Books - Films

Just a normal day

April 23, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Friday was my 38th birthday, but in my head I’ve been 38 since the start of the year, maybe because it’s 2018, hence 20+18. That handy little rule will work, of course, until 2099. My “big” day was an entirely normal work day.

Last week was a busy one – as usual, I finished work every weekday (including my birthday) at 9:30 pm. One of the students I saw on Wednesday, and who started with me last June, texted me to say she’ll no longer be coming. She said it was for “personal reasons”, but I’m guessing it’s because I told her (finally) on Wednesday to stop interrupting me, even if she didn’t expressly say that was the reason. To be honest I’m fine with that.

I haven’t joined a tennis club yet (I’m still unsure of how to do so) and at the end of last week I sometimes stayed in bed beyond seven, but I didn’t do too badly with my goals. I’m certainly eating less.

After this morning’s lesson (with a guy who, as it happens, is one day younger than me) I had a Skype conversation with the bloke I carpooled with in Wellington. He seemed pretty good.

I’ve just finished Prisoners of Geography, a book about how geopolitics between nations is shaped and constrained by the geography of the countries involved. It’s not as dry as it sounds. I’m just about to see Red Sparrow at the cinema in Iulius Mall.

It’s warm for the time of year. Today it’s been 26 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Life :) - The UK

UK trip – Part 2 (and some goals)

April 17, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

As much as I’m enjoying the warm weather, my flat is approaching sauna territory, so I’m currently shirtless.

On Thursday I made my monthly trip to the out-of-hours doctor and the next day I picked up my drugs from the pharmacy, including (of course) the antidepressants. Going to the pharmacy here is always fun, because you get to see the tremendous array of over-the-counter medicines available. You can get the wonderfully-named Spazz, which comes in a yellow and black box, or better still, Codamin. Who knows what Codamin does, but judging by the box alone, I know I want some.

My life isn’t exactly terrible right now, but my time in the UK made me realise it could still be better. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Use the internet less. Way less. Of course sometimes I really do need it – it’s kind of important for my job – but not having it in the UK made me realise what a time-waster it can be. (My internet is currently down for some unknown reason, so I’m tapping this out in Word.)

2. Get up at seven, at the latest, every weekday (sometimes I have lessons which force me to get up earlier than that).

3. Lose some weight. Last month I stepped on a set of scales for the first time since I moved here. I pretty much dismissed the reading out of hand. I mean, the first digit was an eight! That couldn’t be right. Obviously. But then I tried to get into two pairs of trousers I’d left at my parents’ flat. I wriggled my way into one of them, just, but I had no chance with the other. Mainly I need to eat smaller lunches, as much as I love the salami and cheese and eggs I’ve become accustomed to, and far less bread in general.

4. Wear (and in some cases buy) clothes that I want to wear. Not what I think I should wear. Shit, I’m my own boss now. I’m the only person doing what I’m doing in this whole city. I can do what I like (and if I do, I’ll feel better for it).

5. Join a tennis club. For social reasons. Outside work, I’m not meeting enough people.

I was going to write about the rest of my UK trip, but not a lot happened. I did a fair bit of reading (by my standards), met up with my friends who came to Romania last autumn, bought a suit in Marks & Spencer’s in Cambridge for my brother’s wedding, watched Masters golf and snippets of the Commonwealth Games on TV (watching sport is a bit of a rarity for me these days), and got wet. Other than the day I spent in London, the weather ranged from iffy to atrocious. I found a new appreciation for St Ives – if you ignore the northern two-thirds of it where most of the people live, it’s very pleasant and at times bustling town that I was blasé about when I lived there. On my last day I got my brother’s old racing bike pumped up and took it for a pleasant ride around Houghton and the Hemingfords. It was locked away in a shed with a yellow “Danger of Death” sign on the door. He assured me it was safe and the sign was a deterrent only, but I admit I did get a second opinion from somebody else who lived in the complex.

