Coronavirus - Life :) - New Zealand

Certainty is overrated

March 11, 2020 by 0 Comments

The guy who invited me to go up the mountain came for a lesson this evening. There’s currently two feet of snow up there, so things might be interesting, shall we say. I don’t think we’ll go up Țarcu this time. Perhaps we’ll just potter about in the snow, or play that inscrutable Hungarian card game. Hatvan. That means sixty.

Another 168 deaths from coronavirus in Italy today. The whole country of 60 million plus is now locked down, as if it were a war zone. In Romania, chaos might just be around the corner. A dozen new cases were reported today, taking the total to 29. I’ve heard there might be two strains of the virus, where Italy has been struck by the worse form, which we will undoubtedly get too. Kids here seem quite happy with the situation: they’ve all been given eight days off school, and that could well be extended. This morning Dad called me; he and Mum seemed almost resigned to being stuck in the Southern Hemisphere for winter.

I’m being seriously hassled now to sign the agreement to sell our apartment block in Wellington. This is now urgent. Are you having difficulties because you’re overseas? Some of the other owners are overseas, and they’ve managed, so why haven’t you? Maybe I just don’t want to sign because I think it would be utter madness for me to do so. Maybe I don’t like the idea of guaranteed shit, and would prefer the chance, however remote, of some unshit.

Coronavirus - Family - Hiking - International travel

The calm before the storm?

March 9, 2020 by 0 Comments

I FaceTimed my parents this morning. That might be the only way I’ll get to see them for the foreseeable future. On a screen. Strapping themselves into a flying tube packed with 500-odd other poor souls, for roughly a day, might be out of the question long before they’re due to take off in late May. It’s sad, but there’s a very real chance I’ll miss them for the second summer in a row.

When the first Romanian cases of coronavirus presented themselves, my Biziday app alerted me with an ominous chime. For the next handful, only a message flashed up on my screen, which I often wouldn’t see until later. Now I’m not getting messages at all, and probably won’t unless and until somebody succumbs from the virus. So far “only” 15 cases have been confirmed in Romania including five in Timișoara, the same as in the whole of New Zealand. The level of panic is (so far) very low. Very occasionally I’ll see someone sporting a mask. At the supermarket this morning all the shelves were stacked with loo roll. Scented, quilted, embossed, polka-dotted, you name it, they stocked it.

The situation in Italy seems to be something approaching mayhem. This afternoon we had wet weather and I decided to watch the Serie A match between Parma and SPAL, which was a local derby of sorts. I hardly ever watch domestic football these days, but all Serie A matches are now being played behind closed doors, and I figured it would be a bit of a novelty to watch crowdless top-level football, live from Parma which I visited in 2010. At kick-off time all I could see was a large zoomed-in football in the centre of my screen. Apparently the players were on the pitch then, but the Italian Sports Minister had just made an announcement – he wanted games called off entirely, fans or no fans. The game did go ahead in the end, 75 minutes late, and SPAL won 1-0.

Lombardy and the surrounding regions, encompassing Bologna and Parma which were a pleasure for me to visit, are now sealed off. This is (or was) Italy’s economic powerhouse. The impending lockdown was leaked and chaos ensued. It’s been an awful day there, with 133 further deaths. The Wikipedia page on the outbreak in Italy now looks absurd – the initial cases, in their ones and twos, described in great detail, but the entry for 8th March simply states that more than 100 people died in Lombardy alone.

I read a piece by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, saying that when America is facing an epidemic on this scale, having this particular man-baby at the helm is dangerous. He’s dead right. It’s a shame someone like Krugman isn’t president.

In other news, my student has invited me on another trip to Cuntu (the name is still horrible) and/or Mount Țarcu, where I went last June. He’s planning it for next weekend. It’ll be a damn sight colder than it was then, so I’ve really got to make sure I’m properly prepared. I bought some boots, a bag and some wet-weather gear from Decathlon, the go-to place for this stuff, without completely breaking the bank, but still need a warmer sleeping bag. And absolutely no tinned food this time – there’s nowhere to cook it.

