Books - Life :) - Photos - Travel: Romania

Jimbolia and how tech is wrecking us

June 17, 2025 by 0 Comments

This time next week I’ll be meeting Mum and Dad somewhere in London, hoping that my phone works over there. You can never be 100% sure. Blame Brexit for that.

My hours are now dropping like a stone. The end of the school year has that effect when kids make up a higher proportion of my students than ever before. As always, this time of year means more trips to the market. The strawberries will be done in a few days. Stone fruit is now in abundance. Before I go away I’ll buy a few kilos of sour cherries to preserve in jars for the winter. (In Romanian, sweet and sour cherries are completely different words: cireșe and vișine, respectively.) Yesterday I met up for lunch with Dorothy at one of those basic but good Romanian places in her neck of the woods. I had quite a substantial meal: bean soup with bread, chicken schnitzel, rice, and mashed potato mixed in with spinach. The temperature had climbed to 30 by then. As always, she was unfazed by the heat while I was constantly looking around for shade.

On Sunday I went to Jimbolia (a fun name to say), a town of 10,000 people which sits close to the Serbian border. It was a typically Romanian town, mostly unmodernised, its wide main street lined with trees painted (as always here) white on the bottom. They do that, as far as I know, to stop the trunks from absorbing too much heat when the temperature quickly rises in the spring. The main street ends in the railway station, a border crossing between the EU and the wild exterior. The station was practically deserted, but to my pleasant surprise there was a toilet inside. In Romania this is a big deal. Those in Loo Zealand don’t know how good they’ve got it. (That’s just reminded me that there was a Lew Zealand in the Muppets.) Mostly I sat in the shade and read Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories by Thomas Hardy that Dad gave me. It took me a while to “dial in” to the late-Victorian English and obsession with marriage, which was the norm back then. (In Romania, it’s still kind of the norm now. I’ve got used to brushing off the “Why aren’t you married?” question.) The tales take place in towns and villages near where my brother lives, though the names are changed in the book. I’d hoped the stories would be more focused on the places themselves, akin to Wild Wales, but they’ve been worth reading all the same.

My lower workload will give me a chance to work on my other book, the one based on the bloke I played tennis with in Auckland. I hope to make some serious headway with that over the summer.

Last week I read this comment on AI:

AI is the latest con in a long line of charlatanism from the IT industry. Almost every promise made for how it would improve our lives has been a sham. The speed increase of communication has imposed insane pressures on people in the workplace. Social media has mentally damaged a whole generation. Society has become pornografied and every deranged whack job who previously would have had to stand shouting on a street corner has been given a seemingly respectable platform for their nonsensical hate filled tosh. No-one can read a map anymore – or spell – or write music – without pushing a button.

And now we have vast amounts of money being poured into a concept which is going to steal people’s jobs and just make us even more gullible and stupid. The worst part is being told that AI will solve climate change when in reality it is contributing massively to it! We don’t need a billion dollar computer to point out that we are consuming too much – we are just hoping that it will tell us how we can carry on doing it!

Think I’ll put my foot through the telly and go live up a mountain somewhere (if I can find one not swarming with bloody “influencers”).

I don’t think pornografied is really a word, but this commenter manages to be very funny and absolutely right (as I see it) at the same time. Social media has been profoundly damaging for people’s mental wellbeing. It has also catastrophically accelerated the hyperconsumption and each-man-for-himself “un-society” that started in about 1980. And as my student Matei (a big user of AI) said recently, we’ve now got AI on top of all of this, making us super dumb. (As for me, it’s instant messaging that’s the real killer. I turned off all alerts more than a year ago; it was the only way I could handle it. I couldn’t cope with being part of active WhatsApp groups.)

Here are some pictures of Jimbolia:

The railway station

I was met by goats outside the station

A compulsory charge of zero lei to use the loo doesn’t sound too bad. (It was once 2000 old lei.) But the loo had disappeared. Luckily there was one inside the station.

The main street, with the Catholic church on the left

The very centre. The statue on the left is of St Florian, who was venerated in Austro-Hungary, of which Jimbolia was a part at that time. (Jimbolia didn’t become Romanian until 1924.)

A monument marking 150 years since the 1848 revolution, also known as the Hungarian War of Independence, in which tens of thousands died. The plaque on the right uses the word “Pașoptiști”. That comes from the Romanian for forty-eight: patruzeci și opt, or patrușopt in quick speech. The suffix -ist (plural -iști) is used a lot in Romanian: IT workers are known as ITiști, for instance.

A WW2 memorial. The defaced plaque at the bottom is in German.

The Catholic church

Quite a handsome council building, I thought, even if it needs some TLC.