Flying back from Luton was horrible. Flying from major airports is such a rigmarole now, and there are simply too many people in too little space for too long. This time we faced a 90-minute delay because our plane was late arriving from Tel Aviv. Probably 95% of the passengers were Romanian and when I got chatting with a family in their native language, I thought, you know what, I’m not doing too badly here. So that was something. But it was a low-stakes situation, and I need more of them. The in-the-air bit was fine, and as for arriving to the sounds and smells of Timișoara, well that bit was bloody fantastic. Even if it was after two o’clock in the morning. This place felt like home.

International travel - The UK

UK trip – Part 1

April 13, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m back in Timișoara after a few days in the UK, and I’m happy to be here. The city is green all of a sudden, and temperatures have rocketed into the mid-20s.

Just before I left for the UK I made a trip to the Easter market. I bought some colourful wooden eggs and hand-painted fridge magnets showing the name of my home town, for my aunt’s benefit in particular. I also bought a plate of hot mămăligă with sausages and cheese. I asked for 300 grams but got (and paid for) a lot more, and had nothing but my bare hands to eat it with. With my bus to the airport imminent, this was a challenge.

My experience at Timișoara airport was quite stressful. I hadn’t printed my boarding pass, despite doing the online check-in business, because I couldn’t figure out how. The only way I could avoid a €42 charge was to bring up the boarding pass on my phone somehow. I got there in the end, after farting around with the WizzAir app. I thought I’d been careful to ensure I had no liquids over 100 ml, but that damn bottle of pumpkin seed oil, five times the limit, totally slipped my mind. When I told them it was oil they dropped it into a hole which I thought would lead to oblivion, but in fact it was some kind of scanner. My precious oil was given the all-clear. (At the UK airport I’m sure it would have gone straight in the bin.)

After an uneventful three-hour flight, I touched down in wet, miserable Luton. My plan had been to take a taxi the few miles to Hitchin and then catch a train to Cambridge. Getting a taxi wasn’t as simple as hopping in: I had to enter a black and yellow cabin or shed, and order from there. “Could you tell me the postcode?” I hadn’t a clue. They looked it up on their system. “That’ll be thirty-three pounds and…” What? They said the traffic was so bad that my ride would take an estimated 51 minutes. I could just about have walked it in that time. Instead I bought a National Express bus ticket from an extremely helpful woman, after attempting to buy one from an overly fussy machine that wouldn’t take my £20 notes because they weren’t smooth enough.

I arrived at my parents’ flat in St Ives just before ten in the evening and went almost straight to bed because I’d be meeting my university friend in London in a matter of hours. The next morning I got amazing customer service once more, this time from the bloke at the ticket desk at Cambridge railway station. (After 18 months in Romania, all British customer service suddenly seems bloody awesome.) By not catching the next available train I saved £16. My friend and I met at the British Museum, where we spent some time chatting while browsing the Chinese section and the exhibition of coins and medals. The British Museum is a remarkable trove and it costs absolutely nothing to visit. From the museum we meandered over to a nearby pub, where I found out my friend had been vegetarian for eight years. I had my first fish and chips since 2016 and it was wonderful. From there we made our way to Regent’s Park via a board game shop. He seemed impressed that I knew the difference between Ameritrash and Euro games. We chatted some more in Regent’s Park, grabbed something to eat (a Thai green curry in my case) and then it was time to go home. We were extremely lucky with the weather, but my “run” of blue skies was to end after just one day.

