Language teaching - Life :)

The S factor

October 7, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

A bad week on the teaching front was capped off by my trip to Strada Timiș yesterday. The 17-year-old girl was there but her little brother was elsewhere, and their mother hadn’t bothered to tell me. I helped my one student with her homework on bird and animal idioms (such as “to watch somebody like a hawk” and “the straw that broke the camel’s back”) and phrasal verbs. She had several sheets to get through, which consisted almost entirely of matching exercises. At times I gave her clues as to what the answer might be, but I could tell she was thinking, Just give me the bloody answer, would you? The more sheets we got through in 90 minutes, the fewer she’d have to do by herself. We get on well and our sessions are productive, but once again we were interrupted by regular dings and beeps from her phone. I told her she was obviously very popular. She said that those messages came from five social networks. She also made it clear that Instagram, not Facebook, is king among people born around the turn of the century. Of course Facebook own Instagram. They also own WhatsApp. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if either Facebook or Google buy out Coca-Cola or Boeing.

S. Yes. She’s 33, five years younger than me. She works for a large multinational and is currently in the middle of a two-week business trip in Prague. She doesn’t eat meat. Last weekend I asked her how on earth she survives in mici-fuelled Timișoara as a vegetarian, but she assured me it isn’t actually that hard. Her English is almost entirely flawless; she’s developed an Irish-like accent with an appealing lilt. (In some ways her fantastic English is a pain. I want to improve my Romanian.) She isn’t sporty in any way (either playing or watching) but is into all the cultural stuff. She’s been all over the place but was born and bred in Timișoara, which by now she’s understandably fairly blasé about. We’ve been in contact every day since she’s been away.

Only 16 hours of work last week. That won’t cut it, unfortunately. That kind of volume neither brings in enough income nor gives me that pleasant feeling I get from being productive. For the coming week I’m a bit more optimistic – I could have two new students.

Language teaching - Life :)

One and done

October 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a bit of a crappy week from a teaching perspective: too many cancellations. Earlier today I phoned that utterly obnoxious guy who came over last weekend, on the off-chance he might want to come back, but I got a very decisive “no”. That was probably for the best. As a teacher it’s a great feeling to see my students succeed under any normal circumstances, but I don’t wish success on this person any more than I wish success on Donald Trump. After this latest “one and done”, I delved into my (entirely manual) records of my lessons and produced some stats on how long my students stick around. One in eight give up after one lesson. Plenty more call it a day soon after that: 35% don’t make it past lesson number five. After 15 lessons we’re into coin-flip territory: 49% make it past that point. When my students have put up with me for that long, we’ve normally built up some kind of rapport, and they tend to come back. By the 30th lesson, 36% of my students still remain, and 17% even survive beyond the 50th. These are still fairly small sample sizes and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to those stats in the long term.

It’s been a beautiful autumn day here. Not a cloud in the sky. I wandered back from Piața Traian, suddenly with all the time in the world after yet another last-minute cancellation, and met a part-British, part-Romanian family who were trying to figure out how the timetable for the Bega boats worked. They all seemed lovely people.

There’s a referendum on same-sex marriage in Romania this weekend. Oh wait, there isn’t; we haven’t magically been transported to the 22nd century after all. There is, however, a referendum on changing Romania’s constitution so that the definition of marriage explicitly excludes same-sex couples, i.e. so that it reads “between a man and a woman” instead of the current “between spouses”. (When the constitution was drawn up, “between a man and a woman” would have gone without saying.) If the vote passes, any changes will be purely superficial, because Romania is unlikely to recognise single-sex relationships in the lifetime of any of its current gay citizens, no matter what’s in the constitution. There will almost certainly be a whopping great majority in favour of the amendment, but the vote also needs a 30% turnout in order to pass. That sounds extremely low, and crazy, because casting a “no” vote could allow the threshold to be met and for “yes” to win. So the people who oppose the amendment are asking people not to vote at all. Last weekend I talked to S about this, and like me, she finds it insane that same-sex couples can’t get married in this day and age. That we agree on this bodes well. I want to write more about S in my next post.

Baseball: we’re down to the final eight. The Brewers, who have been involved in some seriously exciting games, are on an incredible tear. And the Yankees made it through their wild card game and face the Red Sox in a five-game series starting tonight.

I’m looking forward to the lessons with the kids tomorrow. Sunday will be the second anniversary of my arrival in Timișoara.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

They think it’s all over… but it isn’t

October 2, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

S has contacted me today from Prague, so that’s nice. She told me (in Romanian, yay!) about her technological woes and the wet weather there.

