Chapter 26
Children Are Growing Old Quickly
The problems I was writing about a couple of chapters earlier didn’t go away, but I was eliminating them slowly and in the meantime I spent more time with my grandson. The main reason of that was that with the previous fall my former employer reduced its activities, my work was not needed, only occasionally happened that a smaller task came in. I had more time to work on my hobbies too. I had a good PC after its upgrading. I thought it necessary, because I wanted to register for continuous online work, either translation or something else. However, although I applied by the dozens at different translation agencies, always something was amiss.
The spring of the year 2006 arrived unstoppably, I did a lot of work in the garden, but also my grandson provided me with some occupation. On a certain Monday he was free of the kindergarten, if I am not mistaken the teachers had a kind of training course and for the children it was closed (by the old socialist expression they were ‘inflating their heads’). I decided to take the boy with me for a tour. First we went to the Gellert Square on the embankment of the river Danube to see the highest flood level ever (although I myself remember that of 1965 a height of 940 cm instead of 840 cm, but authentic sources on the Internet stated the latter), the boy even made friends with an angler who succeeded in catching three breams. From here we went to the zoo, he enjoyed himself extremely, especially in the giant greenhouse, where he photographed the crocodile and, although it started an endless lamentation of a guard, he stroked one of the tiny marmosets. Homewards he was so tired that, as we were creeping to the underground station, he sat on the curb in front of the Museum of Fine Arts.
As I had a little more time for myself I started to look for a publisher for my manuscripts, both in Hungarian and in English. The previous proved a dead end very quickly, I had to realize that in this country an author with his or her first book would have to pay for the costs too, beside providing the intellectual property. Then I found an ad of a British publisher in Newsweek and contacted it. They were asking for a lot of things in special format and I sent it to them. They were delighted at first, but from financial aspects it would have been even worse that the Hungarian version. At last they wrote that at that time it was inopportune, but they would contact me in case the situation would change. It wouldn’t yet.
I didn’t have more luck with others either. One of them was even weighing up the possibility to accept my proposal about typesetting by myself, but at last it was grounded too. Then I began to turn into defiant and decided to make a website and place my manuscript and pictures there. After all I didn’t write it so as not to be seen or read by anyone. I began to search the Internet for a cheap home page fee and found one. I tried to learn its website building software, but it was too complicated for me. Then I remembered that my fee for the ADSL line includes a free website address too. I started to work with it, but once more I clashed against a wall: my Millennium OS was a great obstacle, almost all needed XP. At last I caved in and got the XP Home. It was however no solution for me. First, my ADSL contract secured some software that was to be upgraded, but, when I did it, my application programs were doing me trouble. They were almost all exclusively for ME and XP blocked them. I had to upgrade them and at last even my scanner could be used. However, I left that website builder, because I found two others that were also free on their basic level.
First I started with Bravehost. It took me a month to establish the homepage, and soon I had some email replies. But it wasn’t so interesting as others, thus, although it can still be visited, no one goes there any more. Then I found Netforall. It was more convenient for me, as it could accept also PDF files and their size was not excessive. However, only those visitors found my website under that address, who knew already what to look for. Search engines wouldn’t go inside such characters as slash that separated my name from that of the mother page. It worked well when I attached my address as a link in an e-mail I wrote.
Beside websites I had other things to do. It is a rule with me that during winter I tolerate any suffering, so as not be forced to go out to a doctor, where a row of acquired bugs would attack me. But as soon as spring comes I make a counterattack. It was the case with my upper bad teeth. There were a few that felt themselves older than they actually were and many times I had to take pills against toothache. Also one of the canines left without my consent and, when I tried to find a dental technician to fill in its place in my denture I found they were keen to make me a complete new one for a sum equal to my monthly pension, but on the opposite to repair my old chewing appliance. I myself had to buy the needed glue and repair it.
I went to the dentist assigned to our range, my daughter-in-law spoke about her positively. I have got different impressions. First of all, in spite of my registration by phone at a certain time, I had to wait more than an hour, I almost left the place as my time was very tight. When at last I was called in the dentist behaved rudely, made reviling remarks on the repair of the denture, wanted to remove all the remaining teeth of mine, and didn’t want to treat me then, only the next time about a week from that time. I had to tell her, it was a service contract and I didn’t like that service at all, I would find another dentist.
