Dribs and drabs

May 20, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I had a lesson with the 17-year-old girl, and then had a half-hour wait while some family member delivered her nine-year-old half-brother for my lesson with him. I was scheduled to see the boy immediately after the girl, but they had made a detour to a phone repair shop on the way. I told the girl that I won’t stand for that kind of crap from her family. Lesson first, phone second. Got that? During my lesson with the boy, my phone rang. My parents were FaceTiming me. Obviously I couldn’t answer. This frustrated me because the lesson should have been over by then. After we finished, I called my parents back from nearby Parcul Dacia. It was a pleasure to show them the park – a hive of activity on a sunny Saturday lunchtime, with games of football and four table games in full swing. Dad is still waiting for the results of his colonoscopy. We talked about the books that Mum had ordered for my birthday. They’ve been coming in dribs and drabs. When she read out the titles to me, I told her it sounded like a horse race commentary. Nobody’s Boy coming up the outside; Chasing the Scream bringing up the rear. I’ve made a start on A Death in the Family, which admittedly doesn’t sound a lot like a racehorse.

I’ve managed to pick up a cold, after what had been a good run by my standards. Last night we also had a thunderstorm, so I didn’t sleep a great deal, and I’ve felt sapped of energy today.

I failed to mention that ten days ago I had my first knock of tennis for two years. I wasn’t up to much, but the exercise did me good. If the weather plays ball I’ll book myself in for a session on the wall next to the courts in Parcul Rozelor. In 2014, after an extended spell off the court, I did some long wall workouts using the squash court in our apartment block. They were a great help.

Scrabble. I’m on a winning streak, and my rating is now tantalisingly close to 1500. A lot of that might simply be dumb luck. Yesterday I won all five of the games I played fairly handily, playing eleven bingos to my opponents’ one, but I did draw eight blanks. My favourite play of late is CHIRPED, a 60-point double-double. No bonus, no parallel play, no big X or Z spot, just a good old-fashioned word. I’m still trying to learn words, and my attention has shifted to fours. Learning words is like a giant game of whack-a-mole. Every time I learn a new word, it seems another has vanished from my memory.

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Grim

May 14, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Sunday morning my parents rang with some grim news. My uncle G, Mum’s younger brother, was in intensive care. G is less than two years younger than Mum; he came to my brother’s wedding last year in his first trip to this side of the world. Earlier this year he’d been diagnosed with early-stage bowel cancer. He’d responded well to chemo and his prognosis was good. At the end of last week he had an operation to remove the cancer, but it went horribly wrong. My parents tried to explain what had happened. They fitted a stoma bag which came undone and leaked, causing toxic shock and even a heart attack. He was given antibiotics but didn’t respond. Mum thought about making a trip to Palmerston North to see him but he wouldn’t have recognised her. I got an email from Dad this morning with better news – he is now lucid – and I obviously hope he’ll pull through without damage to his heart or kidneys.

Last week, just before this all happened, Mum was telling me about G’s son – my cousin – who had just booked a trip to Madrid to see the Champions League final between his beloved Liverpool and Tottenham. He was planning to go for just four days. Bloody ridiculous, I thought, to go all the way from Wellington to Spain (you literally can’t go any further without leaving the planet) just a game of football between a load of foreigners. He’s since told my mum, “that’s nothing now”.

My own dad is having treatment tomorrow. After a check-up on his colon they found a polyp which in all probability is benign, but he’s having surgery to remove it. That has put their trip to the UK next month in some doubt. I’m about to give him a call to wish him all the best.

Yesterday I got (and deciphered) the results of my CT scan, that were of course all in Romanian. There are certainly issues with my maxillary sinuses not draining properly, but there was no indication of what I should do next. I guess I need to see the ENT specialist again; it’ll be good to have a piece of paper to present him with.

We’re in the midst of a spell of ugly weather, probably the longest in my 2½-plus years here. It’s making getting to lessons – for both me and my students – that bit more awkward.

