Family - New Zealand - Other sports

A degree in emotional detachment

January 18, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

The above is a quote from my brother. When I spoke to him on Monday, he said that’s what our parents have. Not a bad turn of phrase from someone who’s been doing a degree himself. (His results are imminent; I expect he’s done very well.) He was referring to their coming over to Europe. Or not. Yes, it’s a major undertaking, but you’d think there’d be some enthusiasm, some modicum of desire to want to see your own kids and your only grandson in their own world, that would trump all the reservations about the journey. The fact that this doesn’t exist has shocked both of us. We shouldn’t be too upset, we said to each other. Compared to a lot of families, we have it pretty good with all the Skyping and WhatsApping. My brother is now serious about making a trip to New Zealand, with his wife and son, during the southern winter. His aunts and uncles would love to see the little one, I’m sure.

Birmingham played their FA Cup replay against Hull last night. It wasn’t televised, so I listened to it on Radio WM, the local station. I thought it might have been geoblocked, but thankfully not. Listening to football on the radio was something I used to enjoy many moons ago, so this brought back good memories. The ground was three-quarters empty, it was bloody freezing, and the players came out to the rousing Feel It by The Tamperer, just like they did way back in ’99. Hull scored early and were the better side in the first half. Blues, still a goal down, made an extraordinary quintuple substitution after an hour. Changing basically half the team paid immediate dividends as Blues equalised straight away and bossed the rest of the game. They couldn’t find a second goal though, until right at the end – extra time was just moments away – when Blues found the winner via the Japanese player Koji Miyoshi. They now face Leicester away in the next round. A tough task. Tony Mowbray has injected a bumper dose of optimism into the club overnight; scoring last-minute goals in two straight games doesn’t do any harm either. When the game was over, the coverage switched to local rivals Wolves – they were in extra time. I was momentarily confused by the commentary – “Jensen passes to Mee”. That Abbott-and-Costello name reminded me of the Arthur Mee children’s encyclopedias.

I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning. Yes, we talk pretty often. They’d been to Wanaka to collect a painting, then to Moeraki where they stayed the night, then back via Kurow and Waimate (I think). A long drive. They were telling me about a Green MP who had been caught shoplifting (high-end jewellery) on multiple occasions. We were all puzzled as to just why? She came into the country as a refugee and found herself with the world at her feet. Is the buzz you get from the act so great that you’re willing to risk your career, your reputation, your freedom, pretty much everything? It’s hard to fathom.

Life :) - Music - Other sports

Going back in time

January 16, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Elena, the 80-year-old lady who lives above me. On Friday she flies back here from Toronto. She told me that the man who lived on the ground floor and had a stroke just before Christmas had passed away at the age of 74. Very sad, though I never knew him.

I got new my record player up and running on Sunday. The 460 lei (£80 or NZ$160) I’d made the previous day barely paid for it. The first record I put on was Chicago’s 18. When I bought it I didn’t realise it was literally the band’s 18th album. So it was all very eighties. Even the brilliant – if cryptically titled – 25 or 6 to 4 had been brought kicking and screaming into the Reagan era. Slightly disappointing, but at least the damn thing worked. Then I put on Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits album from 1975 – before he came out with other hits that were just as great – and that was pure poetry from start to finish. Of the other three albums I bought, the wonderfully ethereal Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre is my favourite. I’m now eyeing up a dozen or so other LPs online, mostly from the seventies. I associate vinyl with older music; something like MGMT or Arcade Fire (already both 15-odd years old) on vinyl would feel weird to me.

In this morning’s Romanian lesson, our teacher asked me what time I’d like to go back to if I had the chance. I thought for some time about this. Maybe I could go back almost a millennium to witness the building of Ely Cathedral, just down the road from where I grew up. How and why did they build that? But I settled on something far more recent: the sixties and seventies. My teacher was surprised, but I’ve always thought of that era as an incredible time to be alive. The music, the energy, everything seemed limitless. Born in 1980, I missed out. Go back any further though and I think I’d be struck by the harshness of life, if Dad’s descriptions of the UK shortly after WW2 are anything to go by.