To tell the truth I was spoilt a little in that aspect. At the same room I had been treated by another dentist, a man about ten years my senior, and he was the best one I ever knew. When he had gone on pension and he had started to practice only at his home, I followed him, it was worth to pay a little sum and get the best treatment. For about twenty years it went on, then he told me to find someone in place of him, because he was stopping his practice for good. For a time nothing was needed, but there came the day I wrote about in the previous paragraph.
I went to the district outpatient clinic and waited my queue. The dentist on duty was a sympathetic young lady and she agreed to treat me so long as all my current problems be solved. She understood completely my repair problems and wasn’t teasing me about them. She calculated how much to pay and gave me a check to do it. There followed a hard time of about two months, at least four of my mobile teeth were eliminated. Always I had the task to fill their places in my denture, at last it looked as it had been made by me completely. In June I got my brand new upper denture. Only one small mistake had been made: the technician omitted the metallic net to make it more strong. However, the money was paid back to me. She told me she was going to take her holiday. It was bad luck and caused me a lot of suffering as the denture was too tight and for about two weeks it wouldn’t sat in, but as it was already my fourth upper denture – the first one I got at twenty nine – I knew that at last it would fit well.
I wanted to provide myself with a good servicing in other parts of my body. The injury in my knee that I acquired two years before was healing and I was getting better, but still it hurt me and, as I instinctively modified my walking to avoid pain in my knee, it was moving into my hip on the same leg. The specialist was a elderly lady with a great practice and she prescribed me a kind of medicine to be taken for three months. It really did good and in the autumn my walking would be in order.
My search for an online work went on, but without success. I think as our great playwright wrote it: too many Eskimo and too few sea lions. There were too many people looking for jobs. This, however, helped me in my work on the shipbuilding textbook, all my free times went to put my knowledge into it. I extremely enjoyed this work. When I finished a chapter I always did something practical in that field, for example when the chapter Stability was completed, I took a certain ship with all its technical data and made an Excel file for this calculation.
My hard drive contained an ever growing collection of body plans for ships. Every time I found something in the Internet I saved it. And not only those. Years ago I got two fine books as a Christmas present from J. in New York. One of them about the building procedure of the Titanic and the problems arising from its sinking. The other was the renewed edition of Sailing Alone around the World by J. Slocum. He was the first man who rounded the world in a small sailing boat between 1895 and 1898. His book contained also drawings, among others the lines and body plan of the boat Spray. I redrew it in CorelDraw and used it for calculations. J. wrote this year that she had two great thing at the same time: moved into a fine house from the one where she had been living seven years and got her American citizenship.
My grandson celebrated his fifth birthday – children age very fast –, but he couldn’t help doing something wrong, against my advice not to eat raw eggs or meat, he tasted the dough my daughter-in-law was preparing and he got an infection of salmonella. It was terrible to see the small boy in such a helpless situation. For four days only a small fraction of tea and biscuit remained in his stomach, only the fifth day brought his healing. It is wonderful how quickly children recover, on the fifth day he was already urging me to go out somewhere. We went to the Municipal Park and there to the Museum of Transport. He enjoyed it terribly, he was specially interested in the boat St. Jupat, in which two Hungarians were rounding the world – it happened before the change of power in the country. He admired the (relatively) thick running lines to draw up sails and lowering them. Also, his imagination came into motion when he saw the Soyuz capsule, which was used for our astronaut (sorry, it was with the Soviets, so he was a cosmonaut) B. Farkas in 1980. He asked me repeatedly, if it was actually the same cabin that was flying. He was so tired at last that he slept on the bus homewards.
We wanted to arrange an excursion to a nearby bird reserve. We wanted to take the train to the small town Ocsa and there to walk to the reserve. Alas, that year – as I wrote a little earlier – there was a large flood on the Danube, and not only on that river, but almost all over our country. Even far from any rivers or water bodies, inland waters were causing problems on flat meadows. The same thing happened at the bird reserve and we decided to postpone this excursion.
It was June and the heat was depressing. Even when it moderated at last it almost caused trouble for me. A powerful thunderstorm ended the excessive heat and it was the first time in my 65 years that I saw such a phenomenon. I wanted to take a little rest in the upper apartment after lunch, but I soon felt something unusual. A dead silence came and on the horizon I saw completely black clouds. In an instant they covered the sky and rain began pouring simultaneously with frequent flashes of lightning. Both me and my family were locked in because of the torrential rain. However, it was only the beginning. Soon I heard the sound of hail on the roof and the skylight windows and also on the side windowsills small pieces of hail appeared that made me anxious about my fruit trees and grapevines. It took only a minute for them to grow in size and it really was something. Through the side windows I could see hails of the size of eggs bounce and roll. The glass in the skylight gave sounds as if someone had thrown pieces of bricks on to it. I was afraid for the worst as some days before a news program in the TV showed cars damaged in Leipzig by a similar hailstorm. When I went out in twenty minutes at the end of that doomsday I was surprised that there was only a small damage on the grapevines – and even my skylight survived. Later I heard about broken roofs by hail in other parts of the country.