The weather is good for Scrabble. I got in twelve games over the weekend, losing just two. Unusually for me, I won some very close games, three of them by six points or fewer. One of my losses was also by just six points; my opponent was somebody who liked to fish off (or even exchange) a single tile, taking a big points sacrifice, in the hope of drawing a bingo. It’s something I rarely do. In my other defeat I felt I made a big tactical blunder. I had a small lead, but my opponent then played POSTING as a bingo, stopping one square short of the triple word, and setting up a big hotspot for an S, which I didn’t have. On my next turn I set up a second high-scoring spot, thinking I would be able to take one of the two available. But that was extremely risky, because there was no guarantee I’d be able to use either of them. My opponent instead took both (aided by a blank), scored heavily again with his next play, and I was suddenly a long way behind. This is still all a learning process. The good news is I’ve finally got my threes pretty much down pat. That took a while.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

Fitting everyone in

May 5, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s business as usual again here, after “normal” Easter, Orthodox Easter (that’s the big one), and Labour Day on 1st May. They call Western Easter “Catholic Easter” which is a little weird to me, coming from a place where Catholics, Anglicans and non-religious people all “do” Western Easter. People often ask me if I’m a Catholic, which they pronounce with the stress on the second syllable and with a “t” instead of a “th”: Catolic. I explain that, well, I went to a Catholic church every Sunday as a kid, but now I only go once a year at the most. I sometimes also say that where we come from, religion is a personal matter.

Anyway, after a bit of a lull (which was nice) I’ve got plenty of work again. Last night I was lying in bed thinking about the coming week (when I worked in insurance, I never did that), and I realised that fitting everybody in at the times they want (or even at times they don’t want) will be an impossibility. Somebody is desperate for a lesson tomorrow because he has a job interview the day after, and accommodating him has thrown everything else out of whack, not that it was exactly in whack in the first place.

Last Monday I had another attack of severe sinus pain. I had moderate pain from about lunchtime, but at around five or six, it ratcheted up several notches. I tried to soothe the pain with ice, and it subsided two hours later. Hopefully I’ll get the result of my CT scan in the next few days.

I’ve got back on the Scrabble horse, and things haven’t been that easy. A lot of tricky racks, bad draws, blocked boards, hard decisions (for me) that led to time trouble, and so on. After a run of 70 games out of 71 where I played at least one bingo (I doubt I’ll repeat that sort of record for a while; it seems so unlikely), I failed to play one in three of my next four. One bright spot was in a game yesterday, where I trailed by 138 but ended up with a 43-point win, without a bingo. The key moment was when I played off two tiles and drew two E’s (from a very E-heavy bag), allowing me to play ENQUEUE for 72. Do I really have enough E’s and U’s for that? Seems I do! I learnt that word early on; it’s one of the 60-odd seven-letter words containing five vowels, and from memory it’s one of only two such words where the consonants are side-by-side, the other being EUPNOEA, which means good (or normal) breathing.

In other news, it looks like I might finally have someone to play tennis with. We’re having our fair share of iffy weather, but fingers crossed our Tuesday morning game (or bash) goes ahead.

Life :) - Scrabble

Fair-weather friend

April 29, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is Orthodox Easter Sunday. It’s as big a family occasion here (if you have one) as Christmas.

On Thursday I had the CT scan done on my head. The procedure lasted ten minutes, if that. After the scan the nurse gave me a CD, but my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. Anyway, I’ll need to wait a couple of weeks for the proper results. As I was waiting I had to fill in some forms, and then the nurse asked me, “Ce greutate aveți?” I thought she was asking what problem I had that necessitated the scan, because the word greutate (meaning “weight”) is often used to mean a burden or difficulty. But then she gestured; she was actually asking how much I weighed. I came out with a figure of 76 kilos, but it was a guess. I hadn’t weighed myself for ages.