Life :)

Collapse

April 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I paid my rent and expenses (a mixture of euros and lei; yes it’s crazy) at my landlady’s work, near the Timișoreana beer factory. My charge for gas and electricity was higher than usual even though my power usage was completely normal. I paid up anyway. My landlady burst into tears as she has on about the last six occasions I’ve visited her. It seems to be something to do with her husband, who she described yesterday as a vegetable. On leaving her office, I saw a man of about sixty collapse in the street. I tried helping him to his feet, and soon got some assistance. I could smell the alcohol on him. A lady from a nearby office brought out a chair. I called the ambulance and handed my phone to another woman. While we waited for the ambulance (it took about five minutes to arrive) the man was sick on the ground, and the rich plummy aroma of palincă filled the air. The paramedics found the situation mildly amusing; they’d clearly seen it all before.

My Romanian seems to have stagnated. On the odd occasions I get to chat in a relaxed situation in Romanian, I manage fine, but those occasions are very odd indeed. Weekly, perhaps even fortnightly. And that’s the problem. I could really do with some formal lessons too, but they’re hard to come by.

Tomorrow I’m off to the UK. It’ll be my first taste of Wizz Air. I expect to arrive in St Ives around 9pm. I’ll have an early start the next morning as I’ll be meeting my university friend in London. We’ll probably meet outside the British Museum, but after that we have no real plans.

Language teaching - Life :)

On my bike

April 2, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I gave my bike its first proper run today, and yes, it does work! I rode to the end of the Timișoara cycle track, which morphed into the 37 km Timișoara-to-Serbia route that was opened three years ago. It was lovely cycling along the Bega, and I felt great afterwards, so biking is something I’ll want to do a lot more of. This time I turned back just two kilometres up the Serbia track, but next time who knows?

On Monday I had a session with Timea, not at home but at Scârț Loc Lejer, a hippie hangout (yes, we have them here) that I’d read about in 2015 but had never dared go to before. Its walls are covered in all kinds of Communist-era memorabilia. When the weather is nice you can sit outside on a bench or in a hammock. The guy who runs the place has his fingers in two other pies: a theatre company called Auăleu which tours the country, and the Museum of Communism. So hopefully I’ll go back there.

Tuesday’s lesson with Timea’s anagram-mate Matei was hardly my finest hour (or two) as a teacher. He said he was going on holiday in Dublin with his parents, on the same day that I go to the UK. I asked him what he’d be doing and seeing there. He had no idea. I had my laptop with me, so I played him a Youtube video of the top ten Dublin attractions, or tried to. “This video is boring me! Turn it off!” You ungrateful little shit, I said. I immediately regretted that, of course, even if it was accurate. It’s not exactly becoming of a teacher, is it? Matei is a nice kid really, and quite sensitive. The problem is that his parents are wealthy by Romanian standards, and he’s an only child, so he gets everything handed to him on a plate. That includes extra English and German lessons (and French too, perhaps) that he might not actually want. This was my 63rd lesson with him.

Earlier on Tuesday I had my hair cut. A lot. Er…just the back and sides…but before I knew where I was, zzzzz, and it was too late. When we spoke on FaceTime, Mum said I looked more Romanian. Mum and Dad were about to head to Dunedin to see Ed Sheeran. It’s not their thing at all but there were some spare tickets going.

I spoke to my aunt this morning. She seemed pretty lucid (she doesn’t always). She said I should create a blog about Timișoara, or as she calls it, Tiramisu. I don’t think she knows about this one.

Three games of Scrabble this weekend, and three wins. My rating has nudged over 1200 for the first time. But if I’m serious about improving further, I’ll have to actually learn words, something I’m not keen on doing.

Some teaching stats: I had 371 hours of lessons in the first quarter of 2018, with a cancellation rate of 16%.

 

Films - Language teaching - Life :)

New set of wheels (only two, so don’t get too excited)

March 26, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today I bought a second-hand mountain bike from Mehala, the market in the west of the city. It cost me 200 lei. The bike is made by Professional, a UK company. Its previous owner’s name, Allen (first name or surname, I can’t tell) is scrawled all over it, but you only notice that if you’re up close. I rode it home, so at least it works, but there are still bits and pieces I could do with getting. A good lock, for one. The best thing is that if the bike falls apart on me, 200 lei isn’t the end of the world.