I always have to talk about football with my 14-year-old student. I don’t mind too much, but I’m far out of the loop these days. He’s recently taken a liking to Aston Villa, a side I saw play twice (if memory serves) when I was student. One of those games was a real belter: in the FA Cup against Leeds in January 2000, Villa won 3-2 with Benito Carbone scoring a hat-trick. I remember Paul Merson playing a big part in Villa’s win too. The place was rocking. Villa are now flying high, third in the Premier League. To be honest I preferred their rivals Birmingham City, known as Blues, and saw them more often. (Probably because they were cheaper.) Earlier this season Blues were sixth in the division below when their new American owners decided in their wisdom to sack their popular manager, a local lad, and bring in uber-famous Wayne Rooney. Turns out Rooney was rubbish. Once Blues were brushed aside on New Year’s Day at Leeds, Rooney got the boot after just 15 games (and only two wins) and the fans breathed a collective sigh of relief. In came ultra-pragmatic Tony Mowbray. When my lessons were over on Saturday, I saw that Birmingham were 2-1 down at home to Swansea in Mowbray’s first game in charge. Deep into added time, teenage Jordan James struck a pretty sweet equaliser, and Blues escaped with a point. Tomorrow Blues have another home game – an FA Cup replay against Hull. The cup is nothing like it was, sadly, and they’ll struggle to get much of a crowd.

Language teaching - Maths teaching - Photos - Travel: Romania

A busy winter’s day and a trip to Arad

January 14, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve had a busy Saturday, chock-full of lessons. Two maths sessions – two hours apiece – and three English ones. Everything from a creative writing piece about a murder and tactile Little Mermaid books to construction of perpendicular bisectors and probability tree diagrams. Marginally preferable to yesterday though, when I took five paracetamol for my sinus pain.

It’s been cold. Actual proper winter, like my first one in Timișoara, not the half-arsed stuff we’ve had of late. On Monday it snowed all day, making for a pretty sight, but getting around the city for lessons was quite a challenge. Today was the first time since then that the mercury – ever so briefly – touched freezing point. We’d been at (minus) sixes and sevens all week.

Last Sunday – just before the wintry blast hit us – I met Mark in Dumbrăvița and from there we went to Arad in his car. I hadn’t been there for six years. Arad is a fine city, with beautiful architecture much like we have in Timișoara. (Just like my home, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for half a century until the First World War.) After a good wander, be both agreed that in some ways we preferred Arad to its bigger cousin. (Timișoara is roughly twice the size.) There were all kinds of photo opportunities. We managed to go inside the Palace of Culture, which reminded me of the larger one in Iași; the lobby and the concert hall were both superb. The Mureș, a much more substantial river than Timișoara’s Bega, runs through the city. The Christmas market was still running, but rather than grab overpriced food from there, we had a major feed at one of a clump of kebab shops at one end of the main drag. Kebab Alley, we called it. Unlike Timișoara with its three main squares, Arad has one long, broad main street where everything happens, though some of the side streets were impressive too. After our kebabs, we decided to go back home. Mark had parked in an area of town not far from the centre called Boul Roșu – the Red Ox – but despite seeing a sign depicting a red ox, it took us a while to find the car. Coming home from that very enjoyable trip felt like the absolute end of any kind of holiday-related downtime.

My record player – turntable, if you like – arrived yesterday. It’s still in its box. Getting that going will be tomorrow’s “thing”.

Here are some photos from Arad, and of the snow.

Above is one of those Roman numerals date word puzzle thingies that I mentioned on this blog some years ago. But did they have to make it so complicated? Someone must have really pissed off whoever made this in 1779 (if I haven’t gone wrong somewhere – I may well have).

Arad does have a square, and it’s in the process of being revitalised

On the left is the old water tower which I visited in 2016

Life :) - Music - Other sports

Lukes that kill

January 4, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last year it was the two Michaels, this year the two Lukes. They didn’t disappoint. Humphries took the first set and was all set to make it two sets, but Littler smashed and grabbed. One apiece. From there the youngster was in the ascendancy, and Humphries looked a beaten man. Despite maintaining a three-figure average, there was a distinct weariness about him. Every big treble (all those treble 19s!) or big finish by Littler was a gut-punch. In the deciding leg of the seventh set, leading 4-2, Littler needed 112. He can recite his out-shots in his sleep. Treble 18, single 18, double top. His first dart found the intended target, but then his second clattered into it, joining it in the treble. He could still finish – on double two – but he was knocked off his stride. He missed the double two by a whisker, Humphries mopped up to go just one set behind, and from there the “older” Luke (born 11/2/95) never looked back. He won 7-4 to lift the title, pocketing half a million pounds for doing so, while Littler won £200,000. The remainder of the match was hardly plain sailing for Humphries though – there were deciding legs and crisis points with great regularity. Humphries averaged 104, Littler 101. They both hit a maximum 170 finish. The legs and sets zoomed by, such was the standard. The whole thing was done and dusted in under two hours, including seven annoying ad breaks.

