Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Life :) - New Zealand

Mum, I think you’re addicted

November 4, 2019 by 0 Comments

In the last week I’ve used Duolingo a fair bit. Italian in the morning, and brushing up my Romanian in the evening. It’s important to keep the two languages separate as much as possible, because they’re fairly similar. It would be very easy to start mixing them up. This week I happen to have earned around 1500 so-called experience points (XP), which to me are meaningless apart from in one aspect: to gauge how long I’ve spent on Duolingo, in the absence of any clock. (The creators wouldn’t want a clock. They want everyone on there as long as possible, collecting gems or chasing promotion to the next gemstone-named league. It’s a great site, but the way it hooks you in is extremely Candy Crush-esque. Or even pokie-machine-esque.) I seem to pick up about 150 points an hour, so I’ve spent ten hours or so on the site this week. That feels like a reasonable amount if you’re splitting the time between two languages. But then I saw this:

MUM?!?!?!?!

I’ve connected with my mother, who is learning French exclusively. I’ll be generous here, and assume she’s doing tasks that yield points faster than the ones I do (because the points motivate her more than me). I’ll give her 200 points an hour instead of my 150, in which case she’s spent 25 hours on the site. Sheesh. I wonder how much she’s really learning, and how much she’s just mining fool’s gold. If her goal is genuinely to learn French, there isn’t much point in putting in so much volume. Little and often works well. Plenty and often (Mum’s strategy) doesn’t get you very much further. But it sure does get you a whole heap more digital diamonds.

I’ve had some interesting lessons, as I always do. In this morning’s productive session, we discussed the words analyse and analysis, two words that my student uses in her job but finds hard to pronounce, because of the changing stress pattern. After the lesson I sent her a video clip of me saying the pair of words repeatedly. On Thursday evening I had a particularly awkward situation in my lesson with two women in their twenties. They’re both at around a 4 on my 0-to-10 scale. One of them started to get angry with the other woman when they discussed learning styles (What works for you doesn’t work for me!) and out of the blue she burst into tears. I think she’d had a stressful time at work, and I realised that (unusually) we hadn’t discussed their work day at the start of the session. Perhaps, ultimately, it was my fault. The one who cried has always seemed a really nice person, and my biggest worry is that she’ll be embarrassed about her outburst and they won’t come again. I hope that doesn’t happen.

The week before last I had one of my (sadly rare) half-English, half-Romanian sessions. I asked the teacher how I would say “My living-room window faces west” (which it does) in Romanian. She simply said that Romanians don’t say that, and instead I should just say that my room gets the sun in the afternoon. But it doesn’t always, and certainly not today it doesn’t! She told me that compass directions are used fairly infrequently, apart from sometimes to talk about parts of the country. One thing I really noticed when I moved to New Zealand was that compass directions are used all the time there, much more than in the UK (and, as I now know, considerably more than in Romania). Especially where my parents live, there’s always a nor’wester springing up, or perhaps a cold southerly about to hit. The mountains tell you precisely where west is. There’s Northland, Southland, Westland (but no Eastland). Even the two main islands are simply called North and South. I remember when I lived in Wellington and I’d sometimes go on day tramps, the trip leader might say “if you just look to the east…” and I’d be thinking, where’s east?! It’s as if all Kiwis are born with an internal compass. Quite a lot of New Zealanders sail, some of them still build their own homes, and there’s still some of that pioneering spirit.

This morning I went to the chemist to pick up two medications (an antidepressant and something for my hair) but they were out of the hair lotion. That meant I had to go to their other branch at Piața Unirii. It’s in Casa Brück, one of the most wonderful buildings I ever have the pleasure to enter. After that, and just before my lesson, I had a Skype chat with my cousin in Wellington. I also caught up with her husband and all three of their boys. The eldest is now 17. All of a sudden, he’s a man. Time is shooting by.

Politics - Writing a book

Could I write a book?

November 1, 2019 by 0 Comments

Lately I’ve been considering writing a book to help Romanians (specifically) improve their English. Three years and 90-odd students have given me a pretty clear idea of what pitfalls they face, and why. I’d divide the book up into chapters (confusing words, avoiding word-for-word translations, pronunciation, prepositions, verb tenses, and so on). There are plenty of similar books on the market here, but none of them are produced by native speakers as far as I can see, and most of them are brimming with misinformation. My Romanian is nowhere near good enough to write a book in that language, but maybe that wouldn’t matter, as long as I pitch it at people at intermediate level or above. It’s worth thinking about.

Yes, Britain will be having a general election on 12th December, the third in less than five years (the length of each parliament is supposed to be five years). The UK political system stopped being fit for purpose ages ago, long before the Brexit sham. It functions (if you can use that term) by making compromise almost a dirty word, and when dealing with something as divisive as Brexit it totally fails. I’ve watched snippets of Westminster in the last year, and with a few notable exceptions (Ken Clarke? Jess Phillips?) it’s been deeply depressing stuff from all the parties. The Tories (or at least those who remain in the party) have been the worst, though. So many complete and utter arseholes. And they now have double-figure leads in most of the polls. I honestly think any outcome would be better for Britain than a sizeable Tory majority, even the giant mess that a hung parliament would create, but that’s where we’re heading.

I put it to my dad a couple of weeks ago that all the time he lived in the ultra-safe Tory constituency of Huntingdon, he never really had a vote. What? Of course I had a vote. You did, but in name only. You physically marked an X on a piece of paper, but it didn’t matter. But I had one vote, just like everybody else. No! Some people’s votes in different parts of the country were dozens, hundreds of times more important than yours. But there was no point going on. I then mentioned (which I basically never do) that I have a maths degree and also passed a bunch of actuarial exams, so I really do get this stuff. He got a grade 9, which is the equivalent of an F, in his maths O-level. (They’ve recently changed the system once again, so that a 9 is the top grade.) Anyway, first-past-the-post is complete garbage, but maaaybe it’s garbage you can get away with if the (two!) major parties themselves are broad churches, but certainly not in the highly polarised environment we see today.

There are two recent election results that illustrate some of the problems with FPTP. In Canada, where they also have that insane system, Justin Trudeau was re-elected despite his Liberal party losing the popular vote to the Conservatives. Luckily, the Liberals would likely also have formed the government under a sensible proportional system, because they have a natural left-wing partner that got 16% of the vote (but not many seats). So it was really a case of two wrongs making a (sort of) right. Then in Wellington they had the mayoral election, which doesn’t use FPTP, but preferential voting instead. The incumbent Justin Lester was leading until the final count, when Andy Foster took the majority of the votes from the third-place candidate to win by just 62 votes, although Lester has requested a recount. Whichever way that goes, it seems totally fair.

It’s the second half of the week, and that means kids. Two of them coming up.

Family - Headaches

Pain, pain, go away

October 30, 2019 by 0 Comments

This morning I called my aunt for her 72nd birthday. She seems remarkably good these days when I talk to her, but she still has episodes of severe depression and her world has become very small. That’s sad. I wish there was some way she could escape that cycle.

Sunday was a shocker of a day for me. I’d struggled all night with medium-level sinus pain, which became more severe during my lesson in the morning. I was begging for the clock to tick round to twelve and to be alone. When my student left, the pain became unbearable. Screwdriver rammed right up my nose. Pure torture. It was a sunny day and I staggered over to the curtains to block out the light as best I could. I tried pacing around; it was too painful to either sit or stand. Then I stumbled to the sink where I was sick. It took two hours for the pain to subside. I felt shattered and feeble for the rest of the afternoon, and it took until my 8pm Skype lesson to properly enter the world of the living again. My student gave me the name of a Bucharest-based specialist he thought I should get in touch with. But then, after reading a few websites, it dawned on me: maybe these aren’t sinus headaches after all. Maybe they’re migraines. I have all the symptoms, plus the family history.

Fortunately these bouts of excruciating pain don’t occur too often for me. That isn’t the case for my father, who has suffered from crippling migraines since he was a teenager, and has had headaches on a daily basis since about the time he got out of hospital. I spoke to him last night. He said that if they continue like this, his life will effectively be over. A permanent cloud, shrouding everything. The time zone change meant I could speak to Dad while Mum was at golf, without having to stay up past midnight. I get on very well with Mum these days, but occasionally it’s nice to speak to him when she isn’t there.

I also had a quick chat to my brother, who surprised and delighted me when he said he and his wife plan to come to Timișoara next April. It would be a pleasure to have them here.

It’s looks like the UK will be having an election in December. We might see a three-figure Tory majority. What a bloody fantastic Christmas present that would be. Not.

Life :) - Photos - Tennis

Caught up (and some autumn colours)

October 21, 2019 by 0 Comments

So last week I had my usual pair of two-hour lessons with the woman who doesn’t like speaking English, and I mentioned in passing that I played tennis but struggled to find anyone to play with. She said, why not have a game with my son at the weekend? Yes, sounds good. I popped along to the nearby courts to book a session. The only time they had a court free was from 11 till 12 on Sunday (yesterday) when her son was busy, so she suggested that she take his place. Fine. All booked. Then at around 9am yesterday I got an unusual WhatsApp message in reasonable English. Who’s this? It was her husband, telling me not to arrange anything for his wife or son during the weekend in future. Well it wasn’t my idea, but I replied politely. I understand. Weekends are family time. The next thing I knew, he appeared to have blocked me from WhatsApp. His wife was oblivious to the WhatsApp stuff until this morning, when she must have got hold of his phone. She sent me a long message of apology, talking about possessive Romanian men. I want nothing to do with this. For now, the lessons with her and her son will still go ahead, and they provide me with a quarter of my income. I will tread carefully. (Money doesn’t seem to be much of an issue for them. He clearly makes lots of it, but I don’t know what he does.)

It was a beautiful morning yesterday, and we did play tennis. She had hardly played before, and most of the exercise I got was from picking up balls that went here, there and everywhere. I told her that if she wanted to improve, the best way would be to hit against the wall for an hour. She certainly won’t be hitting with me again in the near future.

Brexit. I’m now totally, officially, lost. Boris Johnson does seem to just about have the numbers for his deal, which is basically the same as Theresa May’s that was defeated three times but a smidgen more Brexity, but will that even matter? Does any of this even matter anymore? Here in Romania, the government fell the week before last, and we’ll soon be on to our fifth prime minister in the time I’ve been here.

Here are some pictures from the area around Piața Traian, and a few autumnal shots. There’s even one of (a bit of) me in a hammock, which is the closest thing to a selfie you’ll ever get on here. It’s pretty awesome when I think about it. Not so long ago, if I felt a bit stressed during a work day, I might have been able to walk around a business park for a few minutes. Now I can go an actual park and lie in a hammock.

The sun setting over the Bega
Language teaching - Life :)

Hell-oween

October 20, 2019 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I saw those two boys again. The big one made noises about wishing I could stick around beyond our allotted hour, while the little one wasn’t showing much sign of life at all by the end of the session. The “highlight” was when I mentioned Halloween. The older boy looked at me as if I’d just said the C-word (which in Romanian is the P-word). It was soon apparent that the family are devout Orthodox Christians. It’s OK mate, I’ve never done Halloween either. When I got home I had my first lesson with the wife of my very first student, veteran of 127 lessons. She was very good – I’d put her at an 8½ on my 0-to-10 scale. When I started out I didn’t know how to help people at that level, but now I realise there are so many subtleties and nuances and quirks that even advanced students don’t know about. Inevitably, perhaps, she asked me about her husband’s lessons. Why hasn’t he improved more? Is he lazy? Hmmm, I’m going to get into trouble here if I’m not careful. No, he’s not lazy, I said, but he’s quite happy just chatting, reading, listening to songs, playing games, and doing a few grammar exercises here and there. The truth (as I’ve gathered from our many conversations) is that he has a fairly stressful work and home life, and comes to my place mainly to relax. That’s his goal.

This morning I had a lesson on the seventh floor of one of the tower blocks in my next picture. I felt more like a psychiatrist than an English teacher. Here are some pictures I took from Piața Dacia just after that lesson:

I bought plums, apples and sweetcorn from this stall
Imported from the US. Some Romanian kids certainly do do Halloween.
Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Life :)

Memories of prehistory

October 14, 2019 by 0 Comments

Last week my dad got an email from daughter of my old kindergarten teacher at Hemingford Abbots, not that we used the word “kindergarten”. We didn’t say “preschool” either. It was playschool, or sometimes playgroup. It sounds so much more fun, doesn’t it? My old teacher is still alive; she’s now 87. My grandmother taught her daughter history of art (she became a teacher late in the day – in her early fifties – and the change of scenery rid her of crippling depression almost instantly). My dad forwarded the email on to me, and I replied, trying to remember what I could from her mother’s playschool sessions. The little black dog she used to bring in. My fourth birthday. I also remember a time I was stuck on the toilet, unable to go, and she told me to “make an effort”. I didn’t mention that episode in my email.

Nine cancellations in the last two weeks, not to mention the people who have given up. On the plus side, I’ve had some new people, including another pair of brothers, aged seven and nearly ten. Their mother (who could speak reasonable English) told me at the start of the lesson that she’d need to stick around and interpret everything I said, and I tried to put her off doing that. (My Romanian is good enough, I like to think, that I can get by without an interpreter.) They also have a little brother, aged just one. If I’m still here in a few years… Yesterday I had another duo – two women in their twenties. Trying to get the present simple and present continuous across to them was no simple feat. One of them seemed particularly vacant during that part of the session, glued to her phone while her so-called smart watch buzzed. I couldn’t entirely disguise my annoyance.

My mother has – surprisingly – developed what I’d almost term an addiction to Duolingo. She’s been learning French on it for several months. As addictions go, that’s a pretty good one to have, but I wonder how much she’s really learning. She seems pretty motivated by trying to gain promotion to the ruby league, or emerald league, or whatever it is. In the last two weeks I’ve been using Duolingo to learn (or re-learn) Italian, and yeah, I can see how it can draw you in.

I haven’t managed to play tennis since that time a month ago. I’ve made three court bookings with the same guy, but each time he’s pulled out because of the weather or (the last time) because he was “unexpectedly” out of the city. I think he’s simply got better things to do than spend time with me. (I’m used to that feeling.) When he pulled out last week, I hit against the wall for an hour, at one stage keeping a rally going for ten minutes.

My apartment in Wellington. They just want to sell. Now. To me, this is a total capitulation, a surrender (to go all Boris Johnson), and I can’t see how selling will benefit me while I get $24,000 in rent every year I keep hold of the place. But doing anything else feels almost politically impossible. I’m being pressured to consult a lawyer, which will cost me thousands, and I’m on the other side of the world, dammit. The thing that really rankles is that I’m being asked to urgently care about something – the sales process – that I don’t care about in the slightest. “Please progress this,” I was asked. Oh god. You’re using “progress” as a transitive verb. I wish I could disappear the whole thing.

It’s deosebit de cald – unusually warm – for this time of year. The centre of town has been packed all weekend as a result. In the forecast there’s a row of suns and temperatures in the mid-twenties, stretching out as far as it will go.

Language learning - Language teaching - Life :)

No subtitles

October 7, 2019 by 0 Comments

I’ve just watched a Romanian film, Principii de Viață, and I watched it without subtitles. This wasn’t easy due to the sheer speed they talked at. It seemed they were only saying every third word. I’ll do this again – I think it’s an extremely valuable exercise for improving my listening. As for the film, the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

Matei’s parents invited me to have dinner at their place in Dumbrăvița on Friday night. It was a good evening. We had plenty of traditional Romanian food – pork, slănină (smoked bacon fat), smântână with mămăligă, and pickled cucumbers. I also had a few shots of Romanian liquor – quite what, I wasn’t totally sure. (I’m not really a spirit drinker, and when I’m eating, I’d much rather have more liquid to wash it down.) We talked about Matei’s (expensive) new “British” school, where he has every lesson in English, except Romanian. So, after 118 sessions, he doesn’t need me anymore. After dinner we sat outside; Matei’s dad had lit a fire. I spoke English and Romanian, roughly equally. I left at about 11:40. According to the version of the timetable I had, the last bus to Timișoara left at three minutes to midnight. Matei’s parents’ friends told me there wouldn’t be any buses at that sort of time. I trusted them more than the timetable, but I thought I’d stand outside the bus stop anyway (expecting to be calling a taxi), and sure enough, on the dot of 11:57 the bus came.

At 10am on Saturday I had my back-to-back lessons with the sister and brother. As usual, the big sister just wanted to talk. I do bring actual material with me, just in case, but I know I probably won’t need it.

It’s cooling down. Autumn here is quite lovely with all the yellows and browns, the colours that remind me of when I arrived in this city three years ago tomorrow. It’s been that long.

Films - Language teaching - Life :)

Freak-outs

September 29, 2019 by 0 Comments

My work volume has dropped off a little in the last week or two, so I’ve started advertising again. I put up an online ad, mostly in Romanian but with the last line in English: “I look forward to teaching you English.” Someone replied to my ad, questioning my command of my mother tongue. He didn’t think the -ing on the end of “teaching” should have been there. I swiftly corrected him; he was making a very common mistake.

Last night I bumped into Bogdan, the guy in his early forties who lives on the second floor of my block, in apartment 10. (I live at number 13, on the third of eight floors.) For months and months I saw him hanging around outside the apartment building, and until I got talking to him I never imagined he actually lived there. We decided to go for a beer in the square, just opposite our block, and he seemed reasonably switched on. He even knew a reasonable amount of English; he said he’d done eight years of it at school. He doesn’t work, and doesn’t currently have a functioning cell phone.

Among all the big news stories that flashed by in the first half of last week, I completely neglected to mention Thomas Cook, a big travel company that went to the wall. The number of people stranded overseas was in six figures. The modern company didn’t bear much resemblance to the outfit whose memorable slogan I remember as a kid: “Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it.” However, it was still headquartered in Peterborough and it will be a huge blow to the city.

When I spoke to my dad yesterday, he reminded me of the time (or one of the times) I completely freaked out when I was small. I would have been three or four, and we’d gone to the airport to pick up my grandmother who had flown all the way from New Zealand. I guess this must have been Terminal 3 of Heathrow. Even in the eighties it was vast and chaotic, and none of that helped, but I think it was the loudspeaker announcements that did it for me. I screamed and bawled, and broke out in a hot sweat. Dad said he wasn’t angry with me, but instead he felt powerless and sad. Another episode came in a shop called Habitat in the newly-opened Grafton Centre in Cambridge. On this occasion it was the thick ceiling pipes that I couldn’t handle. They totally spooked me. There were all manner of shops I just wouldn’t go into back then. Shops with freezers were a particular problem. I really didn’t like freezers. Except the dozens that must have been in John’s Freezer Centre in Godmanchester, where I often went with Mum; somehow those ones were OK. Tesco’s in Bar Hill was never an easy one for me. It was huge for a start, there were frequent tannoy announcements, and of course lots and lots of freezers. I was about seven when I got over all of this.

Dad and I also talked about the political situation in the UK, following the incendiary session in the Commons on Wednesday. We agreed that the risks associated with Brexit have now become secondary to the risks that Britain’s democracy will be irreparably damaged. Dad said that he voted to leave in 2016 because he wanted to “shake the tree” a bit. We had a good laugh at that. He now says he’d vote to remain in a future referendum.

I recently watched the five-part Chernobyl series. Very good. Chilling, but brilliant. I imagine the cover-ups and chicanery were even worse than depicted on screen. I certainly won’t be watching the Russian-made version.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Politics

Turning it up to eleven

September 25, 2019 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I watched live coverage of the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous and damning verdict. By an 11-0 margin, they ruled that Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament for five weeks was unlawful. Yikes. I never expected that for one minute. I mean, silencing parliament for more than a month just so you get your own way should bloody well be unlawful, but the law so often makes little sense. Lady Hale wore a very striking (and symbolic?) spider brooch as she read out the decision, and she bore a slight resemblance to my grandmother at a similar age. This latest episode in the Brexit saga has brought to the fore a pair of eleven-letter words that I wouldn’t like to have to say once I’d had a few (which hardly ever happens these days): prorogation and justiciable. To be honest I’m not entirely sure how to pronounce the latter of these even though it’s 9am and I’m stone-cold sober. I think I’d go with /dʒʌˈstɪʃəbᵊl/ (jus-TI-shuh-buhl), but it’s a weird word.

Boris was in America yesterday. He met Donald Trump, and the two of them are looking more and more alike. Trump now has a pair of eleven-letter words of his own to contend with: impeachment proceedings. (OK, an impeachment inquiry.) I was hoping it would never come to this, mainly because the impeachment process, if that’s what we get, may well galvanise support for Trump. Then on Monday we had 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg giving a very powerful and emotional speech in front of the likes of Trump. So much has happened already this week and we’re less than half-way through.

On Sunday I spoke to my parents. They’ve booked their flights to Europe; they’ll be coming this way in May and will stay here for ten weeks. Can’t wait. (But it is a very long wait.) They’ll be flying direct, which I warned Dad never to do. “But we’ll have three hours in Dubai,” Mum said. Bloody great. We ended up talking, for some reason, about the Māori language. In the three years I’ve been away, it seems to have exploded. Ring up your bank now, and apparently you get a Māori (or should I say Te Reo) lesson while you’re on hold. As if the god-awful music wasn’t bad enough. My parents and aunt and uncle resent all of this, and I don’t blame them. A lady in my apartment block just forwarded me a letter she’d sent to some MPs about our situation, and at the beginning and end of the letter she’d written a sentence in Māori, complete with macrons (which represent long vowels), like the one I’ve put on the a in Māori. This woman is 0% Māori, but presumably she thinks slipping into that tongue for a few lines will help her cause when dealing with politicians. It’s a beautiful, powerful language (and the argument that it isn’t a real language because it wasn’t originally written down is absurd), but Māorification seems to be going too far, and who knows where it will stop.

It’s real Autumn here now, and I don’t mind that at all. Spring and autumn in Timișoara are lovely.

Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Moving too fast

September 15, 2019 by 0 Comments

I’ve been here a while now, and these “new” things keep coming back. As I write this, there is a large crowd outside the cathedral to celebrate the Feast of the Cross.

Feast of the Cross

Today I played tennis, for only the second time this year, in Parcul Rozelor. I was better than I thought I’d be, so I’m keen to play again soon. My opponent (not that we played a game) was of a similar standard to me, but about 30 kilos heavier, so I have a fairly good idea of what my strategy will be if we ever do start counting games and sets. For his part, he generated plenty of pace, but also had a penchant for slice and drop shots. After the game, he invited me to go for a beer in a bar by the Bega. He asked me about Brexit, among other things. That’s a hard enough subject to talk about even in my native language.

No, I didn’t see the men’s US Open final. On Monday, my fifth and final student that day asked me, how come you didn’t watch it? Well it started at midnight my time and didn’t finish until five, and that was reason enough. When you’ve got a packed day (as I had on Monday) or even a loosely packed day, you just can’t. Not when you’ve got a job that actually matters. Shame, I know. It was a real barnburner of a match.

Last week it became clear that I need to change tack when it comes to the way I teach. I was going to say I’m pushing my students too hard, but that’s not the right word at all: I rarely exert any pressure on them. More accurately, I’m getting them to move onto the next level too soon, and need to focus more on consolidation. I’m still learning myself.

It’s still pretty warm for mid-September, but according to the forecast the last embers of summer will be extinguished in the next three or four days. The lovely fruit and vegetables from the markets will soon be gone too. A summer of eating Romanian tomatoes from markets makes me wonder how I ever eat the tasteless, polished, uniformly round crap you get in the supermarket.

A few old Dacias in Piața Unirii this morning