Family - Films - Language teaching

Getting on and a great film

June 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

Today is Mum’s 76th birthday. I’ll be down at my brother’s place for Dad’s 75th in two weeks. (Yes, my brother has managed to get a week off work so I’ll see him and his family after all. That’s great news.) I still can’t get over my parents being this old. They’re in great physical health for their age. I mean, Dad almost died 20 years ago when his aortic valve replacement surgery got complicated, then in 2019 he had bowel cancer. Mum is in excellent health too, even with her digestive problem which needs to be looked at when she gets back to New Zealand. They’ve been walking up hillsides in Romania and going for bike rides in the area around St Ives. They just seem much younger. But then I hear Mum calling the computer you have on the end of your arm a “telephone” and Dad calling a conflict that ended 80 years ago “the last war” and yeah, they’re getting on a bit. It’s a crying shame they can’t just enjoy this period of their life, being better off than about 95% of couples of their age both financially and health-wise, but after Dad gave his “resignation” speech at the pub round the corner from me, it’s clear there’s little hope of that. This affects my parents a lot more than me, but since I’m literally the only person on the planet other than Dad who sees how bad Mum can get, I sort of have a special relationship with him.

I’ve been thinking of how to “play” the time I spend with my parents in the future. My UK trip coming up should be fine. We’ll be on somewhat neutral territory. I can let Mum make most of the decisions and when we’re on a bus or a train I can keep quiet, maybe with my nose in a book. Then when we’re down at my brother’s, Mum – fake Mum – will be fawning over her grandchildren and everything will be sweetness and light. Next year will be a challenge, though. I plan to make a trip to NZ. Part of the trick will be minimising the amount of time spent in their house, which is where most of the stress and life admin lies. I hope they let me borrow their (non-electric) car. Then they might come to Romania, in which case I’ll want to simplify everything. Mum and I get on fine when we’re on our video calls, but when we see each other there’s always the potential for things to get really shitty.

Conclave. I watched it this week over two nights. What a film. Brilliant acting throughout. Thought-provoking at about a dozen separate moments. I loved Cardinal Lawrence’s (Ralph Fiennes’) sermon. There is indeed far too much evidence-free certainty and too little doubt in our world. But then the ending. Controversial and a big negative for a lot of people. Dad saw the film on the plane coming over last month, then spoilt the ending for me, not realising I hadn’t seen it. No big deal really – it was thoroughly enjoyable all the same. Then, showing his age, Dad had forgotten that he’d spoilt the ending when I told him I’d seen it. The film got a massive boost from the real conclave that took place just a few months after it was released. Some cardinals even watched the film to glean some tips before attending the real thing.

I’ve just finished my lesson with the boy who wants to be a farmer. He’s been getting 3 out of 10 for English at school. I can see why. (Normally in Romania they give you 4 just for showing up.) His lack of knowledge and interest makes an online lesson with him like wading through treacle. Towards the end, he went to the loo. He was gone for something like eight minutes, coming back with only a couple of minutes left. He lives in a village with clearly a healthy bird population.

I had a funny experience yesterday. Near where I had my lesson in Dumbrăvița (two hours with an eight-year-old girl), I stopped off at a big supermarket for a pee. Getting back on my bike, I ripped the front of my shorts, almost from top to bottom. Great. I tried to tie a knot in them to make it look less bad, but no luck. When I saw the girl’s mum before the lesson, I had my bag strategically placed in front of me. I was sat down the whole time during the lesson and the girl didn’t say anything.

That printer repair was on the verge of taking over my life before the courier came to take it off my hands yesterday. It’s become maddeningly hard to talk a real person. Let’s hope it actually gets fixed.

Good weather right now, by which I mean not too hot. I’ll go to the local produce market now, then I’ll give Mum a birthday call.

Family - Language learning - Tennis

Cuscri and tennis

June 10, 2025 by 0 Comments

Words for family relations vary wildly between languages. Sometimes there are different words for older and younger brother or sister, or maternal and paternal grandparents, and so on. Some languages have a an impressively vast array of family words compared with, say, English.

Romanian, like Italian, doesn’t distinguish between grandson/granddaughter and nephew/niece. Nepot can mean either grandson or nephew; nepoată can be either a granddaughter or a niece. That’s something I always have to point out in my lessons on families, which happen quite regularly.

On the other hand, the words for in-laws are more varied in Romanian than in English – there’s no equivalent of just sticking -in-law on the end. Here are the Romanian words:

socru – father-in-law
soacră – mother-in-law
ginere – son-in-law
noră – daughter-in-law
cumnat – brother-in-law
cumnată – sister-in-law

As you can see, there are two pairs here, but son-in-law and daughter-in-law are completely different from each other. By the way, all six words are totally different from the “-in-law-less” versions; brother (for instance) is frate, which is nothing at all like the word for brother-in-law.

Another oddity, from a native English speaker’s perspective, is that Romanian has a specific word for your son-in-law’s (or daughter-in-law’s) parents. That word is cuscri. I mention this because my parents just got a message from their cuscri inviting them to go on a Mediterranean cruise with them next year. Mum and Dad said it was the last thing they wanted to do, even assuming they come out this way again in 2026. They really wouldn’t want to go on that sort of cruise. I wouldn’t want to go on that kind of cruise. I wouldn’t want them to go on that kind of cruise. They’d hate it. When Covid hit, I hoped the cruise ship industry would be killed off for good – it does considerable harm to the environment and to people who live in places where they dock – but alas it’s come back with a vengeance. The ships are bigger than ever. If it was up to me, I’d simply ban cruise ships with more than 500 passengers, along with ambient music and ranges of paint with more than ten shades.

