Family - Life :) - Scrabble

Weddings: pressing all the wrong buttons

September 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. No real news there. A vicious storm had been forecast for their local area, but it didn’t fully bare its teeth. On Friday I spoke to my brother who was nonplussed after Mum and Dad failed to make a call or send a message for their grandson’s birthday. (He turned three last Monday.) And it’s not like they forgot; Mum, who has a good memory for such things, chucked some birthday money in his direction, but they consciously decided not to make contact. What gives, my brother wondered. They spent all that time with their grandchildren over the summer but now they simply don’t care? He speculated that maybe both Mum and Dad had been hardened at a young age by attending boarding school. Just throw money at him, that’ll do.

A video popped up on Youtube last week which is an absolute must-watch for anyone with a friend or family member on the autistic spectrum. It’s about how weddings are sheer hell on about a dozen levels if you’re autistic. (Honestly, they often aren’t much fun even if you’re not because of the eye-watering cost. And these modern “destination weddings” are the epitome of wastage and selfishness. I’m worth you all spending thousands each to fly to my wedding in sodding Tahiti. Sorry, you’re not. You’re really really not. And because you’re so selfish, it’s fifty-fifty that it’ll be all over within five years.) The guy who made this video (and is married!) has a great sense of humour, as you can see at the beginning when he struggles even to utter the word “wedding”. And oh god, the expectation to dance. Someone asked me once to name my three greatest fears and I said dancing, weddings, and dancing at weddings. He did make one big omission, however, and that’s just how triggering weddings are. All the time you’re thinking, this is something normal people do but I’ll never do – certainly not like this, anyway – because I’m not normal. I should mention here that my brother’s one on the army base in Plymouth was fine, but that’s because it was my actual brother and I was very happy for him. Even then, I wasn’t too disappointed to get back to the hotel room at around midnight.

After my lessons yesterday I played six games of Scrabble – three wins, three losses. I’m finding 50-point bonuses at a decent clip but am hampered by my lack of knowledge of shorter words.

Today I’ll take the bike to Padurea Verde (the Green Forest) where I haven’t been for ages. We’re getting incredibly warm weather still – we’re forecast to hit 31 this afternoon. When I get back I’ve got a video call lined up with my cousin in America.

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos

The land of no nod

September 15, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’ve got five English lessons today (two down, three to go). My next session is with a new student who wants to do the Cambridge exam. Having more work is usually beneficial to my sleep and mental health, but it doesn’t always pan out that way. I was pretty busy on Saturday with all my maths lessons, then after work I had dinner at the beer factory with Mark. (I just had a chicken salad, but he wolfed down a meat-heavy local dish in no time.) I thought I’d sleep well after that, but I was up most of the night. There was a lot of dark matter floating around my head. At one point I got up and read a Wikipedia article on suicide rates in people with autism. The next day – yesterday – was pretty much a write-off. I’d planned a bike ride but had to flag it. Last night I slept rather better, and that’s keeping my head above water today. Tomorrow I’ll see the doctor. It’s unusual for me to go through a rough patch at this time of year – September is normally a good month for me.

In this morning’s Romanian session, after running through a bunch of verbs beginning with D, we talked about some subjects pertinent to our time: how advertising sucks people in, and whether you can trust anything you read online. In our previous session we discussed travel. When asked to name the most wonderful place I’d ever visited, I quickly said Bali. It really was magical for a nine-year-old boy. If I asked my brother, he’d probably give the same answer.

I played three games of Scrabble yesterday. In one game I was accused of cheating. I was definately using an annagramer, my opponent said. He (or she, but it’s always he, isn’t it?) could do with using a spell check. I won that game (in fact I won all three, one of them by just two points), but it left a sour taste in my mouth all the same. There’s no incentive for me to cheat. My motivation is to become better at Scrabble in the long term, not to win random games against people I don’t know from Adam.

They’re about to work on the bottom of this handsome building near me. It’s been stripped back to reveal what used to be a tailor’s (croitorie). That hand-painted signage is very Romanian; 30 years ago it would have all been like that.

The blade sharpener at the market near me. The man in his fifties who runs this stall is usually pumping out Depeche Mode and other similar music from his era.