Yesterday I went further along the track to Serbia, just past the 22 km sign, so it was a 36 km ride in all. I turned back when I could see the weather was rapidly closing in, and rode as fast as I could back to Sânmihaiu Român 5 km away (which wasn’t that fast; I was now facing a crosswind). I made it to the pokie machine-filled café in the village just in time: there was a huge downpour with thunder and lightning. Soon after I got my coffee, water cascaded through the entrance, flooding the floor, and they shut off the power. The storm passed quickly, though, and I was soon on my way back home. It was a nice feeling to be amongst nature as soon as I left the city. I saw a majestic kestrel flying overhead, a heron on the riverbank, and the odd pheasant. On the outskirts of the city, the Bega was teeming with frogs. At one point I stopped and there was a school of fish, with an old man trying to explain to me how and when they spawn. (They’re spawning now, and fishing practically anywhere in Romania is illegal until early June.) Apart from that man, there was hardly a soul for miles around. People must have, like, families and stuff.

Yesterday S texted me to say we could meet up today if the weather turned out to be sunny. A literal fair-weather friend. She’d obviously seen the forecast. It’s about time I found somebody else.

I haven’t played Scrabble online for two weeks, not since the time my opponent aborted the game accusing me of cheating. Instead I’ve been trying to learn words. I’ve devised mnemonics for the top 50 six- and seven-letter stems, and used a combination of random functions in Excel to select one of the 100 stems I’ve studied, plus a seventh or eighth letter, and re-order all the letters. For instance, it might select URINATE plus a P (ha!) and randomise that as APITUERN. From that I’ll have to unscramble that lot to get the valid PAINTURE. The next time it might give me NAAIESR, and I’ll have to think, hmm, SARNIE plus an A, what does that make? The answer is it makes nothing at all. Sometimes the combination might yield half a dozen or more words. There’s a program called Zyzzyva that does all of this for you, but it’ll never give you a barren selection like SARNIE + A, and I think it’s important to recognise when a bunch of letters don’t make a bingo.

My brother and his wife have been on honeymoon in Thailand. I think they got back today.

Language teaching - Life :)

Another year…

April 25, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I turned 39 last Saturday; the next day the Queen turned 93. My birthday was even less eventful than my average non-birthday.

Work has started to taper off a bit because of Easter (Romania’s public holidays take place over Orthodox Easter, which this year is a week later than its Western counterpart). Today was a fairly busy day, however, with seven hours of lessons involving two bike trips. I was off to Dumbrăvița first thing for an 8:30 start: two hours with an 11-year-old boy where I read him a couple of chapters of David Walliams’ Awful Auntie, we talked about Easter, he did some writing about owning a shop, I gave him a quick multiple-choice grammar quiz, and we played three homemade games including (for the first time) a version of the popular UK game show Blockbusters. Then I did some vocabulary and pronunciation with a 22-year-old in her final year of university, then it was back to Dumbrăvița for two hours with Matei, and finally home again for some grammar (present simple and continuous) and two crosswords with the woman who works at the coffee machine firm. In between I had to visit the clinic to reschedule my CT scan.

Yes, tomorrow I’ll be getting a map of my head done. That might shed some light on all my sinus pain, which varies from being almost unnoticeable to utterly excruciating. I really hope something useful comes of it.

Last week two of my students (a married couple) invited me to join them and some friends on holiday in Greece, in the delightfully-named region of Halkidiki. I’ve never been to Greece, and so much of the country looks beautiful, so I was happy to accept their offer, even if I’m always apprehensive about spending any length of time with anybody. They (we?) will be going for a week in early August. In other words, hot.

Talking of hot, we’re forecast to reach 26 tomorrow, and a balmy 29 on Friday.

Environment - Language teaching - Life :)

Footprints

April 16, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just been watching dramatic footage of Notre Dame Cathedral ablaze. I visited it back in 2003 when I met my French flatmate there (we’d lived in student-level accommodation in the middle of Peterborough). It’s sad to see what is a beautiful work of art go up in flames.