I thought I wouldn’t see much of yesterday’s tennis final because of my lesson. But not to worry – there was loads of it left once my lesson had finished. When I turned it back on, Alcaraz was about to break Sinner for the third set to trail just 2-1, but really the match (which lasted 5½ hours) was just getting started. The fourth set was where things got really mental. Alcaraz stood on the precipice, serving at 3-5, 0-40. He was almost gone. And Sinner certainly had his chance on at least one of the match points. Having missed his opportunity, he then dropped his serve easily and it was 5-5. After Alcaraz had Houdinied his way out of that huge hole, he dominated Sinner physically. He won the set on a tie-break and then grabbed an early break in the fifth. He started drop-shotting to good effect. Still there was another twist – Alcaraz was broken when serving for the match and Sinner came close to breaking again and avoiding the deciding tie-break. Sadly for him he failed to do that, and a few minutes later he was 7-0 down in the first-to-ten shoot-out which turned into a procession. The extremely popular Alcaraz won it 10-2.

The match had pretty much everything. Shotmaking, athleticism, determination on both sides, and sheer drama including an incredible comeback. It also made it pretty clear who the current big two in the game are; their rivalry at the very top of tennis could last another decade or more. In terms of all-time great matches, it’s got to be right up there. Maybe not quite at the level of Borg v McEnroe in 1980 or Nadal v Federer in 2008 because (1) the rivalry between the two players was less established than between those two pairs and (2) that final tie-break was a bit of a damp squib after a match of such brilliance. (Why did they have to tinker with the fifth-set rule?) I’d put it on a par with Djokovic v Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open, and that’s some pretty esteemed company.

Jannik Sinner was oh so gracious in defeat. I mean look, you were up two sets, three match points, you let them slip, you serve for the match, you get broken, suddenly all looks lost, then to top it off you come back right at the end in spectacular fashion but still fall short. How he handled the loss bodes well for the rest of his career. It’s interesting how many big comebacks in finals there have been at Roland-Garros compared to the other three grand slams. It could just be random chance, but playing on clay makes fatigue a greater factor. You can’t just rely on your serve on clay, so if you start to flag physically just a little, your opponent can really capitalise, even from two sets down. Plus, because serve is less dominant, any particular lead you may have within a set (a single break, say) is less safe.

There was some fallout from the women’s final following Aryna Sabalenka’s interview. Though it wasn’t as bad as some made out, she should have been more complimentary towards Coco Gauff who actually played pretty damn well.

After our Romanian lesson this morning, I met up with Dorothy for coffee in Piața Victoriei. I gave her half a pizza I made yesterday. It’s been cooler today, with a high of “just” 24. There has been a pleasant breeze all day. Dorothy said that she wishes it were windier in Timișoara. I feel the same.

Things have kicked off in Los Angeles. Who knows where this will lead. Possibly to civil war.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Bro no-go

June 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

This morning I played squash with Mark in Dumbrăvița. We just rallied rather than playing a game and it was good fun. Though we worked up a sweat we were in the indoor cool, which is a real bonus at the moment.

On Friday I had a chat to Mum about my trip to the UK. Mum’s idea was that she’d book a hotel in London for two nights and I’d catch a train from Luton Airport to meet her and Dad. On one of the nights we’d see a show. Great idea, I thought. The theatre is something they rarely do and I practically never do. Then we’d all go down to my brother’s in Poole for three days, taking us up to the 29th – Dad’s 75th birthday is on the 28th – before heading up to St Ives where I’d stay until 3rd July when I fly back from Stansted. Very well sussed out by Mum I thought, and I was keen to tell her that. But then Mum called me last night to say that my brother has to go to Portsmouth for work during that time, making it pretty much pointless to go down to Poole. So it looks like I’ll miss him and his family. I’ll probably book another trip to the UK in August after Mum and Dad have gone.

Before this morning’s squash session I watched a YouTube video by the wonderfully deadpan Patrick Boyle on American consumerism. He started by saying that in the last 40 years the average American has gone from buying 12 items of clothing a year to 68, an unimaginable number for me. But in the same time the average American’s expenditure on clothes in real terms has halved. People have this idea that being able to buy new jeans for ten bucks a pair is a good thing, when really if they’re that cheap something must have gone wrong. Consumer spending in the US is crazy though. I read that Americans buy 40% of all the world’s toys despite only being 4% of the world’s population. I find it sad that many Romanians see America as the holy grail – what they should aspire to.

I managed to see most of yesterday’s women’s final at Roland-Garros. Coco Gauff was mentally stronger than her opponent Aryna Sabalenka, and that was a big part of why she won a close match. Sabalenka dominated the early running and did eventually win a marathon first set in 77 minutes, but her unforced errors – a whopping 70 of them – caught up with her in the end. The men’s final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz is later today. I don’t know how much of it I’ll see because I have an online lesson scheduled.

Grand slam tennis isn’t immune from the saminess that permeates modern life. When I watched the French Open on TV in the nineties, I felt it was being played in a faraway land even though it was only a few hundred miles away. People were still smoking their Gauloises in the stands; it just looked and sounded wild compared to the lawns of Wimbledon. Now Court Philippe-Chatrier looks tame in comparison; it could be anywhere. There are also signs of dumbing down. The scoreboards now flash up “Ace” or “Balle de set”, when I’d have thought sophisticated Parisians wouldn’t need to be informed like that. That sort of thing is fine in New York, accompanied by the waft of hot dogs, but it’s out of place in Paris.