Update: I’ve just had that lesson with the new guy. Only 16, he’s the tallest student I’ve had so far; he’s got to be at least six-four. (Come to think of it the guy who lives in London might well be taller, but I only see ever him sitting down so it’s hard to tell.) His English wasn’t too shabby either. In fact he hardly put a foot wrong. Will I be able to teach you anything? He said that he’s been speaking English since he learnt to walk and he intermingles English with Romanian when he’s with his friends. Ah, you’re one of those. Cool and sophisticated young Romanians like to show off their coolness and sophistication by using a cooler and more sophisticated language, as they see it. We just talked for the first half of the session. Then we did some Cambridge “use of English” exercises and he met his match when he hit the challenging part 4. (Some of the reading exercises are challenging even for me as a native speaker because they’re gamified; I’m not used to playing the game.) According to my records, which could easily be wrong, he’s my 200th student so far. I don’t get new students at the rate I used to; my existing ones tend to stick around longer. I still remember my 100th which was in January 2020, just before Covid and long before I got a car. I took tram number 4 to the end of the line, then trudged all the way to this young girl’s house in Urseni for our first and only one-hour session.

Autism - Life :) - Writing a book

Feeling better, but the end of the line for the books

September 13, 2025 by 0 Comments

After a few days of feeling close to gone, I’m almost back to normal. That’s a huge relief. I still have to catch up a bit from being so exhausted and clumsy and disorganised – this living room is a mess, for instance – but at least everything isn’t totally unmanageable as it was two days ago. Tomorrow (Saturday) I have lessons from 8:30 till 7 with very few breaks; I was worried that would be impossible for me.

I spoke to the woman at the “publishers” today (the inverted commas are there for a reason), three and a half months after we sent off the proposal or whatever it is they call it. It wasn’t accepted, or rather it was ignored. Lack of funds, or lack of interest, or both. I don’t really care what the reason is, and anyway I’d have been surprised if the outcome had been anything else. I told her what I wanted to do next, which is not waste any more time. I might end up having a coffee with her and Dorothy, just to be polite and to put the final full stop to the whole thing.

I told Dad about this. After all, he’d done 25 brilliant illustrations for the smaller of the two books. Don’t worry, I enjoyed doing them, he said. And you’ve still got all the text and artwork. You might bump into a publisher. Seriously, bump into a publisher! That’s not how it happens at all, Dad. If there’s anything that living with (probable) autism for 45 years has told me, it’s that you don’t bump into anything. Not anything good, I mean; you’re more than capable of bumping into piles of shite. You might have bumped into a publisher, Dad, and in no time at all had royalty cheques zooming in from America, all ready to be cashed at the wonderful rate of a dollar ten to the pound, as it was in 1985. But that isn’t how things work for me. I think I may have mentioned that at an autism group. If you’re autistic, connections are hard to make. Chance meetings are rare. If you really want to change your life, you have to actively make the change, hard as it is, because nothing will fall into your lap. Changing my lifestyle involved moving halfway around the world to a country where I didn’t know anybody and spoke little of the language: the very opposite of bumping into it. Anyway, I will need to actively pursue publishers here; there’s no way around that. For one thing, the vast majority of Romanian publishers are located in Bucharest.

Cat - Life :) - Scrabble

Not too smart right now

September 10, 2025 by 0 Comments

I put on the TV this morning. A normal day in Romania. Another fire in an apartment block – this time nobody injured. A report stating that 30% of adult Romanians have no bank account. Then they dropped in on a factory that processes 20 tonnes of pickled cabbages a day. (Cabbage season has just started.) But nothing feels normal to me. Since Saturday night I’ve been stuck in the crawler lane. I’ve been sleeping poorly and constantly fatigued.

Yesterday was a case in point. My Romanian lesson started at eight and I knew I’d be buggered for that. I set my alarm for seven. As soon as it went off I killed it, intending to get up. I hadn’t slept well. Next thing I knew it was almost eight. No time for breakfast or even a cup of tea. The lesson, which overran a bit, was really a waste of time. Luckily I had no lessons until later. After a belated breakfast I knew I needed to pick up my bike which I’d taken in to be repaired last Thursday. The bike shop was five kilometres away. Walk or drive? I decided to walk, thinking the exercise could do me good, and there were a few things I wanted to pick up from the mall on the way back. The walk to the bike shop took me just over an hour. It took me past, among other things, the shaorma kiosk I frequented when I lived in town. Back then, a shaorma cost 11 lei. Now it’s 28. Yes, I’m putting my prices up for lessons again – I have no real choice. The repair – a new chain and a whole new set of gears – set me back 240 lei (£40 or NZ$95).