It might be for the best that Littler didn’t win. Call it the Emma Răducanu effect – win an enormous prize when you’re oh so young, then the pressure of expectation is heaped on you and it’s all too much. Littler was extremely popular with the crowd, and got people tuning in from around the world. Even Romania. ln large part it was his extraordinary talent for someone so young, but also it was the way he looked so comfortable on the big stage and how he already had the doner-kebab-eating darts player look down pat. It’s scary that he could still be challenging for big titles in 2060, when I’ll either be pushing up daisies or won’t know a bull’s eye from a cat’s eye. As for Humphries, he was pedestrian in his first match, then stared down the barrel in both his next two, at one point surviving two match darts. From there he put together three sublime victories and was a worthy overall winner. In his speech he cited his battles with mental health problems. Good on him for opening up. It was also referee Russ Bray’s last match in charge. His incredible 180 call will be missed. The whole tournament was a huge success. The international players added a lot of intrigue to the early rounds, and were often victorious. Germany is now a powerhouse in the game. Let’s hope darts, which still reminds me of beer and fags on telly when I was about seven, continues to grow.

The adverts between sets were at times horrifying. The Barclays one gave me conniptions. It gave a litany of financial stresses that modern, economically active people face: school uniforms, gym memberships, phone bills, yoga classes, getting a wonky shed door fixed, swimming lessons, more school uniforms, I can’t remember how it went exactly. Apart from the idea that Barclays could help you with any of that being laughable, it made me consider how far I’ve drifted from normal, mainstream life. And just as well – I wouldn’t bloody cope with all of that. Not even close.

I recently picked up a newspaper called Dilema Veche. That second word means “old”; their house style is to use the pre-1993 spellings – î instead of â, except in the name România and its derivatives. The headline – Bohemianism in Romania – caught my eye. There are several articles in the paper on bohemia and its origins, some of which I’ve yet to read. A bohemian lifestyle, which I partly have now, has always been attractive to me, as long as it is accompanied by a good deal of actual work. That’s really what I wanted 20 years ago or more, but I ended up doing the corporate thing because there was no alternative that I could see. The paper bemoans the loss of bohemia in society, and blames this at one point on conformity caused somehow by woke culture. I’d say the real culprit is hyper-capitalism. A consumer-based society runs counter to bohemian values. So do skyrocketing property values. Devonport in Auckland was a hotbed of alternative lifestyles in ther eighties and early nineties, but seven-figure house prices had put the kibosh on all of that by the time I arrived there. The cost of university education isn’t helping either.

What a start to 2024 in Japan. First a huge earthquake off the Sea of Japan and resulting tsunamis killed dozens. Then on a runway in Tokyo, an Airbus with 379 people on board struck a small coastguard plane which was headed to the west coast of Japan to help victims of the earthquake. Five of the six on the small aircraft died, but miraculously everybody escaped from the burning passenger jet. I still remember as a small boy the grainy TV images from Japan after a domestic 747 crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. That number felt unthinkable to me then. This was 1985, the deadliest year in aviation to date.

Edit: Talking of 1985, Driver 8 by R.E.M. just came up on my YouTube. It came out in that year. A fantastic train-country-folk-rock song. Did train drivers not have names back then?

Life :) - Music - Other sports - Writing a book

Searching for inspiration

January 3, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today I’ve been working on the book. The book about him. A second crack, after my aborted effort a year ago. (I did do one chunky chapter then, plus I made a load of notes that are extremely useful.) None of this is easy. A novel isn’t a task you can just plough your way through. It relies on inspiration, and sometimes you just don’t have it. And then you write a few hundred words, and think, are you sure this isn’t boring crap that nobody would ever read? Page upon page of self-doubt. One of the fun bits is thinking up names of characters. I’m proud of Felicity Lee, the club vice-president who’s always everywhere all at once. Her name sounds like a butterfly.