We’ve finally reached the end of the regular Major League Baseball season, only we haven’t, because not one but two of the divisions finished in a tie for first place, both in the National League. That’s after 162 games and roughly 500 hours of playing time for each team. Rather than use some sort of tie-breaker method, like head-to-head, run differential or number of ejections, the four teams involved will sort it out on the field. Two bonus 163rd games, that kick off (!) at 8pm and 11pm tonight, my time. The losers of these extra games don’t go home; instead they play each other in the wild card game tomorrow. For the loser of that game, it really is all over. This crazy turn of events is unprecedented, and productivity is likely to plummet in certain parts of the US. I’ll tune in to the first of the bonus games, between the Cubs and the Brewers at Wrigley Field, after my lesson. For the Red Sox over in the American League, things were much more clear cut. Maybe they eased off the gas just a fraction in September, but they still finished with 108 wins, or exactly two-thirds of their games. That’s the best record in the major leagues. Whether they’re the best team is another matter. Boston are very good and a heap of fun to watch, but I’d say the Yankees are about as good and Houston Astros (last season’s champions) are marginally better.

Only two lessons today. The first was on the verb “to get” and most (certainly not all) of its many, many uses. Tonight it’s likely to be either business English or an article on funky modern offices (the sort of places that I’d hate to work in). I’m getting a fair volume of phone calls now, so my hours should eventually increase from last week’s 22½.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble

My weekend

October 1, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday was an interesting day. In the morning I had lessons with my latest brother-and-sister combo. (The previous pair seem to have blipped off the radar. That happens.) I tried to help the girl navigate her way through the “reading and use of English” section of the Cambridge exam, which isn’t exactly a breeze even for me. There’s a lot of emphasis on collocations in that paper: things like “under no circumstances” and “under no illusion” which you either know or you don’t. That makes actually teaching for the test relatively hard. Her speech is excellent though, so explaining things to her is relatively easy. Then came her brother. Body parts! They make such a great topic. We did the “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” song which I remember from when I was five, then Simon Says, then some matching exercises. Simon Says is always fun. “Now sit down.” [Sits down] “But I didn’t say Simon Says!” We also touched on pronunciation. At his young age, learning correct pronunciation is so much easier, so I really want to make sure he nails it. Then we worked on numbers. His school teachers appear to have taught him that English numbers stop at ten, so I was keen to put him straight. Finally we played some quick games (he won all of them; that helps) and at end of the lesson he said I was a much better English teacher than his one at school. Perhaps he was just buttering me up.

At 4pm I had my first lesson with a guy who contacted me last week. We’d spoken Romanian on the phone, but when he was here it was obvious that he could speak English very well. I’d put him at an 8½, perhaps even a 9, on my 0-to-10 scale. It was equally obvious that he was a complete twat. A truly odious man. He talked about his exploits at the gym (“I’m a really big guy”), his Mensa membership, and his ambition to be Romania’s president in ten years’ time (heaven help us). Then he said, “I’m not a humble person.” You don’t say. “I don’t like humble people.” I told him that I considered myself to be a humble person. He introduced several other topics, saying at one point that luck doesn’t even exist, a contention that I find absurd. He reminded me of the New Zealand man who John Campbell interviewed following the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. “When the bomb went off I was on my eighth repetition of a however-many-kg bench press, but naturally I finished my set.” I asked my new student if he wanted to come again at the same time next week, and he said he was so busy that he couldn’t possibly give a day or a time. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never see him again.

Later I met up with my Tinder friend (I’ve called her X previously on this blog, but I’ll now use her real first initial, S). We chatted in English (dammit!) and took a walk around Piața Unirii, which I think is her favourite part of the city. She showed me the map stone – a cool-looking stone inlaid into the square, showing a fairly vague outline of the old fortress. We then grabbed some food and drink at the popular Hungarian market in the centre of town before I invited her up to my flat. She seemed to really enjoy the view here, and it is fantastically wonderful. I told her that when I moved into this place it felt like a dream. We discussed the UK and New Zealand and our various plans, including the idea that I could set up a proper language school. She asked me whether I’d be happy to take on all the hassle that would entail, and I gave her a one-word, two-letter answer. Sadly I won’t be seeing S for two weeks at least: she’s off to Prague on a business trip.