Last week was a pretty good one. Articles on Stephen Hawking, games of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, a piece on the oldest man ever to ride a rollercoaster, some construction-based vocabulary, my Space Race game, practice IELTS speaking tests, Simon Says, and Canadian driving theory test questions all made at least one appearance. The difference between last week and the sense of complete barrenness I use to feel every week, year in, year out, is almost indescribable. Of course I felt knackered by the end of it, as always. At one stage I had 15 lessons in just two and a half days, and I finished at 9:30pm every day from Monday to Friday.

Our clocks went forward last night. Yes, we’re now on summer time. After the unseasonably cold weather we’ve had over the last week to ten days, with snow blanketing the city, “summer time” sounds like a bad joke. The EU stipulates that all countries must change their clocks at the same time. In the UK, Ireland and Portugal, this means that 1am becomes 2am; for central Europe 2am becomes 3am; and for those of us out east, 3am becomes 4am. I happened to be awake for the switchover, and I lay in bed wondering just what the cathedral clock would do. Would it strike three or four? Surprisingly it did both, and even more weirdly it did the four first, then the three. I looked at the clock which clearly said 4:00, so who knows what those bells were playing at.

The change of clock did bring with it a change of weather and a palpable change of mood in the city today. Hopefully winter is finally over. Unfortunately, unlike last year, it looks like being a bad year for fruit.

Last night I watched Metrobranding, an interesting documentary on Romania’s manufacturing industry. Factories that employed thousands in Communist times have since mostly fallen into disuse. The documentary was in five parts, covering sewing machines, bicycles, tennis shoes, mattresses and light bulbs.

 

Life :)

Snake oil

March 20, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago one of my students texted me to ask if I’d be interested in trying some pumpkin seed oil. I was in the middle of the lesson at the time and replied with a very quick yes, without even noticing that she’d mentioned the price of the stuff, and promptly forgot all about it. Last Monday she came with two half-litre bottles of the oil, which was only marginally cheaper by volume than printer ink. I paid up, and was actually glad I did. (If I’d seen the price I almost certainly would have refused, and would have missed out on trying something new.) I’ll give my friends in St Ives a bottle when I go over there in two weeks. Talking of expensive food items, I saw salak (a.k.a. “snake fruit”) on sale at Carrefour yesterday, at something like 70 lei per kilo. Plenty of people were picking it up, smelling it, stroking it, but not buying it.

This morning I saw a small brown dog, probably a mixed-breed stray dog (or vagabond dog as they say here) using the pedestrian crossing during rush-hour. It was fascinating to watch in a way, as it strode across into the middle of the road, scurried back, and then (with no urgency whatsoever) ambled to the other side. When my friends came over in the autumn, the roadsides in places were strewn with dead dogs.

I took a 180-point beating in Scrabble yesterday, my worst on ISC to date (I’ve still played less than 100 games). I performed a post-mortem on my thrashing in Quackle, and it turns out I didn’t play that badly. I did miss one bingo I should have spotted. I’ve only just started attempting to learn bingos. Up until now my focus has been on the short words.

It’s the second half of March. And it’s snowing.

Books - Language teaching - Life :)

The snap is back

March 19, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Thursday evening a miracle occurred. The books that my parents bought me for Christmas actually arrived. Who was to blame for the ridiculous delay we don’t know, but they’d been to Timișoara at least twice prior to last week, before making a bizarre detour to Réunion, perhaps because it has the same initial letter and the same length as Romania. I’ve just made a start on Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. The best title of the books I received is clearly Fucking Apostrophes.

Only 29 hours of teaching last week. Perfect, really. I haven’t done much this weekend and I don’t feel particularly guilty about that. Yesterday I had my only lesson of the weekend – the best moment was when I showed my student the synonyms for “happy” in an online thesaurus. What’s gay doing there?!