Then the mall. A bad idea when I’m so tired and I can’t face noise or bright lights. What I felt wasn’t far off what I experienced in a supermarket in 2001 when I’d just started taking medication for panic attacks. It struck me that most of what you find in a large mall like that is pure unadulterated shite. And these days a lot of it has an added sinister edge to it. A crypto ATM, for instance, with flashing surrounds. I’ve never even liked the Americanism ATM. The Samsung shop, if it was even a shop and not just a display, was even more frightening. SmartThings. AllOneWord. Start your SmartThings journey. In English, of course. The display included a smart washing machine and a smart fridge and a smart TV showing Aardman-like claymation figures watching their smart TV. Presumably there are people out there who want this stuff. There must be; I recently had a lesson in Dumbrăvița with an eight-year-old girl in their smart kitchen and she explained her mother’s smart electric cooker to not-very-smart me. Her mum was in the middle of baking something smart. I think I’d rather have one of those ubiquitous seventies gas cookers you saw all the time in New Zealand, the ones with the digital-dial clock. Similar cookers were made on a vast scale in Romania, all in a single factory in Cugir, 200 km east of Timișoara, not far from Deva. That factory also produced arms.

I walked past all of that crap – all I wanted was some bits and pieces from the Auchan supermarket. I found the tablecloth I needed, eventually. Next stop electric toothbrush heads. These aren’t cheap and I couldn’t find the price anywhere. They used to have barcode scanners dotted around the place but now people have become too affluent to even care… Look, this is too hard. Getting everything on my list will take me hours. I came out with only the tablecloth. At least its price will mean I’ll have change for the coffee machine once I negotiate the smart bloody self-checkout. A woman had to help me with the initial screen. The shops around the coffee machine were in a quieter area and not sinister at all. A dry cleaners’. A shop selling detergent. A place that does printing and medals and trophies. Then I went home.

This really isn’t great. What’s causing it I don’t know. It’s still pretty damn warm; today we’re forecast to reach 32. I hope I’ll be better when the temperature drops, but who knows, I might be low in magnesium or something. I’ll ask my doctor the next time I see him. At the moment I’d struggle enormously to hold down a normal job. (I have had spells like this while in a normal job. That was horrible.)

On Sunday I met Dorothy in town. We had a simple lunch, eventually – it took an age to get served. Nothing new there. But I was very happy to be eating inside especially on such a sunny day – I couldn’t face the brightness.

Some sad news from Dorothy. Her five-month-old kitten has died. She had a virus that she couldn’t recover from and on Friday she was put down. I hope that day she spent with Kitty (14th August) didn’t permanently traumatise her. You just never know. As for Kitty, she’s still going strong. You really notice your fatigue when you have such a bundle of energy around the place as Kitty.

I managed three games of Scrabble yesterday, winning two. In one of them I scored 527 – my highest since I got back into it.

Dreams - Photos - Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 3 of 3 (photos, and is it really worth it anymore?)

September 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

The night before last I had a weird dream in which I was forced to leave Timișoara and move to Cluj. I don’t know why the prospect was so frightening given some of the other moves I’ve made in my life. Cluj is a fine city; maybe I’ll go there with Mum and Dad if they come this way again.

It’s officially the end of summer. I don’t mind that one bit. (It got to 33 today all the same; I had to have a cold shower in the middle of the day after a bike ride.) This summer wasn’t in the same league as the infernal three months we had last year that just about did for me. A combination of the heat and the news made me feel that we were heading for hell in a handcart. A year later I’ve just about checked out of the news entirely; it’s got too much for me.

Moving to New Zealand in 2003 meant I missed out on a lot of potential travel opportunities in Europe. Now, with ever more globalisation and saminess and theme-park-isation, I wonder if it’s even worth it. It’s the differences that make travel interesting. Why not just look at the pictures while staying here? Here is more interesting to me than many popular destinations anyway, with all the funny little shops and bars and cafés. I’m reminded of an episode of Miranda where everyone thinks she’s gone on some exotic trip when in fact she’s booked into the motel down the road to avoid all the hassle. Then there’s the expense. On Sunday I played squash with Mark in Dumbrăvița, then we had pizza and beer at a place around the corner. He’d just got back from a seven-week trip (with his wife and their two dogs) around western Europe, all at unavoidably high cost.