Today I took my new (old) bike to Sânmihaiu Român. It’s not a bad Timișoara bike, and I love the simplicity of it. On the way I met sheep, goats and cows. It was all blissfully Romanian, and a great workout for me. When I got back I played six games of online Scrabble (talk about a change of scenery), winning four. My best move was PAcKAGED for 98, down from the P. I’ve still yet to play (or be on the receiving end of) a 100-point move. Before this session I was on a five-game losing streak, which included some ghastly games, such as a 311-249 loss which would be terrible in a home game, and an encounter that I dominated but because I forgot to check how many tiles were in the bag (partly due to being low on time), I allowed my opponent to go out with a bingo and claim an 18-point win. It was good to put those experiences behind me.

Language teaching - Other sports - Scrabble

Pigman

September 28, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Tuesday morning I got an email from one of the owners in my apartment block in Wellington. She asked me to tell my tenant to move his car from the car park, so that the cherry-picker could get access to the windows for the six-monthly clean. She knew I was in Romania, so I don’t know what she was thinking. I have no direct access to my tenant anyway. But we did get into a discussion about the earthquake shit, and it certainly is shit. I’m glad to be on the other side of the world.

Later on Tuesday I saw my eleven-year-old student in Dumbrăvița. He’s a lovely boy; it’s a pleasure to teach him. We now have two-hour sessions. Perhaps because he used to be the top-ranked chess player for his age in the county, he has no concentration issues in a stint of that length. Three or four sessions ago, I gave him a crossword that I’d created: it was one of a series of puzzles I’d made (and am still making) with a mixture of picture and definition clues. They’re mostly 11×11, but I sometimes use different grid shapes and sizes to liven things up a bit. This particular puzzle had “pigeon” in it, with a picture of the bird as the clue. He didn’t know the English word so I helped him fill it in. As soon as he saw “PIG” and the final N, he shouted “Pigman!” For some reason, the idea of a half-pig-half-man creature sent him into hysterics, and he said it would be awesome to find a puzzle where “pigman” actually was the right answer. So on Tuesday I surprised him with a “pigman” crossword, with a slightly grotesque hybrid beast sourced from Google Images as the clue. He didn’t see it right away, but when he eventually clapped his eyes on 12 Down and realised what it was, he got pretty damn excited and gave me a high-five. He even glued the completed puzzle to the cover of his English folder. After a few more sheets and games, we reached the end of the lesson, at which point I asked him (as I always do) if he enjoyed it. He said, yes, and the last one, and the one before that, and all of them! It’s a great feeling as a teacher to get that kind of response.

Baseball is weird, or to be more accurate, it’s very random. Last night I finished work at 10pm and then tuned in to the Red Sox game at home to the Orioles. The Orioles have had a terrible season, winning barely a quarter of their games, and are guaranteed to finish with the worst record in the Major Leagues. Boston, on the other hand, are sure to finish with the best record, giving them home advantage throughout the play-offs. When I started watching, Boston were already leading 10-3 in the bottom of the fifth inning. Their bats continued to explode as they added another nine unanswered runs. A complete blowout in other words. And it was first against worst, so that was to be expected, right? Well, the two sides met again just a couple of hours later (it was a doubleheader caused by a rain postponement the previous night) and in that second game, the Orioles won 10-3. In baseball, that sort of reversal, even on home turf, even against the worst team in the competition, is by no means unusual. That also means that come play-off time, when teams are of a similar standard, all bets are off.

I played an extraordinary game of Scrabble last weekend, slapping down two bingos to my opponent’s ridiculous four, and I lost 521-445, the highest-scoring game I’ve ever been involved in. And talking of Scrabble:

Language teaching - Life :)

Muddling along

September 25, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve got a cold, and it’s bad enough that I’d have taken sick days in my previous life, but in my current incarnation I can sort of just muddle along unless I’m really sick. In fact, work helps matters. Yesterday I had four lessons, including one on the seventh floor of an apartment block on Strada Timiș in the Dacia area of the city, with the boy of nearly nine whose big sister I recently started with. To begin with I wasn’t optimistic – he was rolling around on the sofa in the living room, saying he didn’t want to do it, exhibiting (when I think about it) the sort of behaviour you sometimes see in autistic kids. But it turned out he was a fairly standard kid who liked basketball and pizza and Fortnite and Roblox, whatever the hell those last two are. He’s close to bilingual – Romanian and German – and sometimes he’d throw me by slipping in a few German words. The first lesson is always tough because you never know what they know, or whether they might decide they just hate you, but we only had an hour and I muddled along.