My daughter-in-law began her paid leave and I had a little more time for my own duties, the boy spent more time with her. It was convenient, I could finish my maintenances around the house (painting of the outside steps and windows) and help my son in going on the construction of his new store. The boy with his mother went to have a week’s holiday at the lake Balaton, on Saturday I visited them and we spent the day together. I was swimming with the child at the shore, then we crossed the lake to Tihany on the other side. We climbed the hill to the Abbey Church and visited the museum within. It was a great thing for the five year old boy to see those ancient objects.
The paid leave of my daughter-in-law was not enough for a long stay at home, she resumed her work and it was again my responsibility to provide my grandson with proper pastime. I took him to the Buda hills around the capital, actually at the western side of it. We took the Children’s Railway at its lower terminal in Huvosvolgy and rode to the other end at Szechenyi Hill. From there we descended to the city level with the rack railway. It is interesting that he didn’t get tired from the long route, even I had to make a stop with him at the McDonalds near our place. Well, children age quickly.
As summer neared to its end my grandson became again a kindergarten ‘student’. It is no accident that I used that word: principally it would be his last year there and such ‘graduate’ children were considered candidates for the school. Alas, in the family there were a notion that it was better for the child to stay in the kindergarten one more year, and at last it would come out that way. It goes without saying that my grandson resumed the same cycle as before: one week in the kindergarten, two weeks at home.
The weather was quite unusual for the end of August, it was similar to a drunkard: when he doesn’t drink he behaves rather sensibly, but in case he has access to the drinks he consumes quantities of that. We had such heavy rains that sometimes it was impossible to walk from our home to the kindergarten about five hundred meter away without wet feet. I was convinced that it was the consequence of global warming. However, not everybody shared my opinion, J. for example wrote in her e-mails that this theory was made-up by certain mad scientists. The weather even caused a tragedy in the capital, although it had a great help from silly people. It is our national holiday, 20 August, when in the evening a fireworks is provided that lasts generally thirty minutes. This year a great thunderstorm attacked the capital, about a million people were celebrating and falling trees killed four of them.
The child was already a little more difficult to take on, he selected me as the most fitting mate in his world and he wanted my company even when my wife was there. This year she said goodbye to her employer – better to say it happened the opposite way around – and she became a full time retiree as me. For this reason she wanted to make herself busy and spent as much time with him as possible. The boy loved her too, only when I was around he expected also me to be there. To tell the truth she wasn’t so skilled in the small details, I had been able to learn it already.
During that time I began to read books I had acquired long ago, but had had to put aside for lack of time. It all began two years before when I saw an ad in Newsweek making a statement that in case I pay 7 pounds to them I would get four valuable books (a dictionary, among others). As English was my second language I was drawn into a catch by certain ‘fine turns’ in its language. I did it. However, when I got the package and floated in joy I also got a separate letter from them with the clear instructions how I could keep my books instead of sending them back. Hid in fine print there was a sentence that I had to order four books to validate my membership. I soon forgot my frustration when I saw the fine titles in the catalogue they included. Well, from that time I am a member of that book society.
One of the books was a small one about the life of Mohammed. The original author had been living about 100 years after him, thus he had been completely authentic. At the same time it was translated from Arabic into English by a Hungarian man in India about 150 years ago. Actually the book isn’t the same, as the original’s 1,000 pages became condensed in 250 ones. For me the moral to deduct was a double one. First, the great man was more a founder of a religion, than a prophet, because he had to lift his believers out of idolatry, the same way as Abraham and the other Jewish patriarchs had done. And second, that his religion had been spread more by force than by persuasion, if I want to be a little grotesque, as it would be done by Temujin with his own followers about six centuries later. Even after consolidation it changed little, he was bearing no difference of opinion from his own, “with me or against me”, it was his slogan. The book was not very readable, but instructive.