Yesterday I did two important things. First I booked flights to the UK around Easter. Leaving on 28th March, coming back a week later. Top priority is seeing my brother, sister-in-law and nephew. It’s a pain that the only flights back are in the early morning, so I’ll have no choice but to stay overnight in Luton on 3rd April. The other biggish thing I did was order a record player. I hope to have a lot of fun with that when it arrives. Buy up a load of old albums, basically go mad with them. I can see why vinyl has come back – the whole experience beats Youtube and Spotify hands down. A more minor thing I did was order a new laptop charger after one of mine got so hot it started smouldering. I still have one, but I rely so heavily on my laptop for work that having a backup is a necessity.

So a new year is upon us. I didn’t stay long in a very packed centre of town on New Year’s Eve. Enough to see the fireworks, and that was it. I’m so glad I avoided the stress of an event. I’ve been thinking back to previous years where a 3 turned into a 4. I saw in 2014 with some friends at Owhiro Bay in Wellington – we lit a fire, saw the stars, and felt rather small. I was going through a rough time with withdrawal symptoms, having recently tapered off my antidepressant. Ten years before that I’d only just arrived in New Zealand. We spent the evening with some family friends, played some volleyball which I was spectacularly bad at, and saw the Caroline Bay fireworks. As for 1993-94, that one involved my grandfather, suffering badly from Alzheimer’s, being all at sea during a game of Skip-Bo. Going back even further, I rather doubt I stayed up to see in 1984, and wouldn’t have known what the fuss was about if I had.

Darts. A couple of barnburners yesterday, as the Americans would say. Chris Dobey stormed into a 4-0 lead against Rob Cross in a race to five sets. He’d been great all tournament and once again he was dominant here. Until he wasn’t. Surely he’ll fall over the line. But he never did. Watching it slip from his grasp was slow torture. Even in the ninth and final set he could have won as he came from 2-0 down in legs to force the win-by-two tie-break, but it wasn’t to be. Professional sport – even darts – can be cruel. In the evening Michael van Gerwen, who had been unplayably good, had an inexplicable shocker against Scott Williams. He was expected to steamroller his opponent, but the juggernaut never got going. Williams was plenty good enough to capitalise, winning 5-3. Luke Humphries, who plays Williams in the second semi-final tonight, had no such problems, and neither did Luke Littler who plays Cross in the first match. Littler, still a child, is now the favourite. The semis are first to six, and I’ll be watching one of them at most. I need to sleep.
Update: Littler produced a frankly ludicrous performance, averaging 106, to beat Cross 6-2.
Update 2 (next morning): There’s no way I could stay up to watch Humphries smash a 109 average in his 6-0 whitewash of Williams. Those numbers from both Lukes are ridiculous. The final (first to seven) is tonight.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - New Zealand - Other sports - Writing a book

Grounds for optimism

January 1, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s already 2024 in New Zealand. The last embers of the old year were still flickering when I called Mum and Dad. I thought I wouldn’t get them – they’d probably be at Caroline Bay for the fireworks and a spin or two of the chocolate wheel – but they’d had thunder and hailstorms and didn’t fancy it. The last time I visited Caroline Bay for New Year was with my brother eleven years ago. He was very subdued, having been through a nightmare few days. The next day we went to Methven – appropriately, it was completely dead – and saw a terrible Australian film at the cinema in Geraldine. Just like now, the darts was on TV. My parents had Mum’s old colleagues from Cairns staying with them; they really could have done without that. This morning Mum talked her elder brother’s daughter, who thinks the world revolves around her, and didn’t want anything to do with her elderly parents over Christmas. Having loving, caring parents hasn’t stopped her becoming a selfish arsehole.

This morning I went to the market in Mehala on the off-chance that there might be a cheap second-hand record player, but no such luck. There were quite a few records, though I didn’t buy any. It was nice to browse all the same, and take in the sights and smells on a sunny morning. The beer, the mici, the vehicles, the signage, the haggling. I had a particularly greasy langoș and then went home.

“You’ll find us on the street, between the langoși and the police station.”