On Saturday I had my second lesson with his older sister, but it was more therapy than anything educational. She talked, at some length, about the difficult three months she recently spent in a school in Vienna. Her stories reminded me of the time I spent at that school in Temuka at a much younger age. All my reading and grammar exercises swiftly went out the window, and before I knew it our 90 minutes were up. From there I walked to Mehala market to look for a bike, and found an old green single-speed German one, probably dating from the late seventies or early eighties. It seemed in good nick. Pretty cool, I thought. I bought it for 250 lei and have already found it way more fun than my mountain bike. It’s also a good deal more practical – and faster – when I just want to get around an almost flat city. It only has a front brake and that will take a little getting used to.

On Friday I met my Tinder friend (from now on I’ll just call her X) and a café on one of the side streets off Piața Libertății. It wasn’t my kind of place – it had English signs everywhere and I usually avoid those kinds of places like the plague. I bought a flat white (only those kinds of places offer that) and when I was about to put sugar in it the barista stopped me in my tracks. You need to taste it first! I was given a piece of paper showing the origin of the beans: Cajamarca in Peru, which happens to be a place that featured in a lesson early this year and would be incredible to visit. Anyway we chatted, mostly in English this time, and she invited me to a board games session on Sunday evening at the apartment of her brother and his wife.

I was kind of looking forward to the board games night, because how scary can board games be? But the answer to that is actually quite scary when you’re playing with frequent gamers who even speak a different language to me. They did speak good English, but that was more of a hindrance than a help I think. We played Ticket to Ride, which I’d played years ago in Wellington, just twice if memory serves, and the mechanics of the game had long been forgotten. I took what to them must have seemed an eternity over my moves. “Oh, it’s my turn again. How did it come round so fast?” My strategy was far from optimal. After that we played two rounds of some head-messing Monty Python-themed game, one of which I won without even realising it. X’s brother and sister-in-law lived in a new apartment block in the south of the city, and their flat gave off a whiff of sophistication. Even modern-style board games are the domain of a certain type of person; by Romanian standards they’re expensive for a start. X’s sister-in-law had a habit of dropping English words into Romanian sentences, perhaps to sound sophisticated. I found that bloody annoying, I must say. Interestingly there were a lot of homemade alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, some of which I tried, as well as hand-knitted bits and pieces dotted around the place. Next time I go there, if there is a next time, I hope I’ll be a bit more relaxed. The experience did however make me a bit nervous about ever showing X my place.

After an incredible Indian summer, autumn is well and truly here now.

Language teaching - Life :)

Match report

September 21, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Like any other app or site whose main purpose is to connect with people, Tinder is a bit scary for me. Scary enough that I started scheduling time each day to ensure I’d actually use it. Monday: an hour of Romanian practice, then my lesson at nine, then coffee, then shopping, then Serbian study for an hour, then lunch, then an hour of Tinder before I prepared for my evening’s lessons. Only I didn’t last the whole hour because I got my first ever match which means we both liked each other, and then some chat thingy popped up on my screen. Uh, what happens now? She sent me a message, I replied, and we eventually agreed to meet at a café in the square on Tuesday evening after I’d finished work for the day.

Tuesday ended up being a pretty good day. In the morning I met up for coffee with a young couple who used to have boatloads of lessons with me, but worked over the summer. They’re about to start their final year at university. I met them at the same place I’d be meeting my Tinder match later in the day; that was a deliberate choice on my part. We had a lovely chat, speaking Romanian the whole time. I’m not sure if they’ll find the time to have any more lessons with me. After lunch I was off to Dumbrăvița for a lesson with my eleven-year-old, and when I arrived there all my lesson plans went out the window (that’s OK though; I can use them next week). My young student had a friend over to play Risk, or Risc as it is here, and they wanted to involve me. His friend was only ten, and almost entirely fluent in three languages: Romanian, French and English. I didn’t do a whole lot of teaching, and somehow got paid to play a board game with a couple of kids for two hours. They had some utterly bizarre house rules that I had an interesting time navigating. I won the first of our two games by sheer luck.

When I got home I had another lesson where I did my fortnightly fill-in-the-gaps lyrics game, this time with REM’s Losing My Religion, and then read and discussed an article on the obesity epidemic in the Western world, which I talked about last month on my blog. At eight it was time to meet my match. By five past, I wasn’t overly optimistic. She works in Corporateville, and when I told her how I make my living, her initial reaction seemed to be, what have we got here? As for her, she didn’t look quite the same as in her various selfies taken in exotic locations including Easter Island. But then everything, somehow, changed. We talked, half in English (hers is immaculate), half in Romanian, and we seemed to feel at ease with each other. When I told her that I shun social media and use a manual diary to organise my lessons, she called the hairy man opposite a hippie. I didn’t mind that one bit. We chatted for nearly two hours. We’re meeting again for coffee tomorrow morning.