I forgot to mention that I got a speeding ticket coming back from Slovakia. I was still in Slovakia when I was pulled over for doing 132 km/h when the limit was 110. (This was in the middle a short section when the limit dropped from 130. For the police it was like shooting fish in a barrel.) I expected the worst. When I got a fine of only €20, which I paid in cash on the spot, I was immensely relieved. I also think I might have got flashed by a camera in the Czech Republic at the start of my trip.

Here’s a selection of the pictures I took on my trip:

Firstly, Olomouc (which was lovely really) in the Czech Republic:

Kroměříž, not that far from Olomouc:

Příbor, still in the Czech Republic, birthplace of Sigmund Freud:

Bydgoszcz, Poland, where I spent most of my time:

The beautiful port city of Gdańsk in northern Poland:

Family - Life :) - Travel: the US

My US trip a decade ago and news from an ex-student

August 31, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s ten years since I took the train from Boston to Albany, New York to meet my cousin and his Italian wife to be. I spent two nights with them. We chatted over dinner and the Sam Adams beer that I’d brought with me from Boston, then they showed me around the local area. Best of all, we went for a hike in the Adirondacks, where the views were breathtaking, and visited Lake Placid. Then we made a trip to Flushing Meadow to see the opening day of the US Open. It was the first time they’d been to a grand slam, but for me it completed my set of four. I had a lovely time with them. I spent four weeks in the US in all, and when I got back I felt great. That trip – my first overseas trip for five years – gave me the impetus to do what I’ve done since. There’s a big world out there! Options. Ways to escape the cycle of hopelessness that had felt interminable. That was before the US went totally crazy. Even during Trump’s first term, it seemed his bark was worse than his bite. I felt some affinity with the US, having been there not long before. I followed baseball. I read Fivethirtyeight, my favourite website at the time. (It no longer exists.) Now I don’t follow US-based news because it’s just too appalling.

Yesterday I was in contact with the lady whom I gave nearly 200 lessons before and during Covid, until I said we couldn’t carry on. She was downright weird. And obsessive. And bored. Since then she’s become a hairdresser – having an actual job has helped her no end. Last year her son, whom I also used to teach – he got very good at English – was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Heartbreaking, really. He was a very smart cookie who wanted to be a pilot. We spent large chunks of lessons discussing passenger planes and routes, and often watched videos on the subject. He seemed to have all the right attributes for captaining a triple seven, including his excellent English. Then disaster struck. Dream over. His mother said he’s handled the last year remarkably well with all his treatments and analyses and tests. He’s just got his driving licence – his parents have bought him a Mercedes, as you do when your kid is 18, though I think in this case it’s a form of recognition for the very shitty time he’s had. They’re in the final stages of getting a house built in Mehala, one of my favourite parts of Timișoara, and should move in before Christmas.

I had another video call with my parents yesterday. Mum looked a lot better – on Wednesday she looked like death warmed up. So that was a relief, but sadly it’s just a matter of time until the next episode.

Cat - Family - Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 2 of 3

August 28, 2025 by 0 Comments

I got back on Sunday evening. The next morning I picked Kitty up from the pet hotel after one of the workers had introduced me to a monstrous moggy weighing eight kilos. Kitty didn’t especially want to leave, but as I write this she looks pretty comfortable in her favourite spot atop the tall cupboard in the living room.

As planned I paid Gdańsk a visit last Thursday. I was only there for three hours. Everywhere I looked the architecture was stunning. The first building I clapped eyes on was the rather nice railway station, and things only improved from there. Gdańsk is pretty damn touristy, however, and that’s why I didn’t spend much time there and certainly didn’t book any accommodation there. I’ve developed an allergy to tourism-based theme parks. The river is spectacular and they make excellent use of it, unlike what you see – or don’t see – on Romania’s waterways. Pleasure boats are almost nonexistent here. After I sent Dad a bunch of photos of Gdańsk, he filled me in on its history. It was a shipbuilding city – Lech Wałęsa, Poland’s first president after communism, worked at the shipyard. I’ve been reading up on Wałęsa who is still alive today (he’ll be 82 next month). The changes he brought about sound overwhelmingly positive. (I was ten years old when he took over, so I wasn’t paying attention.) In Romania, many of those who gained power after 1989 were part of the old guard anyway, but in Poland there was more of a clean break. That’s probably why Poland made a swift recovery from communism while Romania’s has been much more gradual. Poland was one of the countries I thought of moving to, but a lower level of development is actually what drew me to Romania instead. It would make life that bit more interesting. For instance, yesterday I saw an old lady – probably a gypsy – sitting on a grassy area in the middle of a city centre car park, knitting. On Tuesday as I was walking home, I saw a family (again, probably gypsies) in some makeshift vehicle, dragging some sort of cargo behind them. Bits kept falling out and falling off. I’m guessing I wouldn’t see these things in a similar-sized Polish city.

