16-IX-2017.

This year the annual maturski of IV_5pp was at Jasmina - her treat, she got her son married. My duty was to bring the audiovisual stuff, i.e. the same gugolj laptop and the speaker boxes, with the slide show of old pictures and the selection of rock'n'pop music of the time. Opting for cab, I managed to find a bag where it would all fit - the bag Lena used for school.

Took a cab to Lesnina and climbed up to Dragana's place, hauling all the equipment on my shoulder. Brief hug and I felt her ribs, said "more!". She still needs a couple kilos to add. When she was ready, we took another cab, and it turned out the cabbie was an old friend of hers. Like many do, the cab is the last resort when your career ends several years before retirement time.

Once there, I realized I knew the place - she lives right across from Brata. When I tried to set up the laptop and sound, I realized I didn't quite fit everything into the bag - the AC adapter for the laptop was missing. Tried anyone who hasn't arrived yet, to see if he got one (Staša - nope, he got a different one, Baki has one, in Bosnia - so if there's a quick transportation to be arranged...). Then crossed the street to see Brata. Tried his wife's, but it's an HP, incompatible. He's been through some nasty surgery recently and obviously hasn't made a full recovery yet. So if it's some consolation for him to say that I've got old, well - so be it, and besides, we didn't see each other since 1994. My beard is now almost all white (not quite but not easy to spot) and the hairline has taken some evasive action.

So Jasmina's husband had to pick a few things anyway - some meds from a pharmacy halfway to my place, and then the lady who made the pogača, somewhere near the school where I once worked. What I said last week about her driving, husband is no better, avoid the same.

So we got the adapter but, dang, at home it was hooked into that american power strip (retrofitted to 220V, it's just that it takes american plugs) so it didn't come with the adapter. Well, took that piece of cable from Brata's adapter.

The gang gathered in the usual way - Baki came from Bosnia again (or is he more here than there these days), Žara, Mandža, Čombe, Staša and, 2nd year in a row, Sredljak. Mjedac couldn't make it, but we had a surprise - Biljana appeared out of the blue. Haven't seen her since that mess with our phone line, when she was working the 2nd line of defense behind the post office counters, and gave me some good advice where to go and whose sleeve to pull. She almost never appears at these, regularly citing some family business, usually wedding, disease, death or even a moba once. Somehow this time the family managed itself for an afternoon. And we heard her husband is actually actively trying to get her to go out a little, but she won't budge.

The lady with pogača turned out to be the Božana from stour, some kind of secretary to Žića back then. Of course we had a few minutes to reminisce.

We had a telepresence, via skype or viber, of Oli Boj ("she doesn't make house calls" - Baki) on someone's phone, which dragged for a while but then we didn't all try to catch every word, she was the worry of whoever got the phone at the moment.

It was still daylight when we split. Came home in time for dinner... and we just decided that the day is still young. So we went to pivnica again, for some more photos and beer. That guy with the guitar wasn't there, well, some other time.

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Mentions: Biljana Grgurević, Branislav Rade (Baki), Brata Avramov, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Gradivoj Raža (Žara), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), gugolj, IV_5pp, Jasmina Vlajin, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joško Čobzanin (Čombe), Lesnina, maturski parastos, moba, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Olivera Stojanović (Oli Boj), pivnica, Slavoljub Mandić (Mandža), Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), stour, Žića, Živko Mjedenica (Mjedac), in serbian