Fishing - Language teaching - Life :)

Yes I understand, and no I don’t

September 16, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s a lovely evening in Timișoara. At 8pm it’s a balmy 24 degrees. Looking at the forecast, the daily highs are a string of 29s, stretching out as far as I can see. The Bega boats are finally back in business after a delay of almost two years caused my Romanian bureaucracy.

After I caught that tiny fish last month, my next session wasn’t so good. The handle fell off the reel and into the river. Luckily it settled on a ledge in the water, so I could “fish” it out fairly easily, but the screw holding it in place was gone. That same morning I saw the repulsive sight of a dead dog floating down the river. When I told Dad about the reel, he put three screws in the post for me in the hope that one of them would fit, and it did, so I’m now back in business. I’m yet to have any success though. Most times I go down to the Bega, the banks are lined with fishermen, often with maximum roddage. But occasionally it’s completely deserted and I have no idea why. It’s like there must have been a public service broadcast on Radio Timișoara, loud and clear: “There are no, repeat, NO, fish in the Bega today. Seriously, don’t even bother.” One of these occasions was last Friday. Not another living soul. A woman came up to me and asked, “Was there, or will there be, anything in the Bega?” Sorry? Maybe I misunderstood the Romanian. She then repeated her question, which I understood but didn’t understand at the same time. It seemed so cryptic. I still don’t know what she meant. Today I got a much more sensible “Did you catch anything?”

Thursday was Firemen’s Day in Romania: Ziua Pompierilor. There was a big parade of firefighters and fire engines past the cathedral and my apartment block.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, or Ziua Crucii. A crowd of thousands, many carrying candles, congregated outside the cathedral last night and gradually made their way inside to the sound of someone drumming on a wooden cross. The bells continued into the late evening (not just the usual quarter-hourly bells) and I could hear a sermon being sung at about five o’clock this morning. The feast has extended into today, with people snaking around the cathedral. I remember all this from last year, and I still don’t quite know what it’s all about.

Ziua Crucii video: click here

On Friday I had a good session with my new 17-year-old female student. This took place in Dumbrăvița, on Strada Pluto of all places. I posted some flyers on that street last week, for its name as much as anything. (I lived in a damp basement flat on a street called Pluto Place on Auckland’s North Shore in 2007-08, hence Plutoman.) After a chat, I gave her what I hope was a helpful explanation of the difference between the past simple and the present perfect, and then we studied a news article about a marathon swimmer. I was then prepared to give her little brother a lesson, but his mother said he was too tired. (I saw him, and he looked full of beans to me.) My next lessons with them are scheduled for next Saturday.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Little people

September 14, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Earlier this evening I paid my doctor the usual monthly visit to get my prescription. He commented on my new look: a beard and a load more hair in general than I used to have. He said I looked more manly. In truth I’ve always wanted to look like this, and it’s pretty bloody awesome that I now can.

Matei comments on my facial changes every time I see him. We had quite a busy lesson this afternoon. I finally beat him in the Formula One game, after four losses in a row. Tomorrow I’ve got four lessons planned, three of which are with kids, including the new sister-and-brother combination. My only lesson with an adult is on Skype. I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for teaching children when I came to Romania, and when I started getting calls from parents my initial reaction was, yeah OK, if I have to. But in general I’ve found my lessons with kids to be extremely rewarding. At times I’ve had to pinch myself: not that long ago I was staring at (or more accurately, straight through) spreadsheets relating to ghastly insurance “products”, and now my job involves playing racing-car board games with ten-year-olds. Vroom-vroom, baby.

This morning I spoke to Mum and Dad. We chewed the fat once more over the events of the women’s US Open final, which had moved well outside the sphere of just sport. My parents and I were puzzled at how many people, especially in America, sided with Serena. The only people any of us felt sorry for were Carlos Ramos, who earned only in the hundreds of dollars for the “privilege” of umpiring that match, and Naomi Osaka, whose spectacular victory was overshadowed. For that matter, Novak Djokovic’s win – his 14th grand slam, which came less easily than the final score suggests – was spoiled a bit too. And then there was that Australian cartoonist’s take on it all. Cartoons work by exaggerating the protagonists’ features. Real racism happens, and it’s abhorrent, but this cartoon isn’t an example of it.

