22-VIII-2015.
Went to visit Lena at her place in Novi Beograd. Easy trip, no fuss, and nice cloudy weather - after ten weeks of frying and a week of more or less cool and lots of rain. Brought her the goods from home - our best tomatoes, fifty eggs (while we were out in the US they switched the cartons from dozens to tens*), few hundred euros to cover her rent (even though she's fully capable to pay it herself without a wink, the deal is a deal).
Went to eat. There was nowhere to sit in „Durmitor“, we didn't feel like going all the way to Džakarta, so we went to Klen or Dren or some such hardwood, where rasejani met a couple of weeks ago (or after?). We saw Magi briefly on the parking, but he didn't recognize us, and I wasn't sure it was him, he changed in these five years... but later confirmed it was him.
The place is not bad at all, the cook is an ace, the location is an unbelievable nook between highway, a busy street (which would take us to Džakarta just a few blocks down) and a nondescript zone of warehouses and car washes, which still manages to look as if it were carved into a mountain side.
The downside was that it attracts montagnari, and we were exposed to half an hour oration by a few of them at four tables away, about who knows what wrongs that someone did to someone else, something about cheating on land sale or inheritance, someone's lawyer being bribed or whatever. I don't expect those guys to change accent or dialect - they had a couple of generations' time to do that, and if they still didn't, then they won't, period. I expect them to learn not to speek so loud, there are no hills to shout from and to.
Three days later dad called, his TV is malfunctioning. It's not, really, it works as it always did, it's that the analog signal isn't broadcast anymore. It went in parallel with the digital for a few months, now that's over and they want to cram many more digital channels in the space the two dozen analog channels were occupying. I tried to explain it to him, but no, says call a majstor. Yeah, right, someone to take good money from you and install another silly adapter, and you already got one, from emtyess, for IPTV. To cut the story short, I just went to the furniture store on once bager, bought a moderately large TV, nothing fancy, just about 80cm diagonally. Brought it, and while I was unpacking it, he asked what was I doing. „Fixing your teevee“.
Didn't end there, he now had to learn a remote with a few buttons more. And after a powerout, the set would reset, the source picker would be in wrong position. Things of that kind will happen about every three weeks.
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* wrong, I misremembered. The cartons were 10 eggs here since last few forevers.
Mentions: 05-VII-2017., 13-V-2023., bager, Džakarta, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), majstor, rasejani, in serbian