On the 15th of every month I do my meter readings. There are four meters in (or just outside) this flat: electricity, gas and two for water. Yesterday was meter day, and I also happened to read an article about carbon emissions, so I went online to calculate the size of my CO2 footprint (click here). I was surprised at the answer. The centre of this city is increasingly clogged up with traffic, while I don’t even have a car. I don’t fly very often. I don’t think I consume much at all, as I sit here proudly sporting a threadbare seven-year-old T-shirt with a picture of a clapped-out VW camper van on the front (yeah I know, VW, emissions…). But it calculated my footprint as 4.9 tonnes per year, compared to a Romanian average of 3.5. (The UK average is around 7, and for the Western world as a whole the average is about 11.) I did err on the high side with my estimates, figuring that there’s always something I forget, so it’s possible my real total is slightly less. The real negative for me is living alone. In the summer I have the air conditioner going full blast because the heat would be unbearable otherwise. A big plus, however, which the site didn’t take into account, is that I have zero kids. My parents must have an enormous footprint, emitting 8 tonnes last year on their flights alone, and I’d dread to think what my Wellington-based cousin’s figure would be (I might send her the link). As for me, I’m trying to make 2019 my first flight-free year since 2002.

Yesterday was a pleasant day. On the way to my lessons in Strada Timiș, I intended to go to the offices of insurance company to arranging a CT scan for my sinuses, but realised the offices weren’t exactly on the way so I wouldn’t have time. That meant I arrived at Strada Timiș a little early, so I sat in the nearby Parcul Dacia, where old men were playing backgammon, rummy and a traditional card game. The lessons went reasonably well. I played Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with my 17-year-old student, who did rather well in the end, despite starting out deliberating whether Sweden or Switzerland was part of the UK.

Language teaching - Photos - Scrabble

Headless chicken

April 15, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments
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I spent most of last week running around like a headless chicken, trying to organise lessons at the last minute, wading through the disorganised piles of crap on my table in the process. At the weekend I took advantage of the iffy weather to restore some kind of order, and feel much more relaxed now. This morning I had a short coffee meeting with a new student, who will be starting Skype lessons with me tomorrow. She lives in Timișoara but I guess she feels Skype is still a time-saver. Yesterday (yes, Sunday, which I prefer to keep free) I had my first lesson with another new student, who works for a coffee machine-making company. She asked me two questions I get a lot: “What the hell are you doing in Romania?” and “Obviously you do some English teaching, but what do you actually do for a living?”

A problem lately has been long preparation time. I hand-make a lot of my materials. I’d go as far as to say the slightly offbeat homemade-ness is part of who am I as a teacher, and my students seem to like it. “We don’t get this at school,” they tell me, or “My Romanian English teacher just used grammar books.” But all that thinking and writing and printing and cutting and sticking takes time.

There isn’t a whole lot of other news. I thought I’d mention another of my experiences on the ISC Scrabble site, which unfortunately seems to bring out the worst in people. On Saturday I played seven games, winning four, but they were mostly against people rated lower than me, so my rating actually dipped a little. Not to matter. I then fired up game number eight, against someone I’d never played before. It was me to go first, and I had this rack: AEIUTZ and a blank. Hmm, there’s probably a bingo here, and it’ll score a lot. This was void, which means it’s perfectly fine to try words without penalty. Is ‘azulite’ a word? It rang a bell (a blue stone, something like lapis lazuli, perhaps?) so I try it, but no go. Perhaps it’s ‘azurite’ I was thinking of. I changed the blank to an R, and hey presto, 100 points. I felt a bit guilty at my unprecedented stroke of good fortune, but didn’t expect what happened next. He accused me of using a word finder, promptly aborted the game (doing the online equivalent of tipping the board up and letting the tiles fly across the room), then put me on his no-play list. I contacted the site’s help desk, saying that this sort of behaviour detracts from what should be a friendly game, but was told in no uncertain (and sarcastic) terms that if I wanted a friendly environment I should go elsewhere. It’s sad that basic civility seems to be in such short supply.

The Easter market from my window