Getting out of Gdańsk to go back to Bydgoszcz was a chore. My GPS sent me round in circles; it couldn’t handle the road works. I thought I might never properly escape the city. I became pretty damn au fait with the eighties hits radio station. Because I was stuck in traffic I could Shazam one of two of the Polish songs, such as this one by Urszula which came out in ’84. I even started to pick up the odd word of Polish, like czwartek, which means Thursday. I began to doubt it would still be czwartek when I got back. When I finally did so, I grabbed a spicy pork dish from across the road.

My last day in Bydgoszcz was a relaxing one. I wandered to the other side of the river where there was even more impressive architecture and a great park. For lunch tried a Polish speciality from a kiosk – a half-baguette (cut lengthways) with some mushroomy topping and ketchup. It had a tricky name that I can’t remember; to be honest it didn’t do much for me. When I got back to the apartment I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and attempted to learn some Scrabble words.

On Saturday it was time to head back home. I’d managed to book into a place in Žilina in Slovakia by phone without any need for card. It was a 604 km trip to get there, taking me via a corner of the Czech Republic. There’s not much to say about Žilina, a large town whose centre is dominated by communist-era buildings. In town I had a tasty pizza with anchovies and a Czech beer called Bernard to go with it. My accommodation was fine. Breakfast was included, so the next morning I had bacon and eggs, though not as I know it. The strips of bacon were fried into the three eggs. Nothing wrong with that, just not what I’m used to. Then I was back on my way. A whopping 731 km to get home. The traffic was great; it only took me nine hours including various stops including one at Tesco (yes, Hungary has Tesco) just outside Kecskemét.

Mum and Dad have had all kinds of issues with their places in St Ives in the last few days, including a leak into the flat below theirs which seems to have nothing to do with them at all. They’ve been very stressed by all this. When I saw them yesterday, the atmosphere was beyond miserable. It’s horrible to see. Mum loses all sense of proportion when these things happen, which (because they’ve complicated their lives to this extent) they do with regularity. If I ever suggest that she takes a step back and sees that it really isn’t that bad, she’ll refuse to even talk to me. Bloody great, isn’t it?

I’ll put up the photos in my next post.

Travel: Europe

Czech and Poland trip — Part 1 of 3

August 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m writing this from Bydgoszcz. I’ve had two days here with two more to go, and then I’ll have the long journey back to look forward to.

I dropped Kitty off at the pet hotel at 9am on Saturday – it was fun to see all the other cats there – then I drove the most I’d ever covered on a single day: 717 km in all. Most of that was through Hungary. There were the expected hold-ups on the motorway – accidents, road works, heavy traffic – but it wasn’t too bad really. Romania’s acceptance into Schengen at the start of the year has helped matters. I paid the road tax as I entered Slovakia, but I didn’t pay the Czech tax so I had to ensure I was off any toll roads before crossing my third border of the day. Avoiding the motorway made for a more interesting last two hours of driving than what had come before. Being a Saturday there were weddings and other events; a lot of people wore traditional Czech costumes. After negotiating torrential rain – the worst I’d experienced while driving since my time in Wellington – I arrived at my perfectly adequate apartment at 7:10. The owner had been very helpful and had given me self-explanatory instructions including a video.

The next morning I drove the short distance to the smallish city of Olomouc which lies on the Morava river. It was many degrees cooler than Timișoara had been. Although it was Sunday I wasn’t sure about parking. Was I parked legally? How could I tell? I wandered around the town centre with its cobbled streets. The main square was a highlight, in particular the communist-era astronomical clock. It had several dials showing moon phases and whatnot, and incorporated mechanical figures representing people of industry who would come out every hour on the hour and hammer away. After an hour I went back to the car which was still there, untowed and unstickered, and I assumed I was safe. I went into various churches, including one in which its Sunday service was in full swing, and also the cathedral. The best bit was probably scaling the bell tower (206 steps), giving me a panoramic view of the city. Back to the car. Mine was still fine, but the one in front had been clamped. Yikes. It was only 2:30 so I got the heck out of there and went to Kroměříž which, like Olomouc, is a town full of splendid architecture. It also has a garden which belongs to some kind of stately home. This time I could ask someone about parking, and having determined I was safe, I had a good look around.