A new footbridge being built over the Bega in the west of the city

No lessons today. Yesterday I had my 945th to 948th sessions of 2023, including my usual battle to get Matei to understand fractions. If you don’t know fractions, you’re screwed when it comes to calculating probability, and much else besides. Next weekend I’m going to spend the whole session on fractions. It’s what he needs. (His cluelessness about fractions is hardly his fault, as I’ve mentioned before here. He missed out under the Romanian system, and now he’s at the British school where they just assume he has all that knowledge.) After him I had the brother-and-sister combination. I normally spend two hours with him and one hour with her, but the boy said he had to meet some friends in town, so could they do 90 minutes each? She’s six. That’s an eternity with someone so young. Luckily I had a secret weapon: a rather tricky dinosaur maze (see below). I printed it off before our session, not realising how T-rex-like it actually was. Impressively to me, she persevered. (At her age, I think I’d have given up.) I tackled the start, she worked backwards from the end, and eventually we met in the middle. That ate up a good chunk of time. I had an online session with the guy in England when I got home.

The darts. There were three matches last night. First up was Brendan Dolan, the Northern Irishman who started as an underdog against Gary Anderson, winner of two world titles. Dolan, who uses Dropkick Murphys’ I’m Shipping Up to Boston as his walk-on song, raced into a big lead against Anderson who was misfiring at the start. Anderson then kicked into gear and went 3-2 up in the first-to-four-sets match. Dolan then made it 3-3 before hitting double three to pull off a dramatic and fully deserved victory, his third knife-edge win in a row. His wife’s face at various points throughout the deciding set was a picture. Next up was Raymond van Barneveld, an old hand who has been a top player since the nineties, against Luke Littler who is at the other end of the scale (though you wouldn’t think it by looking at him). Littler, who turns 17 next month, has been a sensation. The Dutchman played very well but Littler was unstoppable. The youngster won 4-1. I couldn’t stay up to watch the last match. Snooker, yes, but I draw the line at darts. A pity in a way, because it was one heck of a finish, with Luke Humphries beating Joe Cullen in a sudden-death leg, hitting the winning double at his tenth attempt. (Those outer slivers are pretty skinny, and even the best players miss them more often than they hit. All those misses ratchet up the tension.)

I managed to get the adminstrator to recalculate my catch-up water bill at the old rate, so this month’s bill ended up being a monster 983 lei instead of a gargantuan 1470.

I plan to see in the new year in town, where there will be fireworks and music. I’ve found 2023 to be quite stressful, with the exception of the period around Easter and (in grounds for optimism) the last couple of months. The early part of the year was bloody terrible. Simply put, I couldn’t cope. My “big thing” this year was spending a whole month in New Zealand. Stunning beauty around every corner. The stress my parents have been under became apparent when I was over there, and I’ve found it upsetting. I hope things become less fraught when their building work is done.

The word of the year for me is a depressing one: billionaire. I remember when billionaires were few and far enough between to be ignorable with the exception of Bill Gates and his Mr Clippy. Not any more. Every other article I read is about the antics of some mega-rich egomaniac fucking up the world for the rest of us just because he can. He, of course. Next year, with massively consequential elections taking place all over the world, their influence is unlikely to wane.

A couple of new year’s resolutions, both about writing. Firstly, this blog. I’d like to get back to more free-flowing writing such as I produced right at the beginning eight years ago. Hopefully being more relaxed will allow me to do that. Second, the book about my tennis-playing friend. I made progress last January, then things stalled badly. It needs to be a top priority again.

Family - Other sports - Photos

Avoiding stress in the last week of the year (with some photos)

December 29, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

After giving an online lesson between eight and nine this morning, I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român where I grabbed a coffee and Skyped my parents. They were amazed to see the cloudless blue sky in the background, a far cry from what they’ve been experiencing of late. They didn’t have much news and nor did I. They’ve been cracking on with painting, taking advantage of the poor weather. Then I pedalled back home.

Yesterday afternoon was also sunny, so I went for a walk beyond the lock at the end of the canalised Bega to the wilder non-man-made part that for some reason I hadn’t visited before. I’ll go back there again in the next few days. It’s nice to have a break from lessons and to have very little risk of needing to interact with people.

The darts. The post-Christmas phase started yesterday with a match between Scott Williams of England and Martin Schindler of Germany. Schindler looked like he would win with something to spare, but his finishing let him down badly towards the end, and Williams squeaked it out on a deciding tie-break. In his post-match interview, Williams said “two World Wars and one World Cup” which suggests that he may be lacking something between the ears. I mean, yeesh, I thought we were past that. The female presenter then apologised for any offence caused. I often find myself supporting the non-English players.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching

A Christmas mishmash

December 27, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s 5:20 on Boxing Day evening; the sun set half an hour ago. Once I’m done with this blog post I’ll dip into the ample leftovers from yesterday.