That topic surfaced between me and J. in our correspondence. The spark was that the extremists again did something that needed to interpret their holy book as they generally do. Those people had long earned my deep disgust for their being so obstinate. Even moderate fellow believers they were considering worth for death, for me they were almost the same category as fundamentalists in the Jewish and Christian religions. Events since that time and sober items in periodicals has convinced me completely that this religion must be upgraded in the same way as Protestantism did to Christianity.
I experienced some troubles with my peripheries at that time. My scanner had hardware fault that sometimes surfaced, but otherwise was working satisfactorily. The service couldn’t beat it off. I had to buy a new one sooner or later. I did it and, as I wanted to get a fine value, not a Chinese one, I chose an HP. To my surprise, when I looked under it, I found a text: “Made in China”. The other item was my Xerox multifunctional device that was a printer, a scanner and fax, but which I could use only – in a limited mode – for a printer with XP, as there was no software for the other functions, the manufacturer wanted to push it out of its palette. This machine I got free, because it was out-of-work, I had it repaired and used it with my ME operation system. Now it was going wrong, its head broke down. This one I didn’t replace, I was sending my files to my son in need of printing and he did it.
With autumn came cooler weather and our gathering excursions focused more on lizards than insects. My grandson was always a great fan of them, but in hot weather they were very fast and he couldn’t catch them. As they tried to hibernate themselves, he found one in a discarded cardboard box and caught it. We made a terrarium and the small reptile was living there some weeks, until it met its death by suffocating: the piece of meal was too big and killed it. The boy had a big sorrow, but I told him, perhaps it would have been eaten already by a crow it he had left it there. Anyway, in the future he would be more careful with fodder in his pets in the terrarium.
Also we had to learn with my son that even a person we thought was friendly can be rather bad natured. As my son advanced with his store – or rather garage – construction our neighbour from backward denounced us at the local government that we were doing it without a permission, and its resolution gave us a mere 30 days for its demolition, ‘because otherwise....’. It was a great lesson for my son, he learned by his own suffering, what it means when he wouldn’t take my advice (I was against his desire to enlarge the building, originally he began to change the wooden planks with brick walls to be able to heat it properly), if he did it, that neighbour wouldn’t became frustrated and he himself had spared himself the demolition of the well made structure that could have remained there for a century. As it happened we had to pay the fee to the architect for the design and had a number of additional costs. Well, the architect arranged it with the authority that we had to demolish only the unnecessary parts. All-in-all it meant my son wasted two years, he began the building at the spring of 2005 and he could start once more two years later.
My grandson spent his days in the kindergarten as before, but his enthusiasm was diminishing. There were some negative things that originated from politics, but of course people can be rude without politics too. One afternoon when I waited him in the waiting area of the building he came to me and was weeping. He told me he brought a small toy with himself in the morning – at that time my daughter-in-law was still working at her old place and her working time was very odd, for this reason she was free to take the boy there – and one of the other children, a gipsy boy who came there first time that day, took it from him. He pointed me out that boy. He admitted taking it, but said it was already his. His mother was sitting there grinning, it didn’t occur to her that it was actually a crime.
That woman was a fine example of the paradox that you like people whom you helped and hate those whom you hurt. Deep in her soul she must have felt that it was hurting my grandson. Several times she insulted me because of thought-up sins of my grandson that actually were committed by her son. She was behaving in a micro-environment that her minority was doing in the whole society. I myself experienced twice silly insults against me riding the bus with my lunch-container in my hand. Twenty-something men of that minority picked at me, even the surrounding passengers were astonished to see such manner.
My daughter-in-law had always been very sympathetic with my attempts to get extra money-sources beside my pension. She arranged me something with her employer that was an errand work, I had to go to the registry court and register data of certain firms, about which that employer had to give an account. It lasted two weeks and I was earning less than I lost in my kilos through the physical exercise. However, it was money and my account showed me a lower balance every month, so I needed it.
I found a better occupation very soon. As I was surfing the net for data I found a website that registered professionals and companies in leisure (or luxury) boating. Even its address was yachtlap meaning yacht site in Hungarian. I tried to register, but it was a little expensive. All the same I registered as a private person that was free. Soon I had a phone call when a man – the owner of that site – wanted to offer me a bargain: he would register me free in the professional section if I return it in translating work, from Hungarian into English and German. We settled it and for a time my reserve funds began to grow on my account.