I noticed on the official Roland-Garros website something called “excitement rate”, a percentage which goes up and down during a match. Near the conclusion of yesterday’s final it reached 97% with a burning flame alongside the figure. I mentioned this to Dad who thought it was silly because it depends on who’s watching: the average Serbian will get more excited during a Djokovic match than the average Spaniard, for instance. But it clearly isn’t measuring that: it’s a measure of how crucial the upcoming point (or maybe few points) are based on the current situation in the match. At 8-8 in a deciding tie-break there’s way more riding on the next point than at 6-3, 6-2, 4-2, 40-15, and hence far more “excitement”. I still think it’s silly though for a whole raft of reasons. One, “rate” is the wrong word: it should be “index” or “level”. Two, “Get excited now!” doesn’t add anything. Three, I never saw it drop below 60-70% when it should be able to drop to practically zero; the “marketers” are never going to say their “product” is boring. Four, it’s really just a crappy way of promoting a data company, in this case InfoSys – I’ve seen these pointless promotional stats and indices in tennis for ages.

I had a funny online lesson yesterday with a boy who was keen to show me his farming simulator. He plays Roblox and Fortnite and Minecraft, but the farming simulator (which is in English) is his go-to game. He’s not the first boy I’ve taught who – refreshingly – wants to be a farmer when he grows up rather than a footballer or an online influencer. His grades in English are shocking, but this game is at least boosting his vocab in a specific area – combine harvester, enclosure, crops, slurry. It has given me ideas for future lessons.

Cat - Dreams - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

A little rascal

June 7, 2025 by 0 Comments

Today I had a free morning, giving me the chance to cycle to Sânmihaiu Român before it got too hot. But really it was already too hot. I was sweating like a pig and jumped into a cold shower when I got back. The sweet smell of tei – or lime – has now taken hold. Not helping matters was another bout of sinus pain – though not as bad as the one before, it sapped me of energy as always.

Yesterday I didn’t start till ten – unusually – but it was a busy day. It started with a two-hour lesson with a lady in her late forties in which I partly took on the role of a shrink, then I had four more one-hour sessions with kids aged 10 to 13. One of them meant trekking across the city on my bike. In between I took Kitty to the vet to get her latest jab, then got my car back after getting the air con fixed. They put freon in it and also replace a switch that had been playing up. That was an absolute necessity and it only set me back 700 lei (£120 or NZ$260). I’ve also had the battery replaced on my laptop. It’s been a good week for that kind of thing. I’m still waiting for someone to pick up my colour printer which has packed in well within its guarantee. With only a black-and-white printer, my options with kids are limited.

It was interesting talking to Mum and Dad after their trip down to Poole. They really took to their granddaughter. Their grandson on the other hand is proving to be a real live wire. Super intelligent (my brother wonders how he could possibly be so good with numbers and the alphabet) but pretty conniving with it. My brother could be a pain in the neck at that age – I can remember – but there was never any malice in him. So watch this space, I suppose. My brother has been extremely good with his son when a lot of fathers would lose their rag. They were relieved to get back to St Ives and not have to do very much for really the first time since they left New Zealand. (I’d wanted their time in Romania to be a relaxing one, but it didn’t quite pan out that way.)

When my parents were with me, Dad sometimes said “I don’t know how you do it” in relation to my work. He thought it was surprising that I have a job that has a large social element when socialising has never been easy for me. To be honest, the sheer amount of talking I have to do can be exhausting. Sometimes I’m not even talking in my own language. But the social aspect isn’t too bad – it’s hardly going to some packed trendy bar where socialising is the primary goal, I rarely have to interact with more than one or two people at a time (I’ve always been terrible in large groups), and I’m safe in the knowledge that after 60 or 90 or 120 minutes it’ll be all over. And I’m actually helping someone in the process, which is something most humans derive satisfaction from. The social side of an open-plan office is far, far harder for me, even if it involves less actual talking. So much fakeness and playing the game. And don’t get me started on Christmas parties.

It looks like Elena, the lady who lives above me, will feed Kitty during my nine-day stay in the UK. Dorothy just happens to be acquiring a kitten in the next week or two, so that wasn’t an option. I was worried that I’d be forced to find a shelter for her. As for my planned road trip to Poland, I may well end up taking Kitty with me. That thought made me think of the song Me and You and a Dog Named Boo by Lobo. It was a number-one hit in New Zealand in 1971 and they’d sometimes play it on classic hits stations. It makes life in those days seem pretty simple.

Off-the-pitch football news. Birmingham City’s already ambitious plans are going gangbusters now. They plan to build a 62,000-seater stadium in the middle of a sports quarter with transport links to the city. Potentially this could be huge. Blues are already a big club in terms of support – it’s a big city after all – but on the pitch they’ve been very much in the shadow of Aston Villa. This massive investment could turn the tables. They’ve got one trump card up their sleeves that Villa lack – having Birmingham in their name. A successful Blues team could really put the city on the map, giving it a real shot in the arm, as well as revitalising a pretty impoverished part of it. I just they hope they don’t totally down the Manchester City route; I stumbled upon one of their home matches on TV recently and I switch it off – I couldn’t handle the sheer scale of all the advertising.