I mentioned to my parents that I’d browsed tents in Decathlon and was amazed just how much tent technology has come on. This prompted Mum to show me photos – the best she could on a grainy FaceTime screen – of our camping holiday in Northern Spain in 1988. Back then you could have a cheap, simple holiday by a Spanish beach without hordes of people. The trip did have its moments, though. Half-way through our three-week stay, my parents had the bright idea to visit Sitges, a resort near Barcelona where they’d clearly had a great time in the seventies before I and my brother came on the scene. Dad drove close to 400 miles, through the night, in his Mazda. Then when we arrived, Sitges had obviously changed. The sea was soup-like. My brother didn’t like to get his face wet, and Mum sensibly stayed out of trouble too. But Dad and I went in, properly, and were sick for the next four days. We went back up north and saw out our holiday up there. We went to and from Spain by boat – 24 hours each way, to and from Santander. The return sailing was rough and my brother got seasick.

I’ll give my brother a call now and see how much he remembers. My guess is a lot – he has very good recall of his early childhood. I’ll also see how much bog roll he has.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

The latest fodder

March 1, 2020 by 0 Comments

I’d only just hit “Publish” on my last post when I got an audible red alert from the Biziday app, its highest level of notification. Coronavirus had hit Timișoara. Predictably, the affected woman had travelled from Italy. So far there’s little sign of panic here beyond the occasional face mask.

This morning’s student told me he now wants to move to the UK. It might not be the cure-all that he expects. He comes every Saturday, and at the end of today’s session he correctly pointed out that it was his fifth meeting with me this month. He’ll have to wait 28 years to have the pleasure of seeing me five times in February again. I have vague memories of a maths lesson 28 years ago today (yes, a Saturday – my school was decidedly weird) where my teacher said something about the palindromic date: 29/2/92. I have much clearer memories of 29/2/16 – flying from Timaru to Wellington after I’d seen my brother and future sister-in-law, wandering through the airport at the other end, and feeling sick because there’d be no escape from my flatmate when I got home. It shouldn’t have been anything like that horrible, but it was.

I had a busy evening yesterday: a lesson with the two boys in Dumbrăvița, then a session with the 18-year-old girl in Strada Timiș, then just enough time to have a late dinner before my Skype lesson, which finished at 10:30. With the young woman I played perhaps my favourite game, where I ask my student to bet on whether words are real or fake. “Scurvy?! There’s no way that’s a real word.” Coming up with dozens of fake but plausible words was time-consuming but fun. In the middle of the game, I thought, this isn’t a bad life really.

real or fake game
Isn’t tomfoolery wonderful?

At this time of year the streets are lined with mărțișoare, which are talismans (I want to write talismen but that can’t be right) that men give to women to mark the beginning of spring on 1st March, and all the optimism that’s supposed to go with it. Some of the handmade ones are pretty cool. This year I’ve given a mărțișor to all my female students.

mărțișoare
Street stalls selling mărțișoare
Coronavirus - Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Writing a book

Is it time to panic yet?

February 28, 2020 by 0 Comments

I might have to lose my beard, dammit. I saw my doctor this evening, and he told me all my facial hair isn’t very face-mask-friendly. Yep, it’s got to that stage here. There’s currently a very Romanian headline on Digi24 (a national news site): Watch out in churches! Don’t kiss the icons! Don’t shake hands with other churchgoers! I’d seen all kinds of scare stories about empty shelves at the supermarket, but this afternoon everything was hunky-dory. I did pick up a few extra cans though. Who knows where this will end up. Timișoara is at some risk, because it’s the closest major Romanian city to Italy, Europe’s coronavirus outpost.

At this rate my parents will be cancelling their trip to Europe for the second summer running. Dad also has his latest mini (I hope) health scare. Yesterday he had a scan, and next week they’ll be shoving a camera down his willy, as he put it. In Wellington I worked with CCTV footage of drainage pipes; this sounds like a scaled-down version of the same thing.

The owners of this flat want to sell. They haven’t put my rent up in the three-plus years I’ve been here, while rents on average in Timișoara have soared by at least a third, so I’ve had a good run. But still, bugger. I’ve enjoyed being in this central location, and finding a new place at short notice is always a hassle. It’s possible I won’t have to move out at all, because the buyers are likely to be investors. The sale price is €100,000 – that’s a lot by local standards – and when the estate agent came on Monday to take photos, I could tell she thought it was overpriced. “But there’s no balcony! And all you can see from the window are the cathedral and the park!” If I do have to move, it might be worth forking out a bit extra for somewhere with a space that I can dedicate solely to teaching. For three years I’ve been teaching in my living room.