On Saturday the 23rd I had my full complement of four lessons. After an online English lesson, I had to get to Dumbrăvița by bike – a struggle on such a blustery morning. I was glad that Matei was finally learning probability. We went through various exercises. One of them asked him to imagine picking two letters, one at a time without replacement, from the word SCIENCE. What’s the probability that the first letter you pick is S? One in seven, he happily answered. What’s the probability that the second letter is S? Now he wasn’t so sure. Doesn’t it depend on what the first letter was? Well yes, but at this stage we have no idea about that. I did my best to convince him that the probability was also one in seven, asking him to consider a lottery draw (the second ball is just as likely to be 17 as the first, isn’t it?) and resorting at one point to tree diagrams. Probability messes with people’s heads.

On Christmas Eve I made salată de boeuf, which despite its name is a chicken-based salad, with potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips and gherkins added to the mix, bound together by mayonnaise. I put a sliced egg, some olives and slices of red pepper on the top. Then I made salam de biscuiți: a pound of simple biscuits broken by hand, to which I mixed in milk, melted butter, cocoa, raisins and rum essence. I rolled the mixture into two salami-like cylinders and put them in the fridge overnight.

Then in the evening I did something I hadn’t done for five years: attend a church service. Dorothy, a regular churchgoer, had invited me. To be polite I accepted, not knowing what I might be letting myself into. I cycled there and got my shoes all muddy as I found something to attach my bike to. I found the church, which didn’t look at all churchy, without too much trouble. Sfânta Treime – Holy Trinity. A Baptist church. I felt out of my comfort zone. Since Covid, I’ve found that any place where there are dozens of people, some of which I may have to interact with, will give me that feeling. It didn’t help that my muddy shoes came close to causing a scene. Mass kicked off at seven; I was amazed how young the congregation was. Many of them could speak English, and quite a few had good jobs in the IT field. At the front of the church, if it had a front, were a guitar, drums, and a viola. We sang several carols, many of which were the same tune as the English but with Romanian words. I must admit that the wordy Romanian version of Silent Night did little for me, though Away in a Manger was fine. (The Romanian for “manger” is iesle.) Some of the language was new to me; religious Romanian tends to be older and more Slavic-based than what you encounter day-to-day. In the middle of the service, the children acted out a short nativity play. There was a sermon in which the priest, dressed in civilian clothes, lost his thread on more than one occasion. The service took 1¾ hours. Afterwards there was lots of chitchat – I ended up talking to an Australian woman among others. Dorothy, who had gone to the church since 2001, was in charge of food and drink duties, as out came cozonac (a traditional Romanian cake which I’ve tried to make in the past) and non-alcoholic mulled wine. It was an interesting experience, but I was glad to finally get home at 10:15.

On Christmas morning I spoke to my parents who’d been over to my aunt and uncle’s place in Woodbury for dinner. I then called my aunt in England. I was happy to get through to her, but what do you say, exactly, when she’s stuck in a nursing home for what will almost certainly be her last Christmas? Have a good Christmas, I said. I think I’ll have had better, she replied. She got calls from Dad and my brother, and thankfully a visit from her son. I worried that she might spend the whole day alone.

I had a 45-minute walk to Dorothy’s place. The food and bottles of drink and (admittedly basic) presents were too much to carry on my bike. When I arrived, I was greeted by Dorothy and a 65-year-old man called Ionică who lives in the same apartment block and has recently retired from 44 years of working as a baker. A real job. He left school at 14, he said, and did military service which was compulsory back then. He had made enough apple tart for a dozen people or more, explaining that he either bakes in proper quantities or not at all. Ionică and I were tasked with decorating Dorothy’s (real) Christmas tree. When that was done, Gabriela (a woman who attends the same Baptist church as Dorothy) arrived. Although she has an 18-year-old son, she said she wasn’t yet born when Ionică moved into his flat in 1982. Her son didn’t come, apparently because he’d injured himself playing football. The food came out. I was slightly bemused by how gingerly Gabriela approached my salată de boeuf. What? A man cooking? A British man cooking? Romanian food? Despite being quite young and (you’d think) more open, that didn’t quite compute in her mind. In the end, she seemed to quite like it. Then came Dorothy’s roast dinner – chicken, stuffing, potatoes, parsnips, and so on. The British stuff, in other words. Finally we had dessert – the apple tart, my salam de biscuiți, and some Christmas pudding and mince pies that Dorothy had made. We had plenty of food left over. Ionică’s fact-free musings on mental health were interesting, shall we say. “I don’t take any pills,” he said with an inordinate level of pride. Lucky you. “Depression isn’t real. You shouldn’t have time to be depressed.” It’s all a lot more complicated than that, I’m afraid, I said. I’m glad I went no further. I found Ionică to be a very pleasant chap, but on that issue he was badly misinformed. Hardly surprising, because he comes from a time and place where things were simpler. Not easier certainly, but simpler. Probably the best thing about Christmas Day was how much Romanian I spoke. Pretty much all conversation was conducted in Romanian; a few more days like that and I might get reasonably good at it.