Continuing the football theme, I had a dream on Tuesday night about a Championship (second-tier) club that lacked decent support or even a decent song. As a joke a supporter composed a song: “Keep the cat flying along” (whatever the hell that was supposed to mean; I think it was a mishmash of other football songs) that ended up becoming not only the club song but a major hit.

I’m currently watching the Roland-Garros semi-final between Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic, though it’s uncomfortably hot in the kitchen where the TV is. Sinner took the first set 6-4 and Djokovic leads 3-2 (on serve) in the second. There was an extraordinary point early in the second set in which both players scrambled to reach near-impossible balls. The winner will play Carlos Alcaraz in the final.

On Sunday I’m playing squash with Mark, and maybe his wife too.

Family - Life :) - Photos

Here we go again… and some trip pictures

June 2, 2025 by 0 Comments

After spending a week at my brother’s, my parents have now made their way to St Ives.

It’s officially the first day of summer, meaning infernal temperatures are just around the corner. This coming Saturday we’re forecast to nudge the mid-30s. That’s still some time away so it could be several degrees out. In either direction. The air con on my car stopped working properly during the trip with Mum and Dad. No big deal at that point, but if I don’t get it sorted (maybe it just needs a top-up of freon) my car will rapidly become unusable.

Today we hit 28 degrees, the warmest day of the year so far. It was supposed to be my first relaxing day since my parents left, but I had sinus pain – not that absolutely crippling pain but bad enough all the same – that didn’t go away until five, after which I felt washed out and weary. I did manage to get through a lot of Brave New World, though.

Yesterday was the deadline for the book “project” submission. There were so many hoops to jump through, understandable in a way, but it made the whole thing (as Dad put it) a slog. I wish I could have gone through a conventional publisher. While I was having lunch in the park in Dumbrăvița between lessons, a 77-year-old man sat on the bench next to me. Unusually, it took him a while to determine that I wasn’t Romanian. He wanted to know what the British reaction to the Romanian election was. I said I bet it passed most Brits by entirely. (Not totally accurate, come to think of it. The re-run definitely garnered more attention than usual over there.) He said he was a retired Romanian and French teacher who had published 15 books. His “publishers” sounded rather like mine: glorified printers and not much more.

I had an earlier finish than usual yesterday so I met up with Dorothy at Berăria 700 for a light dinner. The weather was perfect for sitting outside. Among other things, we talked about Dot Cotton from EastEnders and forms of address for tennis players. She talked a bit about woke stuff, a subject that energises her much more than it does me. It’s funny – a couple of weeks ago I had a lesson with the 35-year-old guy who lives in London. He wanted to know why on earth all this trans rights (and related) stuff mattered so much. How is it even news, when so few people are affected? Yeah mate, you’re preaching to the choir here. I don’t get it either. It’s like deciding on what colour to paint the spare bedroom when your house is on fire. And that goes for both sides of the argument. Mark, who’s 54, said something similar last weekend, though he drew the line at calling individual known people “they”. So do I, honestly. The kind of singular they in “Always give the customer what they want” or “What did they say when you spoke to Barclays?” is perfectly normal to me because the person is unknown. “They wrote their first novel at 24” is something I can’t bring myself to say, however, and it takes me aback when I read it. That’s not for anti-woke reasons, but because the grammar of using “they” for an individual known person is just too jarring for me.

Another thing I forgot about our trip was the Romanian film Război în Bucătărie (War in the Kitchen) which we saw on TV in Sibiu. A really weird film, and one I wouldn’t mind seeing again.

Here are some pictures from the trip, as I promised last time. I’ve also included some of the unrenovated buildings near me. Mum said that give it ten years and they’ll all look pristine. That may well be true. But if that also means getting a KFC and bubble tea cafés and overpriced trendy ambient bars with everything in bloody English, I’d rather things stay as they are. Gentrification and saminess make everything deeply dull. I’m glad I arrived in Timișoara when I did, before all of that began to set in.

Outside the Catholic church in Recaș

Porumbacu de Jos, on the way to Brașov

Codlea, just outside Brașov

The immediate vicinity of where we stayed in Brașov

I hope you agree that Brașov is beautiful

The Black Church with its rugs and pewage

More from Brașov

The museum in Brașov

A pleasant village at the start of our journey from Brașov to Râmnicu Vâlcea

Râșnov

The centre of Sibiu in the rain

The Catholic cathedral in Sibiu

Ciacova

Some of the buildings near me
Family - Life :) - Romania

Keeping my arms to myself

May 28, 2025 by 0 Comments

A lighter day today, which is just what I need. Having my parents here was quite stressful honestly, and since then I’ve loads of lessons plus all the book stuff. (I’ve now sent off the cover for the dictionary. That should be it.) Probably the most stressful thing about Mum and Dad being here (well, Mum, lets be frank) apart from the two really shitty bits, was all the washing and cleaning. In theory it should have been a plus having Mum around to help, because normally I have to do it all myself, but while she was here the chores went from being a gentle drum beat that accompanies my life to crashing cymbals constantly in my ear.