The book. I met with my Romanian teacher on Tuesday, and outlined to her my idea in what I thought was shocking Romanian. The idea is pretty simple. There are loads of English textbooks (and the like) written by Romanians, and sadly most of them are terrible. There are also plenty of English learning materials written by native speakers living in the UK or America, and these are, on average, eight times better. But they’re not geared towards Romanians and the aspects of English that they, specifically, find difficult. This is where I come in (I hope). I’ve given well in excess of 1500 lessons in my time here, and the same difficulties and mistakes crop up time and time again, often from students who otherwise communicate at a pretty decent level. I want to present each of these big-ticket items with a how-to-do-it page and an illustration. Luckily I know a man who can do rather good illustrations, and he seems willing to help during the times when he hasn’t got a camera stuck up his dick. My Romanian teacher knows the market and has some contacts, so hopefully I’ll be able to make a go of this.

Family - Language teaching

Just doing my day job

February 19, 2020 by 0 Comments

There just isn’t a whole heap of news at the moment. Timișoara is balmy for the second half of February; the kids are disappointed we’ve had a virtually snowless winter, though I wouldn’t entirely discount an appearance of the white stuff in March.

I had my fourth lesson with the ten-year-old boy who continues to impress me. He knows the English alphabet upside down and backwards; most adults have a tough time with their G and J and E and I and W and Y but he managed just fine. His grandmother lives there, in their typically Romanian apartment, and I’m always amazed by her hair. Midway through the lesson she handed me a big bowl of frișcă, or whipped cream, topped with a kind of purée made from chestnuts. I’m not used to eating something that sweet in the middle of the day, and I only got through about half of it.

One of four lessons yesterday was with a guy who doesn’t lack confidence when it comes to speaking – for a lot of people that’s more than half the battle – but he’s still speaking Romanian with English words. I went through some exercises with the goal of getting him away from word-for-word translation, but they were rather tough for him.

This morning I had one of my rare half-and-half English and Romanian sessions at the university. In our previous session the teacher gave me a signed copy of her mother’s recently published children’s fantasy book about a dragon-like creature and a kite. The Romanian word for both of those things is the same – zmeu – hence it was a kind of play on words. It was a lovely story. I learnt that her mother is something of a celebrity in her home town of Alba Iulia. I meant to discuss my book idea with her, but we ran out of time. I did send her a message though and who knows, maybe I can start to get the ball rolling.

Dad’s sister seemed to have blocked his phone, and he thought she’d deliberately severed all lines of communication with him for good. But then on Sunday, out of the blue, she called him. She might be selfish and frustrating, but it turns out she isn’t actually an ogre.

Life :) - Politics

Other Brits exist in this place after all

February 10, 2020 by 0 Comments

In the last few days we’ve had a weird combination of icy gales of Wellington proportions, and beautiful cloudless spring-like weather. In a recent lesson we discussed the topic of travel while a plane carved a four-pronged vapour trail across the blue sky. I told my student it was probably an Emirates A380 like the one my parents hope to take when they visit Europe in May. I say hope because my father still hasn’t had the “answer” to the blood in his urine, and there’s also the small chance that the coronavirus will put the kibosh on international air travel entirely.

Yesterday I met my ex-student who lives in Austria but is back in Timișoara for two weeks. I also met her friends, an English couple of about my parents’ age who have lived in Romania since the late nineties and in Timișoara since 2001. This was my first-ever encounter with British residents of this city. My former student thinks it would be good to run English coffee evenings or something along those lines. A good idea, but wouldn’t it really fly in my apartment – there just isn’t enough space. So I’d need to hire a room somewhere and … everything would get complicated. Lack of complications is one of the best things about my job, and I’d like to keep it that way. The book idea of mine though, that’s something I still want to pursue. I had quite a long chat with the guy, and realising he could speak Romanian at an OK level but with a strong British accent – his vowels were waaay off – made me feel a bit better about my attempts at ă and î.

America. What a joke their so-called democracy is. They don’t even allow witnesses at the Trump impeachment trial (seriously?), and then at the Iowa caucuses (which are stupidly undemocratic anyway) they don’t seem to even care about counting the votes properly. Things are going backwards there – even human life expectancy is – and again nobody in authority really cares as long as their team is winning. Yesterday my dad described the potential Democratic nominees as a bunch of has-beens. Yep. Of the six candidates with a realistic chance, four are over 70 and three aren’t far off 80. Pete Buttigieg (37) is the big exception, but he might struggle to expand his base due to his lack of experience and, um, gayness (sadly; I know it’s 2020). Please, please, please, not Michael Bloomberg. If you’re going to vote for this megalithic media magnate you might as well vote for Trump.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