On Monday I went back to the cheap eatery I stumbled upon three weeks ago as I was posting flyers. I noticed the name of the place was Aditex, which I found unappetising: the -tex ending invokes something manufactured in a factory, a textile perhaps. Definitely nothing that should pass between one’s lips. Realising that it was just a word and I shouldn’t be bothered by such things, I sat down. My meatball soup was absolutely fine, but then I got the rest of my meal. My fork was dirty, and I should have sent it back, but I wimped out and tried to minimise my fork-in-mouth action until I finished.

It’s warm for the time of year, with temperatures pushing 30.

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

A cluster of random thoughts

September 9, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I didn’t watch the women’s US Open final, but now wish I had, for the sheer drama alone. Serena is an incredible player but she’s also a bully, with a “Don’t you know who I am?!” attitude. She has a history of using her bullying tactics at the US Open in particular, where she knows the crowd will probably side with her (as, shamefully, they did in this match). This time she also made completely irrelevant comments about being a woman and having a daughter. I’m pleased that Naomi Osaka played great tennis and got over the line, even if Serena and an obnoxious crowd robbed her of that special moment of winning her first grand slam. Osaka even felt the need to apologise for winning. I suppose I shouldn’t feel too sorry for Osaka – she took home US$3.8 million, which is a crazy amount just for being rather good at whacking furry yellow objects over a net with a bat.

This year’s US Open has seen its fair share of upsets and retirements; the searing heat has been a major factor in the latter. The biggest shock on the men’s side was Federer’s loss to John Millman. I remember Millman from my first day at Flushing Meadows three years ago. I was queuing with my cousin and his fiancée, and Millman (who I didn’t recognise, but I saw his name tag) was at the next-door kiosk, trying to sort out something quite important for his match that was due to start in half an hour. I thought at the time he was clearly one of the have-nots of tennis. With his win over Federer he’ll make the world’s top 50, and he earns nearly half a million for reaching the quarter-finals, so he’s starting to do quite nicely from the game.

On a different day, Federer would have beaten Millman in straight sets, but on this occasion he wasn’t at his best on the big points. On the same day as this match, I watched the Red Sox beat the Braves by the totally flattering score of 8-2, a game in which they were outplayed for long periods, with the result in serious doubt until the eighth inning. After these two results in different sports, I thought about the importance of clustering and sequencing, in sport (and in life too). There are different concepts from timing, which obviously has a profound impact on results as well – a double fault or a walk can range in importance from meaningless to game-changing depending on when it occurs. Sequencing, or the order in which events happen, is also very important, as is clustering. As a rule, you’re better off if good things happen to you one after the other, but you spread your bad things out a bit. That’s very true in life too – we can often handle one issue at a time, but a pile-up of problems can send us into a tailspin. On the other side, achieving a major success (say, a deal with a large record label) relies on a series of positive events happening one after the other. Baseball analysts have tried to figure out what determines effective timing, clustering and sequencing, and the answer (in that sport at least) is very clear: luck.

Politics is one area where clustering is of paramount importance, especially in first-past-the-post systems. The clustering of Democrats in urban areas was a big (and understated) reason for Trump’s win in 2016. Clinton ran up the score in those large cities, making her vote inefficiently distributed. It also affects the other branches of government. Because their opponents are neatly clustered in areas of high density, and because they’re arseholes, the Republicans are able to gerrymander effectively, and that’s why the Dems will need a hefty popular-vote win if they want to take the House in November. Clustering isn’t always bad for political parties, however. If you’re a big party trying to form a government, it harms you, but it’s to your advantage if you’re a small party trying to get some representation in parliament. An interesting case (and a terrible advert for FPTP) was the 2015 UK election, where 3.9 million people voted UKIP but they won just a single seat because they weren’t a dominant force in any geographic area. In the same election, the SNP managed to achieve the best of both worlds, by being entirely “clustered” in Scotland but very unclustered within Scotland. Their 1.5 million votes (half of all votes in Scotland) gave them a whopping 56 of 59 Scottish seats.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. The All Blacks v Argentina game was about to start, and they pointed the camera at the haka. It sounded like a great game. Mum and Dad had just spent a few days in a chilly Moeraki.

Last week I posted about 100 flyers in letterboxes in Dumbrăvița, and I got a reply. Hopefully this week I’ll be starting with a 17-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother.