Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports

God it can be hard sometimes

April 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

My brother and I got an email from our aunt to say that Mum is indeed better. She also said that their deadline sale didn’t go as hoped – they got only one offer which much less than what she wanted. She’s in a tricky spot – they could really do with moving before my uncle goes downhill much further.

I’d hoped that Mum could have got the flight from Timișoara to Luton booked today, but it got complicated with all the baggage allowances and so forth, so I may end up booking it myself. I spoke to my brother last night; we talked about how technologically unsavvy both our parents are. (I’m not even that great myself, but I can at least do the basics.)

I had a surprise Good Friday lesson this morning. That one with the twins went well, but I had some tricky ones earlier in the week. Easter can make discussion awkward because of the religious aspect. People can’t talk about their Easter meal or egg painting or trips to see their family without also bringing religion into it. I often get asked whether I’m Catholic or Orthodox, as if only those two options exist. I sometimes say I’m a Catholic to make my life easier. (I did go to a Catholic church until I was 15 or so.) One boy mentioned the word atheist this week (or rather the Romanian equivalent ateu), practically shuddering with disgust as he said it. The more I think about it, the more I like Mum’s attitude to church – she keeps up the family tradition by going through the motions of attending the weekly service, then chats to her friends over coffee afterwards. I don’t think she really believes. Church certainly doesn’t get in the way of any other aspect of her life – whether to take a vaccine, for instance. Right on cue, Dorothy has just messaged me, inviting me to the Easter service at her church on Sunday.

Watching the last two Crucible qualifiers on Wednesday bordered on being painful. Both of them reached a deciding 19th frame at the same time and were shown on a split screen. Both final frames were extremely cagey, such were the stakes. There were three re-racks between the two of them. Seeing Matthew Stevens miss out was a real shame – he reached the world final in 2000 (back in what I think of as my era) and again a few years later. Having built a good lead in the decider, he potted a superb red but then instead of playing safe and gaining a tactical upper hand, he went all-out for an overly ambitious black. He missed, and Wu Yize, one of ten Chinese to make the main tournament, took advantage. The other decider was between Matthew Selt (who has serious issues, it seems) and Jimmy Robertson, who was a perfectly nice bloke as far as I could see. Robertson, who had been way ahead at 8-3, had a difficult pink to make it through. It didn’t find the pocket, and Selt (bugger him) potted pink and black to qualify. The phalanx of Chinese qualifiers made the post-match interviews interesting. Some had a smattering of English, but others didn’t speak a word and needed an interpreter.

This morning I saw the result of last night’s Europa League second-leg match between Manchester United and Olympique Lyonnais. They’d drawn 2-2 in the first leg, so this was a straight decider. United went two up, but Lyon scored twice to force extra time and then led 4-2, only for United to score three in the final few minutes and run out winners in extraordinary fashion. I saw Lyon play a bunch of times when I lived there in 2000-01; they had an exciting team. (Tickets were way cheaper than in England.) That match last night sounds amazing, but what even are Manchester United or Olympique Lyonnais, really? Brands, badges, entities? Are they even the same things as they were, say, in 2000 or even further back? I’ve always struggled with that, and that’s why I like individual sports (as much as I even like sport at all, these days).

I bought that water pistol, from the toy shop down the road, straight after I wrote my previous post. It’s worked a treat, so far. Kitty has cottoned onto it very quickly. Already, just brandishing the thing does the trick. No squirting needed.

Cat - Other sports

Kitty: the first hundred days

April 16, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s actually a bit over 100 days. So has it been worth it? Kitty is a lovely little thing with a beautiful soft coat, and that’s probably what made me take her on in the first place. It’s fascinating just to watch her. Cats – especially young ones like her – are amazing animals. I often marvel at how well designed she is, with her speed, strength (those back legs!) and flexibility. As I lumber around my flat, I feel utterly pathetic in comparison. I’ve also become acutely aware of how few places on my body I’m capable of licking. (She can get to almost anywhere, and for the few places she can’t, she’ll just lick her paw, then wipe her wet paw on the desired area.)

So, Kitty is great to observe, but is there any benefit to actually having her? After all, there are cats all over the show in Timișoara. I could just watch them. That’s a tough question. She knows where to pee and poo, and she hasn’t wrecked my furniture as I’d feared, so really she hasn’t been a problem. The real disappointment is that she hasn’t become a friend. She loves to play, but not really when I’m involved. Expressions of affection – or even interest in me – are extremely rare. Some of that must be down to her start in life. The only time Kitty seems halfway friendly (and only sometimes, even then) is when she’s purring away in an inactive state. If I come into the living room at night, she’ll sometimes rub up against me. It’s lovely when she does that, but all too rare. At times I feel sorry for her as she looks longingly out the window. I bet she’d love to be on the other side. I’ve got used to the zooming which took me aback at first, but I really wish she wouldn’t jump on my desk so much. My desk is a place for work and concentration, not a place for Kitty to play. I often end up manhandling her off my desk, but she usually jumps back on anyway unless I lock her in the living room – I so sometimes resort to that. I’m going to invest in a water pistol.

In short, Kitty is fine and I don’t regret having her, but if someone (a student, say) told me they really wanted a cat and had some outdoor space at home, I’d probably palm her off onto that person.

Last night I watched the Champions League quarter-final second leg between Aston Villa and Paris St-Germain. I almost never watch football at that level, but by golly, what a match it was. So open and so fast. It was like a different sport from the other games I’ve seen lately at a lower level, or even the top-level games I’d watch back in the nineties. The sheer pace was dizzying. Villa, already 3-1 down from the away leg, conceded twice to go four goals behind on aggregate, and surely it was done. But they got one back before half-time and though they still had a mountain to climb, the game was so ridiculously open… They got two more early in the second half. Madness. Just wave upon wave of Villa attacks against perhaps the best club team in the world. And they still had ages to level things or even win it. Villa had some great chances, and some superb saves from PSG keeper Donnarumma basically made the difference in the end. I have no idea why they played only three minutes of added time. PSG had a player called Désiré Doué. What a name. Doué means gifted or talented in French. It was a night that will live long in the memory of Villa fans, including Prince William who was there (no idea why he supports Aston Villa – the name?) but it was nearly one of the all-time great comebacks in the sport.

Snooker. Drama, as expected, in yesterday’s last-round qualifiers. The best match was between Zhao Xintong (a supreme talent; he’d just come back from a suspension for match-fixing – ugh) and Elliott Slessor who had the misfortune of having to play him. They both played at such a high level; Zhao won 10-8. There were also two 10-9 finishes. I felt sorry for Irishman Aaron Hill who had been well in front but was pipped by David Gilbert – he was just about in tears at the end. You could tell how much it meant. Eight more qualifiers today. The tournament proper starts on Saturday.

Can he keep the black out? This was a crazy tippy-tappy exchange. Wells (in the picture here) did eventually sink the black and Wilson won the frame, but Wells was the winner in a decider.

After watching both football and snooker, I’ve decided that snooker is more my thing. It has a nice mix of drama and relaxation.

We’ve got warm weather in store for the next little while.

Driving - Family - Other sports - Writing a book

If you’re worried about that…

April 15, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday when I called Mum and Dad – I’m doing that a lot at the moment – Dad was pulling his hair out trying to get his Skype transferred to Teams. A good sign, I thought, if you’re worried about that rather than Mum’s health. Conversation then turned to Rory McIlroy’s play-off win in the Masters and a packet of coffee beans that Mum showed me with an annoyingly pointless Māori translation on it (Pīni kawhe; there’s no B in Māori, so they use P, its voiceless counterpart). More good signs. Then they talked about actually booking a flight to the UK for 22nd May and luggage allowances and all that stuff. (They’re scheduled to arrive in Timișoara on the 8th.) Mum was looking good once again, and seems to be more regular now. She still mentioned nausea, and hasn’t played golf (which was always a given in her life) for some time. No guarantees of course, but things are much more positive than two weeks ago when my brother had almost accepted that we wouldn’t be seeing them.

Big news from the snooker qualifying. I mentioned last time that Jackson Page was in line for a bumper payout if he could somehow make a second maximum break. Well, he went and did it in the same match. Nobody had ever made two in the same match before. One of the commentators was left practically speechless. For Page, who is ranked 35th in the world and is just 23, that £147,000 (plus various other assorted prizes) will be life-changing. I stayed up last night to watch two matches (at the same time) that both finished 10-8. In one of them, Matthew Stevens got over the line after the lightning quick Thai player Thepchaiya Un-Nooh went for a kamikaze shot on a red. Today and tomorrow the final-round qualifiers take place. The spectators in Sheffield pay just £12 for a day’s action – such great value. It reminds me of qualifying for grand slams in tennis. I really wish I’d seen Wimbledon qualifying when I was younger. I had no idea of what drama can unfold until I saw Australian Open qualifying one time (for free).

A wet day today. I called Mark’s car mechanic guy but he said he’ll be on holiday until 5th May, so I’ll just leave it until then. There are many reasons to like my car, such as its Frenchness (I’ve always thought French cars are cool), its age (it pre-dates the era when “everything’s computer” as Trump put it), and its incredibly low fuel consumption. I really hope it survives.

Encouraging news on the book front, which I’ve sort of neglected of late. I have a recommendation from somebody Dorothy used to know, and may also have a second one. That should increase the chance that it gets accepted by the Minister of Culture. (I still don’t properly understand all of this.)

Trump called the latest Russian attack on Ukraine “a mistake”. It really is a case now of “make America go away”.

Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Floriile

April 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

Today is Floriile, or Palm Sunday in English – the last Sunday before Easter. When I went to church as a kid, we were all given palm fronds which we made into a cross; here they use willow boughs instead, and this morning I found some willow draped over my door handle. It’s been a beautiful day, sunny and 20 degrees or so. After a 90-minute maths lesson (I try and avoid teaching on Sundays), I met Mark in town. It was heaving, or rammed as people often say these days. A combination of the fine weather, the religious festival, and all the brightly coloured tulips, brought people out in their droves. We wanted to have lunch, but the sheer numbers of people meant service was even more crappy than normal. Mark seemed to fancy eating in Piața Unirii, but I wasn’t prepared to pay the prices you get there. We sat down at the Timișoreana place in Piața Victoriei, but nobody ever came to take our order. We got something kebabby from next door instead. Then we got a beer from some place. They had different sized bottles including an extra large one. Could we get one of those and two glasses, please? Sorry, no can do. Two glasses means two separate bottles. Sorry, that’s bloody ridiculous. Eating and drinking out in Romania just isn’t worth it most of the time. And if you find a rare place where it is worth it, keep going back there.

Yesterday was a monster day of lessons – nine hours of them. Although they were tiring, I didn’t have any of those online ones with young kids that are so often a struggle. Three of them were in Dumbrăvița, which is a different world, and not one I would wish to inhabit. My maths student’s mum noted that a box of chocolates on the desk were eleven days out of date and threw them away. Just imagine doing that. Chocolates. The mind boggles. It also gets me how many water bottles people from Dumbrăvița get through. Vast multi-packs of those half-litre ones. I always fill large bottles from the well, as is common here, but the modern Romanian way is mindless consumerism.

In the middle of my lessons I spoke to Mum and Dad who had got back from Moeraki. Mum looked good, and the plan seems to still be that they make the trip, but I know that one turn for the worse would probably can the whole thing. Still far from any guarantees at (as my brother called it) t minus three weeks. Then there’s what happens if they do make it. If you’re properly ill, a long-haul flight isn’t a great place to be, and the flight itself (pressurised cabin and all that) can really mess you up if you’re a bit flaky to begin with.

My car. I took it in to another place on Friday. They put it on one of those ramps, then the guy took it for a spin (without me). He told me I’d need to replace the steering rack. Sounds expensive, but I could live with that. I hung around a bit, then he updated his assessment. What about the valve timing? (I think that’s what he meant.) And the shocks. And something else I’ve forgotten. We ought to replace all of that too. I stuck around a while longer as he prepared a quote, which was just over 5700 lei, or £1000 or NZ$2250. The car is only worth about that, so obviously I didn’t take him up on that offer. My spidey senses told me that because I was foreign he was trying it on a bit. Would all of that go wrong at the same time? When I got back I went for a 40-minute drive and, but for a two-second judder, it was fine. I drove it for half an hour yesterday with no problems at all. Mark says he knows a mechanic, so I might try him next. My Peugeot has been my favourite of all the cars I’ve ever owned, so I’d be sad if I had to get rid of it after barely a year. If my parents are coming, it might be an idea to buy the equivalent of AA cover before they arrive.

Football. A surprise in the EFL Trophy final as Peterborough beat Blues 2-0. Posh scored two superb goals in the first half, including one just before the interval, and for all their work it just didn’t happen for Blues. Posh have had a disappointing season, so good on ’em for such a strong performance in the final and a well-deserved trophy. Vast armies of Blues fans descended on Wembley, and they wouldn’t have gone home too happy.

Snooker. Qualifying for the Crucible continues. There have been huge comebacks, at least one final-black decider, and today even a maximum break by Jackson Page. (If he gets another in the qualifying or the main tournament, he’ll win £147,000. You used to get that just for one maximum, back when they were much rarer.) For sheer drama though, I doubt you could top what happened on Friday night. I was trying to follow two matches at the same time: Jimmy White against Ashley Carty and 53-year-old Anthony Hamilton versus Steven Hallworth. When Carty won a close frame to go 9-5 up in a first-to-ten, I switched it off because I had an early start the next morning. Surely it was bye-bye Jimmy. Hamilton, who had been 9-0 up in his match, was still miles ahead, even though Hallworth looked like closing to 9-3. When I got up in the morning, I saw that Carty had beaten Jimmy alright (10-5) and Hamilton had eventually squeaked through 10-8, winning the 18th frame on the black, sometime after midnight. In other words, he narrowly averted the biggest collapse ever in the game. In his post-match interview, he said his eyesight had deteriorated badly, and that had he lost, that collapse would have followed him for the rest of his life. He also said something very British: “It would have been on quizzes and stuff.” I’m glad it didn’t come to that. Hamilton comes from Nottingham, and his nickname is “the Sheriff of Pottingham” which I absolutely love.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The madness of Mum

April 11, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning I had a 64-minute Skype chat – surely my last ever – with my aunt and uncle who still (and probably not for much longer) live at their place in Woodbury. It’s up for what they call a deadline treaty, basically a silent auction, and the deadline is just a few days away. I once tried to buy a flat in a similar way in Wellington. (I found the whole thing a bit intimidating, and that made me lowball my offer.) Mostly I spoke to my aunt; my uncle (83) has slowed down a bit. They’ve already put down a deposit on a place up the Downs (they always say up the Downs for some reason) in Geraldine which has something like a third of an acre. Sounds as if it should be ideal for them. (They’d go nuts if they didn’t have a decent amount of outdoor space.) And best they move now before my uncle deteriorates to the point where the move totally throws him.

We spent half our time discussing the move and the other half discussing Mum. My aunt is in regular contact with her. (Even more regular now.) She’s been practically tearing her hair out over Mum’s refusal to see the doctor. She’s been quite forceful with Mum of late, because she knows Mum respects her and won’t get angry with her in the way she does with Dad. Like me, she sees Mum’s recent decision making (the house, and now the business with her health) as a descent into madness.

Mum and Dad have gone to Moeraki for a few days. Mum broke her promise to see the doctor after finally going to the loo for the first time in a week. Crisis averted. Yeah right. I’ve been getting loo updates and tummy pain updates from Dad, which I’ve passed on to my brother. To find out what’s going on with Mum, we all have to basically ignore Mum. I hope she’s managed to get some sleep down in Moeraki – she’s been fatigued a lot lately.

I’ve had six lessons today, all of them with kids. The “highlight” was probably the lesson with ten-year-old Filip. I looked over the homework I’d set him last week. He’d made a few mistakes with the past simple. “Mum told me to write this,” he said. “Well I’m sorry, your mum is wrong.” I didn’t realise his mother had been listening in. At the end of the session she asked me what she’d done wrong. She couldn’t have been too offended because she gave me two Nutella pancakes. Occasional food is one of the little side benefits of my job.

Our beautiful warm weather ended abruptly last Saturday night; it’s been much chillier since then. Not that I mind too much. For one thing, it’s given me an excuse my mustard woolly jumper that I bought second hand a couple of months ago and makes me happy.

Football. Birmingham are promoted following their 2-1 win at Peterborough, aka Posh. Cue wild celebrations. Now they’re aiming for record points. They’re playing Posh again in Sunday’s EFL Trophy final. I’ll try and watch that; it should be fun. Barry Fry, director of football at Posh, was in attendance on Tuesday night. He’d turned 80 the day before. Birmingham’s arch-rivals Aston Villa lost 3-1 at PSG in the Champions League last night, conceding a late goal, but are still not out of the two-legged tie. They’ve done remarkably well just to get this far. Villa have also made the semis of the FA Cup. For all their success, they haven’t won a trophy since 1996, though they’ve had a number of near misses.

Snooker. Now it’s the qualifiers for the Crucible. I hope I can see some of the final-round matches. Two years ago I was able to catch them; it was pure drama. Jimmy White – incredible that he’s still even playing – fell over the line on Tuesday night after coming from a long way back to beat a Ukrainian who played painfully slowly. He won 10-9 in a match that finished at 1:20 am. (That’s British time, not my time. I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it.)

I took my car in yesterday. Somewhat predictably, they found nothing wrong with it. If the juddering only kicks in after half an hour or so, what do you do? What a pain. On Saturday I’ve got a chock-full day of lessons scheduled and I’ll have no choice but to use the car.

Today has seen a record up day on global stock markets. My back seems to have just about come right.

Driving - Life :) - Other sports

Body talk

April 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

Some news about my body (which will be 45 in a couple of weeks) for a change. On the night of 28th-29th March (Friday-Saturday), I had sudden back pain out of nowhere. I couldn’t lie on my right side. The pain abated over the next day or two and I thought it would just go away, but it hasn’t done. I now have low-level burning pain in the right side of my back. It doesn’t stop me from doing anything, but what is it? I’m now icing my back regularly. If it hasn’t gone away by the time I next see the doctor (the 18th I think), I’ll ask him.

My car’s body (19 years old) is playing up too. I got its thermostat replaced in February, but the juddering is back again. The last two times I’ve been out in the car, it’s started to shake after half an hour or so. It’s an intermittent back-and-forth shaking which happens at speed and it’s somewhere between disconcerting and bloody terrifying. I’m taking it in on Wednesday after a video call with my aunt for her birthday. I can manage fine without a car – I did just that for over seven years – but it’s certainly nice to have it, and it’ll be a must when – if – Mum and Dad come over in a month’s time.

Kitty’s diminutive body (just over a year old) is absolutely fine. Too fine. She doesn’t stop.

I’ve been thinking back to my trip to America almost ten years ago. In one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote that the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots was the most noticeable thing about American society. It can only have got worse since then. The word freedom is tossed around like confetti, but it’s all a big lie – freedom is a commodity, like everything else over there, available only to those lucky enough to afford it. And if you can’t afford it, that’s all your own fault. What a country. I’d probably be OK if I visited the US because I’m white and haven’t posted anything anti-Trump on social media – I don’t do social media – and this blog doesn’t have my name attached to it. But right now I wouldn’t dream of it. Nor am I likely to visit McDonald’s or Starbucks anytime soon, or order anything on Amazon. (I didn’t do those things anyway.) I wish I could avoid WhatsApp and even Microsoft. Talking of McDonald’s, I still remember the first time I had McDonald’s in the middle of Birmingham with the other guys from my university hall. I’d only been there maybe twice before in my life, and only had fries each time. The other guys, on the other hand, were fluent in Mac-ish. I ordered a Big Mac because it was something I’d heard of. “Why didn’t you get a meal?” they asked me. Um, I’m not hungry. Oh, I’m supposed to get a Big Mac meal. Good to know. I haven’t had a Big Mac, meal or otherwise, since I left uni in 2002.

Amid all this stock market turmoil, there’s one thing people always forget. You can short stocks and shares as well as buy them. In other words, you can bet on them to go down. Some shysters must be making a killing here. For them, they’re loving the chaos. Up equals win, down equals win. What we’re seeing is pretty seismic – a shock on the scale of the ’87 crash, or the financial crisis in ’08, or the start of Covid five years ago. Notice that those four “shocks” have got closer together. (I’m looking right now at a picture of a family picnic in Caroline Bay in the summer of ’86-’87 when the market was rocketing away. Brierleys and all that. My uncle thought he would make a mint. Dad still remembers all that talk – and his skepticism.)

When I went to bed, Mark Selby was 7-5 up on John Higgins and well on his way to 8-5 and seven straight frames. He did make it 8-5 alright, but then Higgins rattled off the last five in a row to win 10-8. What a finish that must have been. It made me think of the role of momentum in sport. You hear the word a lot. My view is that momentum exists, but it’s much less of a factor than people think, and has a smaller impact in team sports than in individual sports like golf, where nerves play a bigger part. In tennis, if your 4-0 lead has been whittled away to 4-3, you’d still rather have (in my opinion) that slender lead than be 4-3 down, even though you wouldn’t feel good about it. The reason being that a 4-3 lead isn’t that slender, especially at low levels of the game where server advantage is small. Win the next game and you’ve got a huge edge at 5-3 needing just one more, and even if you lose it you’re level at 4-4.

Family - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos

Wanting to get at the truth

April 7, 2025 by 0 Comments

I tried calling Dad last night. I hoped to get him in the short interval between Mum going to church and him going to Pleasant Point to fly his plane. With the time changes, this meant calling at midnight. I didn’t get a reply; he’d probably already gone to Pleasant Point, meaning that an interval when I can get him on his own simply doesn’t exist, unless it’s too windy for him to fly. (Normally I’d get a chance on a Tuesday when Mum plays golf, but since she got ill she hasn’t been playing.) I wanted to get Dad on his own because the only time I get the proper unspun news on Mum is when she isn’t there.

I called again this morning my time. Mum was clearly much better. Colour had returned to her cheeks. She looked better, in fact, than any time in the last two weeks. This could easily be a false dawn; we’ve had them before. She’s refusing to visit the doctor. I’d now put the chances of seeing them next month at 60%. (God, it’s gone up and down a bit, hasn’t it?) Encouraging, but still far too low to plan road trips or book accommodation or anything crazy like that.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Unusually, I had a long gap between lessons, so I sat in the park in Dumbrăvița – the nice part of Dumbrăvița – and read Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. A brilliant read. I’d managed to get half-way, then found I couldn’t concentrate, probably because of all the Mum stuff. I’m nearing the end of it now.

On Thursday I had a good lesson with the “I’m bored” girl. I made the whole thing about animals. Unfortunately I can’t do that every time, and anyway after a few sessions of animals she’d get bored again.

Word of the year so far: tariff. A lot of people still don’t know how many Rs and Fs it’s got. Trump’s tariffs (essentially half of the US’s trade deficit with each country, with a minimum of 10%) don’t make any sense and they may well have been whacked out on ChatGPT. But if we didn’t already know, we know now that the old world, the hyper-globalised world of the eighties onwards, is history. By the way, I’d dread to think how much my KiwiSaver has dropped in the last few days.

I’ve been watching the Tour Championship snooker which is being played in Manchester. The final is between John Higgins and Mark Selby. Higgins leads 5-3 in a first-to-ten, though Selby won the last two frames of the afternoon session. Lots of big breaks surrounding one out-of-character safety-heavy frame which Higgins won in 57 minutes. It’s unlikely I’ll see the finish because I have to make an early start in the morning.

Football. Birmingham hammered Barnsley 6-2 yesterday. Shame I didn’t see it. Barnsley had someone sent off in only the third minute, but at half-time it was one apiece. Then in the second half Blues went mad. With seven league games left, Blues now have a quite ludicrous 92 points.

Tulips in the park near the tennis courts on Friday.

A lovely day to be in town. Big spreads, especially in the US dollar rates.

I used to live in the building on the right. A fifth-floor apartment is for sale.

One of many lizards in the botanic park on Friday.

Dumbrăvița yesterday. My brother assures me that these are African geese.

I took this picture, which is on my street, because of the typically Romanian signage.
Family

I probably won’t see them

April 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

She’s still “not right”, whatever that means exactly. She needs to go back to the doctor again, but who knows whether she actually will. From what Dad said in his email, the chances that I’ll see them next month have plummeted to about 40%. I’m sure that Mum would prefer not to make the trip anyway, even if she was perfectly well. I think my percentages have been overestimates all along, for that very reason.

Update: My brother called me shortly after I posted that last paragraph. He’d just spoken to Mum and Dad. Things don’t look great. I’d guess 25% now. He’s resigned to the idea that his kids might never see their paternal grandparents again, and his daughter may never see them at all. It would be so damn difficult and expensive for all four of my brother’s family to make a trip over there, and my parents mightn’t be all that bothered even if they did. I suppose 25% isn’t zero, but they might already have made up their mind weeks ago regardless. And it is weird and concerning that Mum hasn’t discovered the root cause of her problem. The most important thing is Mum’s health, even if the “family political” implications of it are rather upsetting right now.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Getting Mum unblocked

April 2, 2025 by 0 Comments

Good news from Mum. After a painful day on Sunday that made it likely my parents wouldn’t be flying, she saw the doctor the next day. He said her constipation was a result of her colonography rather than the (still mysterious) underlying issue itself. The doctor gave her a box of sachets, kind of like the ones I put down the bathroom sink when it gets blocked. She took ten (!) of these sachets on one day, and they seem to have unblocked her. Unless something else kicks off, it’s more than likely they’ll make the trip now – I’d put it at something like 85–90%. (It must have been under 50% on Sunday. They were fearing the worst.) They’re due to arrive five weeks from tomorrow.

Around the world and beyond, we’ve had a deadly earthquake in Myanmar, an near-total eclipse, and major political developments such as Marine Le Pen being barred from running in the next French presidential election (for now at least). But as for me, not a lot has happened. The eclipse, which I tried to watch with an eight-year-old girl during our lesson last Saturday, was a damp squib. It all looks pretty normal so far, doesn’t it? And then the came over and that was that. On Sunday I went up and saw Elena, the lady who lives above me. I took Kitty along for the ride. Kitty hasn’t quite been the friend I’d hoped for. She’s just, well, there. And here, and everywhere. I might talk more about her next time.

Last night I watched Birmingham’s match at Bristol Rovers. The first half was great: Blues scored early (a brilliant strike from Keshi Anderson) but Rovers equalised and really dominated the half. They were unlucky not to be ahead at half-time. The second half wasn’t anything like as open. A few minutes from the end, Blues were awarded a soft penalty which Jay Stansfield tucked away, and they snatched a 2-1 win which they hardly deserved. After that result and a 4-1 home win over bottom-placed Shrewsbury last weekend, a colossal points total is still on. I see that Blues have entered a partnership with Birmingham University, my old alma mater. I also noticed the players had “Visit Birmingham” on the lower back of their shirts, before realising it also said “Alabama” in small letters. So they’re palling up with anything called Birmingham, even if it’s 4000-plus miles away. That’s something that their local rivals Aston Villa, far more successful than Blues over the years and with a fancier-sounding name, can’t really do.

One final thing: this morning I got the cazier judiciar which is a document that I’d applied for in early March that should allow me to update my residency permit in time for the upcoming Romanian presidential election.

Family - Language teaching - Politics

Busting boredom: not an easy task

March 31, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’ve just switched over to summer time. New Zealand moves to winter time next weekend. The combined two-hour time shift will make it a bit harder to contact Mum and Dad between now and October. In the meantime I should get to see them in the flesh. Still no guarantees there. For Mum it’s very up and down, hit and miss, and she still keeps pretending things are OK. Her sister-in-law, for whom Mum has a lot of respect, has been a big help – it’s largely down to her that she’s seeing the doctor tomorrow. I just know how Mum will be at the doctor’s. Just a bit of pain, nothing much really, I don’t suppose there’s much you can do, I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy.

I’ve got one lesson today, a Sunday, which should take my total for the week to 28½ hours – just under my target. This lesson is with a woman in her late forties. Yesterday I had lessons with four females aged between 8 and 48, so this weekend is entirely boy-free. On Thursday I had a lesson with an 11-year-old girl that I’d like to forget. I was teaching her directions when I saw out of the corner of my eye that she’d written something on the map I’d given her. Mă plictisesc. “I’m bored.” I told her that writing something like that isn’t very nice and she doesn’t have to see me if she doesn’t want to. In fact I said that if she did something like that again, it’d be over. I’d tell her mum that she’s not to come anymore. She then put her serious face on. When she said she had too much schoolwork and homework and private tuition in other subjects, I sympathised. She’s a victim of Romania’s pretty terrible education system. It means that I can make my lessons as unboring as possible and it’s unlikely to make much difference. A “highlight” of our session was when I gave her (for the first time) a writing exercise. A choice of three options to write about, including a time machine, which she chose. I hoped she’d write about the dinosaur age or flying cars, but she said she’d use her time machine to zip forward to … next week. Tech and social media makes a teacher’s task even harder. Say I’m teaching a girl who’s really into horses. I can include as much horse-related stuff as I like in my lessons, but she’ll still just want to watch horse videos on TikTok.

One thing that came out of that awful Signal group chat (leaked last week) was the US government’s hatred for Europe. If it wasn’t already obvious, that exchange confirmed that they really despise Europe and everything it stands for. That includes the UK. The “special relationship” was always tenuous as best and is now positively dangerous. As for visiting the US, I’m glad I did that ten years ago because I certainly wouldn’t do it now. There’s so much about America now that I find abhorrent. Having read American Psycho (which contained a whole lot of Trump from 35 years ago), I see that America is turning, at a rate of knots, into a crass Batemanised version of itself. Only straight, rich, white males matter. Anybody else is no more than an object. And straight, rich, white males who aren’t unquestioningly loyal to you are threats that must be eliminated.