No more time wasters please

February 4, 2020 by 0 Comments

My brother called me during the fifth set of yesterday’s men’s final at the Australian Open. I didn’t answer. I thought before the match that Dominic Thiem had a real shot, and arguably he should have won. Djokovic had been there so many times though, and he wisely chose not to press when he went two breaks down in the third set, deciding instead to save his energy for sets four and five. Djokovic’s serve is now more of a weapon than it used to be, and he’s certainly beefed up his second serve. Throughout his career he’s continually made tweaks to his game. This notion that he’s boring and robotic and does the same thing over and over is, frankly, bollocks. He’s a genuinely nice bloke and super intelligent to boot. I don’t get people’s dislike of him. The only dark spot for him in the final was at 4-4 in the second set. Having just broken back, he was twice pulled up for taking too long between points. He dropped his serve again in that ninth game, and having lost the set, he ranted at the umpire on the way to losing six straight games. Sorry Novak, the clock had hit zero both times. You don’t have a leg to stand on. As for Thiem, he’s knocking on the door now. Hopefully he can barge through it soon.

I saw most of the men’s final, but only a single game of the women’s in between my lessons. Another first-time grand slam winner in Sofia Kenin. She lifted the trophy by winning a whole bunch of tight matches including the semi-final and final. Muguruza’s big, high-risk game paid dividends at key moments in her close semi-final with Halep, but in the final it seemed to have the opposite effect.

It was a pretty good tournament all round. And heck, it looked for a moment that it might not happen at all. The tournament started amid orange haze. But we were treated to some fine matches, my favourite being Nadal’s drama-packed four-set win over Kyrgios.

When the tennis was over, I called my brother (who has zero interest in tennis) back. He was fine. He told me about their new hens. They aren’t laying yet because all their energy is being consumed in growing feathers. We talked about our aunt who, for some reason, seems to have blocked Dad’s phone. Dad can’t imagine what he’s done “wrong”.

My brother celebrated Brexit Day on Friday night. Yes, it’s become reality. He’s wildly optimistic about Britain’s post-Brexit future. (This attitude makes as much sense as the other extreme. Right now we simply don’t know, and it’ll be many years before we do.) My immediate priority is being able to stay in Romania beyond the transition period which expires at the end of the year.

My first Syrian student (I’ve since acquired another) didn’t last long. Last week he twice cancelled lessons on the day, and third time (yesterday) he didn’t show up at all. He told me he’d overslept. For his 6pm lesson. I said if we wants to continue he’ll need to pay me for the lesson. He said no thanks. I’m glad to get shot of him.

Tennis

The business end in Melbourne

January 30, 2020 by 0 Comments

Cancellations are up this week. That’s a pain, but for whatever reason I’ve felt pretty lethargic these last few days, so in some ways the lighter workload has been welcome.

Last night I woke up during Simona Halep’s match – again – and I saw her make a quick dash to the finish line against Anett Kontaveit. She’s playing at a very high level, more aggressively than she used to, and what’s more she’s enjoying it. When she reached world number one without a grand slam to her name, she hardly revelled in that situation. But after capturing Roland Garros in 2018, followed by a surprise second slam last year, the pressure seems to have been lifted. It’s a pleasure now to see her in action. (She’ll probably get pummelled by Garbiñe Muguruza in tomorrow morning’s semi now.)

Roger Federer fended off seven match points to beat Tennys Sandgren yesterday. What a name. And what a shame, in my opinion, that Tennys wasn’t the winner. He played a great match to beat Fabio Fognini in the previous round and dominated for lengthy periods against the Swiss. As for Federer, he’s been incredible for the game over two decades, but his fawning fans who treat him as if he’s lighter than air do get to me. Last night I had something of an argument with a student who was clearly a Federer fan. He said Federer was vastly more talented than either Nadal or Djokovic (they both have to “resort” to hard work), and that “fact” diminished both Nadal and Djokovic in his eyes. He also said that Federer plays tennis as it should be played, unlike the other two. Seriously man, Djokovic has won 16 grand slams! Who are you to say that he shouldn’t play his way? And I simply don’t buy the argument that he’s robotic and one-dimensional. (There are players who I would describe in that way, but they haven’t won many grand slams.) I hope Djokovic silences the crowd tomorrow.

I didn’t see any of Dominic Thiem’s extremely tight mini-upset of Nadal in the last quarter-final. That Thiem was able to – eventually – close out the match should give him a healthy boost. He plays Alexander Zverev in the second semi-final.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Travel time taking its toll

January 28, 2020 by 0 Comments

Last week I had 33 hours of teaching – that’s on the high side, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is exceptional is all the time I spent walking or biking or bussing or tramming to lessons, and I guess that’s why I feel exhausted, a bit like during those few months in Wellington in 2016 when I had that flatmate who drove me into the ground.