Today I had a look at second-hand bikes at Aurora, one of the weekend markets, but they only had a small selection. I’ll have a look at Mehala, another market (supposedly famous for being where stolen bikes end up) next weekend, if I get the chance. I really need the exercise.

Stephen Hawking’s passing is sad, even if he lived half a century longer than his prognosis gave him. He was something of a local hero for me.

And it’s cold and drab again. Not a ray of sun in the forecast for the next five days.

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Romania

Drained (and our cold snap)

March 11, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I need a break. A day off. Even a week off. For the first time I’m really feeling it in my body.

It’s time I stopped saying yes to everything and started blocking out days in my calendar. My last day off was 13th January, eight weekends ago. There’s a certain irony that this week I was missing the hours and days I spent last spring and autumn roaming the streets of this beautiful city, putting thousands of adverts in people’s letterboxes. The weather is far too nice now to be stuck inside all the time, or to venture outside only when I have a lesson to get to. It really hit me on Friday when someone rang me up asking for lessons. Of course I said yes, and my new student came over yesterday morning. We had a productive session, but it meant I no longer had a block of free time in my Saturday. In the afternoon I had back-to-back lessons in Dumbrăvița with the brother and sister who are both hard to teach for very different reasons. Their mother provided me with food – celeriac soup, chicken and rice, and even though it was delicious, I’d earlier grabbed a pleșcavița from one of the kiosks in Piața 700, so I felt quite bloated after that. I had another lesson in the evening – this time on Skype – and I muddled through despite my inadequate preparation.

I still love my job and wouldn’t go back to some god-awful insurance company for all the tea in China, but I’ve got to remember that I’m the boss here (that’s kind of the point!) and the extra money I make by saying yes all the time isn’t worth it. At the end of the week I have a healthy brick of lei in my hand, but in pound or dollar terms it might as well be Monopoly money, and at the moment I’m not even getting the chance to spend it.

Here are a few pictures of Timișoara during our late-winter blast of cold weather:

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Romania

Don’t talk about the weather

March 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ll soon be having a lesson with my Italian student who’s taking the IELTS exam in three weeks. His country went to the polls at the weekend. I watched John Oliver’s “explanation” of Italy’s political environment on YouTube because he was likely to make as much sense as anyone else. Like many young Italians, my 25-year-old student is a supporter of the Five Star Movement. It was a good result for them. I’m sure he’ll want to talk about the election in the lesson.

Two cancellations on Saturday meant I could go to Piața Badea Cârțan, my favourite market, in the morning. I was thinking, if I can’t do something as simple as this, it almost defeats the purpose of being here. I didn’t get very much: a few filled peppers, various hunks of rather chewy meat, and a sausage. Just one big sausage, as is the norm here.

Last night I spoke to my brother. He looked tired. Washed out. He’s currently in the middle of some kind of instructors’ course which, as he explained in no uncertain terms, he doesn’t see the point of. I imagine it reminded him of school, which for the most part he didn’t see the point of either.

On that note, my lesson with the near-ten-year-old boy on Saturday afternoon didn’t exactly get off to a rip-roaring start. I began by talking about the snow. He said to me in Romanian that “if we’re just going to talk about snow, I’ll die of boredom.” Right. Where do we go from here? I asked him if he wanted me to leave. He didn’t say anything. I then brought out my emergency pack of cards, and we played Last Card. He probably learnt a fair bit in those seven games: jack, queen, king, ace, the names of the suits, “pick up”, “put down”, and so on. He beat me 5-2 and mercifully the lesson was over.

That replacement watch strap I bought in January broke after just 41 days. I couldn’t find my receipt anywhere, quite possibly because I never actually got one (this is Romania), but thankfully they gave me my money back. Hopefully I can get one in Cambridge.

Three games of Scrabble at the weekend and three wins, although I failed to break 400 in any game. I’m sure my play was very sub-optimal.

It’s warming up a bit now.