On Friday I asked Dorothy if I do have a problem with arm-waving when I get stressed or annoyed. She said yes, she remembered a time when the older woman at the publishing house gushed forth with confusing information, as is her wont, and I waved my arms furiously in frustration, something Dorothy called “concerning behaviour”. She emphasised that it happened just the once. So it’s something I’m going to watch out for and will try to curb. (Mum walking out of the pub because I waved my arms is clearly quite ludicrous, though.) One time I accidentally recorded part of a lesson and I was taken aback by how much I waved my arms and tilted my head, even when I wasn’t frustrated at all. Maybe it’s just a nervous tic. (There’s also the leg-shaking which a younger student pulled me up on.)

My most enjoyable hour and a half since my parents left (so far) has been meeting Mark in town on Sunday. We went to Berăria 700 and had two beers each and plenty of conversation. I liked the simplicity of that.

Yesterday I booked a trip to the UK. I’m taking the early flight from Timișoara to Luton on 24th June, then coming back on 3rd July a different way: I’ll fly from Stansted to Budapest in the afternoon and then catch a train to Timișoara. My sleep-free experience at Luton Airport last summer is something I hope never to repeat.

On Monday I took possession of something pretty important: my permanent residence permit, as they call it, which doesn’t run out until April 2035. That piece of plastic is made even more valuable by Romania’s presidential election result. By the way, Nicușor Dan still needs to pick a prime minister and cobble together a government. He was sworn in on Monday amid a torrential downpour. I’ve been careful not to mention the election to my students unless they do so first, or unless it’s come up before in conversation.

Some other things I didn’t mention from Mum and Dad’s stay, probably because I’d forgotten them. One was all the dogs on the roadside during the stop-start drive from Brașov to Râmnicu Vâlcea. They were mostly old, scraggy things. Until fairly recently, when there was a drastic cull, Romania had a big problem with stray dogs in cities. Another thing that comes to mind is Romanians’ priorities when it comes to accommodation. This was of some frustration to Mum. She wanted a place with an electric kettle (I agree, for us that’s a basic requirement) but instead these places on booking.com all boasted that they had slippers. “Fuck the slippers!” Mum said. Highly amusing, I must say. Last weekend I saw a YouTube video by the excellent RobWords which delved into the most loved and hated words in the English language and gave the results of a poll. “Ethereal” topped the survey of best words (it’s OK, but it wouldn’t feature in my top ten), while “phlegm” was the most hated. I get why; it doesn’t sound too bad, but it looks disgusting and describes something pretty nasty too. In the Black Church in Brașov, Mum noticed the word “pewage” repeatedly on signs next to the pews: “This pewage is not in use.” Neither of us had seen the word before. That’s got to be up there with “phlegm” if you ask me.

I’m now making a concerted effort to contact Mum more via email. Normally I email Dad, but I think the more I communicate with Mum the better the relationship between us will be. That’s my hope anyway.

Next time I’ll post some pictures from the trip.

Family - Politics - Romania - Travel: Romania

Stress test: my parents’ stay

May 26, 2025 by 0 Comments

The weather has been cooler and wetter than normal for this time of year. The pungent whiff of lime trees all over the city has therefore been delayed. If it could stay like this all through the summer I’d be most happy, but it most certainly won’t.

Nicușor Dan will be sworn in as president later today. When I spoke to Matei’s parents on Saturday, they talked of their plans to leave the country in the event of a Simion victory. Like many others with good jobs in the main cities, they weren’t joking. A win for Simion would have meant another brain drain out of Romania. On Thursday, however, I had a lesson with a 14-year-old boy who said the election results were fake because just look at how many followers Simion has on TikTok! He said he expected “chaos” in Romania now and lamented the fact that Romania couldn’t have a “real man” as president. Ugh. If he is at all typical of his generation, Romania’s long-term future is bleak.

I’ve been exhausted ever since Mum and Dad left early on Thursday morning. I’ve had some very busy days of lessons, plus on Friday I had a meeting about the books. Plural now, because the publishers have decided to wrap both books into one “project” that still needs to be approved by an organisation called the AFCN (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național) which provides funding for cultural projects like books. The older lady went through all of this in great detail while I struggled to stay awake, even though I knew it was important. I was just that tired. (Also, in the morning, Dorothy got me to deliver a table from her friend’s house to hers. The table was an inch too wide to fit in my car, so it needed to be taken apart. Her friend didn’t have enough screwdrivers and spanners – I’d have brought some if I’d known – so she had to borrow some off her neighbour who luckily was in. I could have done without all that.) After nine hours of lessons on Saturday, I spent most of yesterday getting bits and pieces together for the AFCN, including CVs for both me and my father, a “justification” for the project, excerpts and so on. I still haven’t got the title finalised for the large book.

So I set the alarm for 3:50 on Thursday morning which, as it turned out, was far earlier than I needed to. I let Mum cuddle Kitty one last time (how much she liked the cat was a revelation after all the negativity when I got her), then took Mum and Dad to the airport where they checked in, and that was that. Their flight and trip from Luton to St Ives were painless. When they got to the flat, Mum sent me a lovely email to say how much she appreciated my help in Romania and also how helpful the staff at the airport bus station were. On Friday my brother came to the flat, then on Saturday he drove Mum and Dad down to Poole. They’ve now seen their granddaughter for the first time. Mum was busy playing with her grandson in the background and everything looked very jolly.

She wasn’t quite like that with me. Just like when I visited New Zealand in 2023, she would switch from being lovely to being someone I didn’t want to be within a mile of, at the drop of a hat. With all the talk of her digestive problems, which still need to be properly looked at, her stress levels are a much bigger issue. That’s why that trip we did was badly planned on my part – all that booking accommodation and driving was just begging for her to turn shitty. I mean, I even don’t like to move that often. And she now lacks that sense of adventure that she once had.

Last Tuesday I had lessons until 7:30. We went to the beer factory afterwards – a pretty late dinner by our standards. That didn’t help. Mum wasn’t in a great mood – maybe she was nervous for the trip to the UK – and she loses interest in food if it’s not at her normal time. Unlike the other time we ate there, the tables were free of paper menus and instead had QR codes to scan. I’m not at all a fan of QR code menus, but Mum really couldn’t face the idea of ordering dinner in that way. I suggested we eat outside; maybe there’d be paper menus there. Indeed I could see some, but when I asked the waiter for one, he told us – in aggressive fashion – to scan the damn QR code. The paper menus aren’t in English, he said. Look, I can read Romanian. I then got a bit animated, I suppose. Then Mum decided she couldn’t handle me waving my arms like that and stormed out. Great. Dad and I ordered a beer each. Dad told me how hard it is to live with Mum and how he’ll often go to his studio even if he has nothing to paint, just for the peace and quiet. He said he’s resigned to living the rest of his life under constant stress; his remaining years will not be happy ones. It’s all so very sad. A man who would normally float calmly through life, almost like my favourite snooker player Mark Williams, having to live like that. And it’s sad for Mum too – as well as being my mother, she’s fundamentally a very good person who wants the best for people. To see her under so much stress when she’s one of life’s great winners, someone who has everything she could possibly want, is so upsetting. Fifteen minutes later Mum came back, still very angry. We ordered food. Mum’s mood lifted just a little – there were two people who must have been identical twins on the table opposite that looked just like someone she knew in Geraldine. We got home, I put some music on, and we went to bed.

I had no lessons on Wednesday morning, so I took Mum and Dad to Ciacova, a place south of here that I’d only previously been to on a Sunday. In midweek it was much more interesting. Ciacova was a bustling little town, complete with its huge cobbled square, old men on bikes that were almost as old, meeting up for a coffee or (even at that time of day) a beer. As my parents said, it would have made a good film set; it could have been 1950s France. And the surrounding architecture is quite something. They really enjoyed Ciacova and (earlier) Buziaș; going to those places was stress-free – they were good decisions on my part. I know now that the trick is to keep stress to an absolute minimum.

Dad isn’t immune to stress either. So much of it is caused by modern tech. Both my parents struggle with that. I do to, if I’m honest, or rather I make a concerted effort to pick and choose the tech that I can handle. The very idea of a smart watch that can receive messages makes me break out into a cold sweat, so I’ll never get one. Neither will I get one of those “hey Google” thingies that sit on your desk. Dad would also benefit from deleting the damn Daily Mail app from his tablet. So often I’d see him engrossed in it. Come on Dad, you’re better than that. It gets him worked up about LGBTQ stuff which I see as mostly an irrelevance. It’s not even the political position of the paper that bothers me (though it is firmly on the right, while I’ve always thought of Dad as being squarely in the middle); it’s the bile and hatred that it – and the people who comment on it – spit out. Reading it will make you bitter and angry.

I plan to spend nine days in the UK from 24th June – I’ll meet up with the whole family over there – though I haven’t yet decided what to do with Kitty. Later in the summer I’m planning to visit Poland. Stay in the same place for five nights. Don’t move. Life is easier that way.

I’ve got more to say, but this has already been a long one. I’ll put up some photos next time.

Driving - Family - Travel: Romania

Tough trip with Mum and Dad — Part 2 of 2

May 22, 2025 by 0 Comments

So we were walking up the hill to our apartment in Brașov when Mum decided to spout some bollocks about Jacinda Ardern. Seriously, why New Zealand politics here and now? I told her what I thought, which I probably shouldn’t have done considering she was already in a crappy mood. That evening was so terrible I don’t want to write about it, though I will say that Mum talked about wanting to die. It was similar to the time I fell out with her in 2016 just before coming to Romania, although this time Dad was also involved and she got really shitty with him too. In fact she accused us of ganging up on her. It was made worse by having to book our next place to stay – she insisted on doing that, even though she was in no fit state to do so. It took her two angst-filled hours. She booked a night in Râmnicu Vâlcea which sits on the Olt River.

The trip to Râmnicu Vâlcea started off great with all the sleepy villages and picturesque countryside, complete with hay stooks and storks up lamp-posts. We stopped in the well-kept, bustling town of Râșnov, not too far from Brașov, whose focal point is a 13th-century fortress. But as we traversed the hills, we ran into a massive roading project which required incredible manpower and considerable expense. Mum was extremely anxious the whole time, and that didn’t make driving any easier. We were constantly stuck at red lights as traffic was reduced to one lane. It was also pretty warm and I was having trouble with the air con. At one point I was at the head of the queue and the traffic light was out, so I just bowled on as you would, only to meet head-on traffic which I was lucky to be able to swerve clear of. Then near our destination there was a maniacal driver that could have wiped out several cars with his overtaking manoeuvre. Nothing unusual for Romania, but it frightened the bajeezus out of Mum.