When I got home I spoke to my brother who showed me his son, dressed up in a Father Christmas costume. He has an outfit for every occasion, it seems. He’s just started walking and is a happy chappy whenever I see him. I’ve made up my mind to visit the UK for Easter, so it won’t be too long before I see him in the flesh.

Today I’ve finally got round to finishing George Borrow’s Wild Wales, including the interesting bit at the end on the Welsh language. We’re getting warm weather for the time of year, and tomorrow I’ll take advantage of that by going for a bike ride.

Language learning - Life :) - Other sports

Strange games

December 23, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last night I met Mark at the Christmas market. It wasn’t as busy as we expected. Whether it was the prices or the too-loud music or something else, we couldn’t tell. Mark wanted to buy his girlfriend a present, so we visited one of the souvenir shops. An ie – a traditional tunic, embroidered in red and black – caught his eye. It was 550 lei (nearly £100 or NZ$200), so not cheap. Unlike other cheaper versions made in India, this one was handmade in Romania. A ton of work. He got me to ask the sales assistant about washing and the like, and when he was satisfied he made the purchase. We had langoși (deep-fried flatbread) and mulled wine, and talked about how lucky we are to be living in a city as nice as Timișoara. You really can’t beat the three beautiful squares in the city centre, and while it isn’t quite as developed as somewhere like Cluj, that actually adds to the experience. I don’t think I could be me in a city that was all perfect and pristine.

In English, two-letter words are almost entirely restricted to function words: prepositions (at, by, in, of, on, to), conjunctions (as, if), pronouns (me, he, it, we, us), and forms of very common verbs (do, go, am, is). Two-letter content words are very thin on the ground: there’s only really ox and (if you’re American) ax. In Romanian, that isn’t the case at all. Of the top of my head, as well as ie (plural ii), there’s iz (a whiff), ac (needle), șa (saddle), as (ace), in (linen), os (bone), om (person), ud (wet) and uz (use, noun), in addition to a whole bunch of function words. You could imagine a simple Romanian conversation in a shop consisting of only two-letter words.

Having a lighter work week has given me a chance to brush up my Romanian a bit. I’ve added hundreds of words to my Anki deck (a spaced repetition tool), and several cards that aren’t words as such but instructions: conjugate this or that verb, think of all the ways to say this or that, find four words that begin with zg-, and so on. On Monday in our Romanian lesson, the teacher gave us a story to read entitled Puiul, or the chick. It’s a sad story. Although I got the meaning, there were a number of new words for me, and they all went in the Anki deck. I need to start reading properly in Romanian again.

Today at the darts there was a match that went all the way to a sudden-death leg, but the big story so far has been 16-year-old Luke Littler who was out of this world in his first-round victory and won again in round two. He looks considerably older than 16 and has already developed a good paunch; he’s got “darts champion” written all over him. Watching not-so-young members of the crowd swaying and braying to a version of annoying nineties hit There’s No Limit made me think, some of these people must have kids. Imagine if I’d been “blessed” with a dad like that. Just imagine. Watching that, and visiting the mall today to grab some simple presents, made me consider the idea of some super-intelligent species watching humans in intrigue or perhaps horror at their behaviour, and making documentaries on them. “Once a year, they practically fall over each other to buy so-called knick-knacks made in China, without ever wondering why. Look at how this female extends her arm. You can see she is practised in the art.”

Update: Sheer madness in the darts tonight. Florian Hempel, the big German ex-handball goalkeeper, came back from the dead to beat seeded Dimitri van den Bergh. He hit a massive 151 checkout to keep himself alive, then he went ballistic. Two ten-dart legs back to back. Madman mode. It was quite something to witness it. And such great sportsmanship from his much smaller opponent after the match.