Dad sent me a link to some truly wonderful photos of Naples, a city he lived in for a time as a boy, while his father was stationed there. I would like to visit one day. The photographer did well to gain access to the interior of so many homes, and their residents. I get to see the insides of people’s homes here in Timișoara, and at times it can be a fascinating experience. Today I had my second lesson with the ten-year-old boy. I could see into the next room, where a row of two-foot-long (at least) Romanian-style sausages were hanging over the back of a chair. The boy said his grandmother, who also lives there, had made them. On the way out, I saw one of the apartments on the floor below had various religious iconography pinned to the door, with some sort of obscure coded message written in chalk. This was an old apartment block. The expensive new blocks aren’t fascinating in the slightest: inside those clinically white places, you’re met with English signs saying LOVE and HOME and GOOD VIBES ONLY and other equally ghastly decor-shit. SHOOT ME NOW.

Today’s match between Nadal and Kyrgios was a treat. Good job for the spectators, who had paid an eye-popping amount to witness it. That third set, which Nadal won in more than 70 minutes, was the most gripping I’ve seen for a while. I couldn’t quite see the end – as Nadal attempted (and failed) to serve out the match, I had to set off in the rain for my lesson. I warmed to Kyrgios a bit during this match. He will have gained more fans than he’s lost during this tournament, I feel, and for the first time I thought that maybe, just maybe, he has it in him to convert his extraordinary talent into a major title or five.

I was awake just before 4am, so I turned on the TV to see Simona Halep break Elise Mertens in a captivating game to lead 6-4 5-4, and then serve out to love. I then went back to bed.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis

Supporting the underdog

January 25, 2020 by 0 Comments

Latest news from Dad. His never-ending headaches have finally ended. They won’t dog him for the rest of his life as he’d feared, and it seems the culprit was his tooth after all. Being headache-free (apart from the odd ones he always gets) has given him a new lease on life. That’s the good news. The less fantastic news is that he’s found blood in his urine and will be having tests, and who knows what they will turn up.

Old age. I often forget that Dad is five months short of seventy. Today I bumped into the elderly couple who live on the sixth floor. She had just been to the dentist. She showed me her teeth – she’s one of the several million Romanians who have none of the ones that sprouted naturally. This time they told me their ages – she’s 79, he’s 88. He told me that in the fifties and sixties, people used to stroll up and down what is now Piața Victoriei: it sounded like an Italian-style passeggiata. Now he said it’s full of gypsies and people who don’t care. The lift was out of order, so they had no choice but to painstakingly climb the stairs.

It’s been a tiring but productive week of lessons. On Tuesday I had my five-kilometre walk from the end of the tram line to Urseni to meet the 12-year-old girl. It was quite a trek, even if he road had been sealed since Google went there, apart from the last little bit. After the lesson her father took me into town (he was driving that way anyway), and in future her mother will pick me up from the last tram stop. I enjoyed the lesson – it made a refreshing change to teach a girl, after having a string of boys who play computer games endlessly and dream of being YouTubers when they grow up.

After my lessons today with the Cîrciumaru family, I was glued to live score updates from the first-to-ten fifth-set tie-break between Roger Federer and John Millman. Federer won six straight points from 8-4 down; Millman will surely be devastated. I wasn’t too happy either – I’m kind of over Fed now, and would have liked the gritty Aussie to have pulled off the upset on home turf (he did shock Federer in the US Open in 2018). I did a rough calculation in my head of the chances of a Federer comeback from 4-8 (which is a deep hole for anybody, even Federer), assuming both players are of an equal standard. The “answer” depends on how big advantage you think the server has on each point, but it’s somewhere in the region of 1 in 18. Obviously, if you drop the “equal standard” assumption and instead assume Federer has some kind of edge (probably a psychological one due to his vast experience), his chances go up, but I wouldn’t go any higher than one in a dozen.

I’ve watched bits and pieces from Melbourne. My favourite match so far has been the one between Tommy Paul and Grigor Dimitrov. Paul was up two sets but Dimitrov came storming back and served for the match in the fifth, only for Paul to break back and play an absolute blinder in yet another deciding tie-break. There have been so many.

And Serena is out, beaten by Wang Qiang 7-5 in the third set, while Coco Gauff had another massive result in beating last year’s champion Naomi Osaka in two sets.