The following day necessitated another long drive – 621 km to Bydgoszcz in Poland. Dorothy recommended I visit Příbor on the way. It’s a very picturesque town – some of the narrow streets are quite beautiful – which sits about an hour from Olomouc. She suggested it because it’s the birthplace of Sigmund Freud, her great-grandfather. There was Freud signage everywhere; the square was even named after him. I tried to park in the square but I had no Czech cash and my card was rejected for some reason, so I parked further out. Because it was Monday, the day when none of these things are open, I couldn’t go in the house where Freud was born. Then the rest of my drive. Not much to say about that, although I got a message from my bank saying my card had been blocked. Over the border into Poland, the speed limit on the motorway rose to 140 km/h. On the stretches with only two lanes, you’re pretty much forced to do that speed too. As it became apparent that I’d arrive rather earlier than I said I would, I decided to check out Bydgoszcz before heading to the apartment. I found a car park, but oh shit, how am I going to pay? No working card, no Polish cash. I had no choice but to race to the mall (a 20-minute walk) which seemed to be the only place where I could get my hands on some złoty at 6pm without a card. (I was able to exchange some euros.) Straight back to the car park having hardly seen the city at all, then to the apartment. Nobody there. I call the number, a woman answered. Do you speak English? She laughed. No. Bloody fantastic. I then got a message full of indecipherable Zs and Ws and Ys which I put into Google Translate. This place is keyless – the doors all rely on pin codes – and I got myself in eventually. Stressful though. Just like the last place, it does the job just fine.

The town centre is within walking distance of where I’m staying. Yesterday I wandered around the river, Mill Island, the old granary buildings and the main streets in the centre. Everything is in very good nick. I also went up a water tower which is already up a hill, so I got some nice views from there. Perhaps the most incredible building is the 15th-century cathedral whose interior has a unique colour scheme with its striking purples and reds and oranges, like nothing I’d ever seen before. When I got back I got a takeaway from the Asian restaurant opposite. Its menu is vast. I took a picture of the Polish menu and went back to the apartment to figure it out before ordering an Indonesian curry. It was delicious and enough for two nights. Today I visited a museum of dirt and soap (why not?). They had a tour in English, thankfully. The guide was perfectly understandable despite his dodgy pronunciation. We started off by each making our own bar of soap by mixing glycerine with lavender and colouring and putting in a mould. At the end of the tour our moulds had all set. In between we had a (rather short) run-through of historical washing practices – both clothes and bodies. The most interesting bit was when he told us about the primitive washing machines and detergents – and even loo paper – that were used by Poles as late as the 1980s. Times were tough then. Later I went to a museum of explosives – it was an explosive factory during WW2 so visiting had a sinister feel about it – but a lack of non-Polish signage detracted from the experience somewhat.

Tomorrow I’ll probably visit Gdańsk, a bigger city on the coast, a two-hour drive from here. Then the following day, my last day, I don’t plan to do a whole lot. About my card, well I called the bank yesterday. I assumed they’d detected some “suspicious activity” because I was out of the country, but it had nothing to do with that. For some reason when I tried to renew my website (through a NZ provider) last week, my card failed. I was still able to make a bank transfer but it triggered something in the system and my Romanian bank blocked my card a few days later. They can’t reactivate it; I have to wait until I get back when they’ll give me a replacement card. Until then I’m relying entirely on cash. Good job I brought plenty of euros (€425) with me. That will awkwardise my stay on the way back. I’ll probably stay somewhere in Slovakia – at least they use the euro there – but booking.com is out of the question. I’ll have to rock up somewhere, after a drive in the high-600s km range, and hope for the best.

Family - Life :) - Music

Just before I go…

August 16, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m just getting packed up for tomorrow, having finished my last lesson. It’s much easier when I’m not having to fly anywhere. I’m including a kettle; in Romania there’s no guarantee you’ll get one and I have a feeling Poland will be similar.