Alas, there was a big catch in this job too. I had to use a few online dictionaries and somewhere my PC got a virus. Or, better to say, viruses. They did me a lot of concern and at last I couldn’t use my e-mail. Even the Task Manager wouldn’t open. I had to ask my son to help. He checked it and told me I had four viruses that infected 1,400 of my files. He collected all software that he could and in three days he succeeded in debugging my computer. After that he gave me very strict instructions what to do and what not. From that time I haven’t got any such problem.
In a few cases I had got translation tasks also from abroad, however, they were rare as a blue diamond. Sometimes even a little funny. Once I got one and a half page from a Scottish woman to translate, even that was almost empty, at most ten lines altogether. I had to organize an international cooperation for it, namely it was a birth certificate in German from 1929, and it contained a lot of cursive writing. I asked the man from Switzerland for whom I did the translation of lyrics for music one year earlier and asked him to send me back the text in typing. (He was my debtor, I also did him a favour by getting him a printing press here for the printing of his posters.) He apologized that he was not very skilled at black (Gothic) letters and forwarded it to an acquaintance in the former GDR, as they were much better with black letters. In the meantime I didn’t rest either, and until that time when at last I got the reply from the GDR lady via the Swiss man I almost guessed what it all could be. It goes without saying I asked nothing for it from the Scotswoman, but she promised me to send other jobs to do. So far she didn’t manage.
I mentioned already my problems with the growing prices of energy. That made me search for data in three fields: photovoltaic, wind energy and ground-coupled heat pump. Alas, my money would have been only enough for one of the two previous, but then I would have remained without any reserve. I tried to find possibilities, for example taking on being a reference for a pilot project, but nothing could be found. Anyway, I made calculations and also sketches for two types of wind turbines, one an axial and the other a radial turbine. I wanted to make a model in a one to five scale for each, but so far it hasn’t come true yet. For the photovoltaic I found out that there are such hitches as a hailstorm, and I didn’t want to lose a big sum by a weather factor or go to court against either a manufacturer or an insurance company.
As for the heat pump, the biggest handicap is for me that I don’t know the geological data of my locality and it were needed for calculation. The manufacturer – or rather the representative of that here in this country – was very keen to help me, but I don’t have the money to start. I think, at last it will be the best solution for me. At present there are two apartments in my house and both are heated centrally by gas fired boilers and radiators. A heat pump sound at 120 m depth could perform about four kilowatts of heating on a heat exchanger of two kilowatts of electric consumption. On a water temperature of thirty five 
C it could provide a basic heating down to five C ambient temperature. That means there would only be any gas consumption under five degrees. More than half of the money paid out for gas could be saved. All these plans of mine had to be shelved, but I think someone can realize them at some time.
Well, this winter passed too, there were again flues, colds, and at last the spring of 2007 came. I had a very dense time during winter because of my new job and it was hard to solve that sometimes I spend a few hours with my grandson too. He liked my reading to him, sometimes I taught him a few things needed in the school. I still hoped that at last my daughter-in-law would change her mind and support the boy’s going to school. I also made forms with prewritten letters to make him easier to learn writing. Reading was easier for him, but writing didn’t attract him too much. Actually it doesn’t matter, the women in the family won and it was decided that he would stay another year in the kindergarten.
The spring brought me more work. It happened actually in January that the owner of the website invited me into a restaurant in the inner city, where a business meeting of the staff took place. Some years earlier they had a printed monthly magazine, but it must have been stopped. That time it was decided that it would be restarted beside the website. The language of the periodical was to be Hungarian, but every item was to have a short summary in English. They wanted me to do translation work. The first big package arrived on my e-mail address in March and to the end of April it must have been completed. That meant about ten thousand characters daily in English, in German I wasn’t able to go above six thousand.
Every second year I had an ugly job to do in the spring: technical inspection of my car. That year it was already nineteen years old and it had been ten years before that I paid a large sum for renovating its body and repainting. I purchased the right type of catalyst and gave the car into the service to prepare it for the inspection. I expected a high bill for all the work, but it pushed me back what actually resulted. Almost a whole monthly pension of mine was needed to settle it. And it was only the beginning. After my logbook was validated we used the car, but its clutch was faulty. I had a hard time to discover that the hose connecting the fluid container to the hydraulic cylinder had been loosened on purpose. Someone in the service did it to force me to return to them. I repaired it and bled the system, this problem was solved.
My grandson was six in that May and from that time on he had to buy a ticket on a bus or tram. Funny, up to that time his trip was free and I had to use my monthly ticket. It was almost the same time when I became a free rider and he had to pay for it. Once more we were reminded of the truth that time was passing and children were aging.