I had a strange dream last night about a fictitious sport played in Britain. I visited a centre where this traditional rough-and-tumble sport was played, and talked to a player. The name of the sport began with B and had another B in the middle. Something like burbank but not that. From there I went to a place nearby, where a version of cross-country lacrosse, that also seemed to have elements of golf, was played. I talked to a woman about the game.

Four lessons tomorrow, then a very barren patch until the second week of January. I won’t mind that.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

A room with a view of sorts

December 21, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments
Outside the window of my office this morning


I regularly posted pictures taken out of the window of my old flat, with the view of the park and the square. Not so much this place, though the sky – just before my 8am lesson on perhaps the second-shortest day of the year – made for an interesting shot.

Yesterday wasn’t such a great day. Way back in October 2022 I had a problem with the loo in the small bathroom which I hardly ever use. I went to the UK for a few days, and in that time the cistern ran non-stop. I shut off the valve when I got back, but in that time many thousands of gallons of water had gone through the system. I sent the block administrator my meter readings as I do every month. She misread the reading – 337, when it was actually 377 (an understandable error – how could I have possibly used that much water?) and charged me accordingly, “promising” to correct the mistake the following month. I got a plumber to fix the loo, but the fix lasted about two days. I thought my water bill did get rectified, but obviously not because yesterday the administrator sent me a message, finally asking for the extra money. What’s more, she’s billing me at the current rate (which has gone up in the last 14 months), not the old rate. I’ll pay the bill of course, but only if it’s calculated at the old rate. We’re talking a couple of hundred quid here, which is a massive pain but nothing I have (or had) any control over.

Mum and Dad only made a short stop in their showerless pit in Geraldine, and Skyped me from Hampden this morning. They’re still some way off fully recovered from their bout of Covid. Mum said she’d been sleeping most of the day. No harm in that. Dad used a word – pantechnicon – that I’d never heard before. It’s a British word for a big truck or van used for transporting furniture. I feel I should have known the word, being British and all, but the Pantechnicon company, which the name comes from, ceased trading in the seventies. More often than not these days I’m too old to know a word, not too young, so that made a change. In a previous chat with Dad, we got talking about Auckland for some reason. A city with so much wasted potential. What a disappointment the centre is (or was – maybe it’s magically improved since either of us visited). But there are nice parts, Dad said. I replied by saying, yes, but the nice parts are inhabited only by people who can afford stupidly expensive houses, making for a funny kind of nice that I wouldn’t want anything to do with even if I had that kind of money.

At this time of year I give my students a sheet of paper asking them to write down five new year’s resolutions, then to pick one to focus on. How will you go about achieving it? This afternoon my able 11-year-old student wrote “Make my parents feel proud of me” for one of his resolutions. “Don’t they feel proud of you?” I asked. He replied with a definite no, and that made me feel sad. He also wrote “Be nice”, which surprised me because he’s always seemed perfectly nice around me. He probably feels comfortable around me: a harmless hairy man wearing (today) an orange jumper with a multicoloured llama on it, rather than his classmates. He says all the bullying makes him morose when he gets home.

Earlier today I watched a YouTube video from a guy who goes around decaying British high streets. Once thriving, they’re now struggling up and down the country. Today he went to Slough, which rhymes with now. Not far from Slough are Eton and Windsor, England’s two most famous public schools, and many affluent towns, some of which even (much to their disgust) have an SL (for Slough) postcode. He opens his video by reading a few lines of John Betjeman’s poem that asks for “friendly bombs” to be dropped on the town. Betjeman wrote the poem in 1937, so the bombs didn’t have long to wait. I went through the poem a few years ago in a lesson with a woman who once spent a few months in Milton Keynes, whose reputation is no better than Slough’s.

More drama at the Darts. Matt Campbell, from Hamilton, Ontario, pulled off an upset by beating James Wade 3-2 – he was clearly the better player – and has made it to the post-Christmas stages. Prior to this tournament, he’d never won a match in four attempts. He’s flying back to Canada to spend Christmas with his family. Yesterday afternoon saw a whole host of upsets and wins for players outside the UK – all good for the game. Steve Beaton, someone I remember from my bigger darts-watching days in the nineties, got through his first match. Age is no barrier in this game.