I’ve spoken to all my immediate family today. My brother said he had a go at Mum for still driving even though her eyesight is equivalent to downing five pints. Don’t blame him – it’s inexcusable – but I’ve decided not to go there with Mum. He also mentioned his frustration with Mum and Dad’s negativity whenever he speaks to them. I feel the same as him. As an example, I got the Maori stuff again recently. Even though I broadly agree with them, I don’t want to hear it for the 85th time. If it was impinging on their quality of life to even a remote extent, I’d be a bit more receptive. Maybe negativity is something that comes with old age.

When I saw Dorothy on Tuesday, she had the order of service for the funeral of Samantha, a medical student from India whom I met twice last year at Dorothy’s church. I didn’t know she’d died in May at just 27. Around Christmas she contracted a rare disease – some kind of inflammation of the brain, Dorothy said – and was put in an induced coma. Even though I didn’t know her well at all, she seemed a very nice young woman; to have two-thirds of her expected life taken from her is very sad. Dorothy said she’d gone to a better place and so on, but that isn’t at all what I believe.

Today is Sfânta Maria, or St Mary’s Day. If you’re one of the millions of Romanian women called Maria or men called Marian or Marius, or numerous other variations, you get to celebrate your name day today. It’s one of the two biggest name days on the calendar, the other being St John (Ion, Ioan, Ionuț, Ioana, …) which is in January.

I don’t think I mentioned that the plumber had been. He created a U-bend under the sink, and after fiddling around with the shower for a while, seems to have got rid of the stench. Which is great.

At the market this morning I went past the stall where the guy often pumps out Depeche Mode on his speakers. Today he was playing something Depeche Mode-esque that I liked but hadn’t heard before. I Shazammed it; I was only the 183rd person to do so, it said. It was a British band called the Recreations with a song called Neoprene which came out in 2016.

It’s 36 degrees right now. Yeah, bugger this.

Cat - Travel: Europe

Off to a land unspoiled by vowels

August 15, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’m off to Poland just 36 hours from now. I’m spending five nights in Bydgoszcz (say “bid”, then “gosh”, then add a “ch” at the end, and you’ll get pretty close to pronouncing this intimidating name). Because it’s close to 1300 km which is much too far to go in a single drive, I’m breaking up the journey by spending two nights in the Czech city of Olomouc (say “o-lo-moats” in three syllables). Bydgoszcz, which is in the northern half of Poland, has great architecture and isn’t touristy at all from what I can gather. Avoiding expensive touristy cities (theme parks, if you like) is an absolute must for me. Because I’ll have four full days in Bydgoszcz, I’ll have plenty of time to look around and maybe even make a day trip to Gdańsk on the coast, which does get a bit of tourism. I should accomplish two main goals: one, simply to get away (and visit two new countries which is a bonus), and two, to escape the heat. On the way back I’ll have a one-night stop – probably in Olomouc again.

Kitty has added an extra wrinkle to planning this sort of trip. What do I do with her? As an experiment, I dropped her off at Dorothy’s on Tuesday morning, just for the day. Dorothy got a kitten in June. Maybe the two felines would get on fine, even though mine was twice the size of hers, in which case a longer stay could work. No such luck. Her kitten was scared of Kitty (don’t blame her) to the point where she hid for four hours. Dorothy couldn’t find her. They had to be separated, and even that didn’t entirely work because their scents lingered… So I’ve booked Kitty in for nine nights at a so-called pet hotel in Timișoara, at a cost of 540 lei (£90 or NZ$210). In the longer term I’ll have to think about what to do. Kitty’s lovely and everything, but if I want to be spending a month in New Zealand and stuff, I’m sad to say she might not be worth the hassle and expense.

I got a surprise letter in the post from the Romanian equivalent of the IRD, saying that I hadn’t declared my foreign income for 2019. What the hell? That’s six years ago. Did you mean my NZ rental income (which I’d already paid tax on) or what? I went to the office yesterday but the queue was a mile long. This morning I got there much earlier and they told me it was to do with the £51 of interest I’d apparently received on my Barclays account that year. When I get back from Poland I’ll have to make another trip there – it sounds like I’ll have to do something on a self-service kiosk. Some of the stuff you get in Romania is laughable.

On Monday morning after my Romanian lesson I got a call from Mum and Dad. Sunday was a stinker (we topped out at 38) and it didn’t drop below 22 that night, so I slept terribly. Talking to them was a struggle. I can’t wait to escape that.