Finding our apartment at Râmnicu Vâlcea was stressful in itself. These privately owned places just are stress-inducing. We stayed there the night without even seeing the town or the river, then hung around for a maddeningly late breakfast (9:20) that was delivered in a car.

Then, off to Sibiu. Not an especially long drive, but a wet one. The temperature had plummeted. I found what seemed to be the right address but it was way out of town. We got there in the end; the owner guided us through the narrow archway into the courtyard that housed our apartment which was the best of the three we stayed in by a mile. Mum had an afternoon nap, which did wonders for her. She was fine after that and for the next three days, after which it all kicked off once more. We ventured into the city which was close at hand. We seemed to spend a lot of time in shoe shops before looking around the Catholic church. We’d all been to Sibiu before and the familiarity was nice, even if it was still raining. I didn’t feel any of the wonder and excitement at seeing Sibiu that I did in 2016, though. Looking back, that was something quite special. Magical, even. We had a simple but decent meal, and after a good sleep we were on the road again, back to Timișoara. (We’d planned to wander around Sibiu in the morning, but it was still wet and horrible.) The rain made the first half of the drive tricky, but it then brightened up. When we got back, I went over to Dorothy’s to pick up Kitty. She’d been well looked after.

If Mum and Dad come back this way again, there’s no way I’ll do a trip like that with them. I wanted to show them a bit of the country, but that kind of travelling is far too much, for Mum especially. Four nights in Sibiu or maybe Cluj, staying in the same place the whole time, would be fine. Maybe. With Mum, there’s no guarantee that anything will be fine.

Family - Politics - Romania - Tennis

Dan the man (what a relief)

May 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

Frankly I’m shocked. Romanians used their collective brainpower to not elect George Simion, a thug, a bully, an ex-football hooligan, an isolationist (which you can’t sensibly be in Romania), a Trump fan and a Russian sympathiser. Instead they gave a five-year presidential term to Nicușor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, who is pro-Europe and pro-brain. Dan got 53.6%. At the beginning the result was in doubt. At 9pm a pair of exit polls showed Dan in the 54-55% range, but the diaspora (who made up about 14% of the overall vote and for some bizarre reason favoured Simion) weren’t included in those estimates. The polls only had to be off by three points or so and Simion could have won. Both Dan and Simion claimed victory initially, but Dan and his supporters were clearly in a chirpier mood while Simion was dripping with aggression – there was a man in a red MAGA hat alongside him which told you all you needed to know. (Simion had called his opponent “autistic” and had refused to debate with him.) The results came through impressively quickly and by 10:30 there was no realistic path to victory for Simion. With the diaspora factored in, the exit polls were pretty much bang on. (By the way, of the 301 New Zealand-based Romanians who voted, only 37 cast their votes for Simion.)

It was interesting watching the coverage with Mum and Dad. I was able to translate the speeches and commentary. The election is hugely consequential for Romania and for Europe, even if it’s had limited press around the world. It really looked like Romania would be the latest domino to fall. After all, Simion won the first round by a huge margin; Dan only just made it into the final round. Yesterday I was encouraged by high turnout in obvious Dan-friendly areas like Cluj and lower numbers where Simion would be strongest – turnout figures were reported throughout the day – but didn’t dare to believe. I’d been there before with Brexit, Trump and heaven knows what else. But it was clear that there was a heavy mobilisation of people in the second round against Simion. Two million more people turned out compared to the first round – turnout was almost 65% which in Romania is very high. Dan will now set about forming a government made up of pro-European parties.

In some ways I get the appeal of someone like Simion. Capitalism and globalisation are no longer working. Societies are breaking down. The invasion of tech is becoming more sinister and taking away people’s jobs. The environment is deteriorating as I type. Something needs to change. But certainly not in the simplistic, belligerent way Simion wanted. For the moment we’ve dodged a bullet. I should be able to live and work in Romania in peace, to see more of the country, to at least try and improve my command of the language. I still have a future here, and that’s a blessed relief.

Mum and Dad have gone for a walk into town. That’s a blessed relief too after Mum’s endless cleaning and tidying and rearranging. Earlier this morning Dad helped me move a disintegrating chaise longue into the car; I then took it to the tip. That was a good job done.

Yesterday I took Mum and Dad to Scârț where we met Dorothy. After our coffee we looked at all the weird and wonderful Ceaușescu-era artifacts downstairs. I was on edge all day yesterday; mostly I was dreading the results of the election. When we got back I had a two-hour maths lesson. After that we watched the men’s tennis final from Rome (on clay courts next to the Tiber River) between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. I hadn’t thought of watching tennis for some time, but Mum still follows it. Sinner had two set points in a long opening set, but Alcaraz won it on a tie-break before racing through the second 6-1. Dad was surprised they didn’t play best of five sets. They once did play five sets in these big finals; Rome had two absolute classics in 2005 and 2006.