15-VII-2022.
Nothing much all week. The weather was getting nicer, but unfortunately no rain reached us, got to Čenta and Orlovat and no closer. Belgrade was flooded, even the Novi - Lena sent me a video of water gushing around the building, next block east from their apartment. It's up to the balls, waist in places. Luckily, they're in Istra, with Api.
Didn't go to Peskara, weather being cool enough. Made more noodles, she cooked more tomato juice, put up some cucumbers to pickle.
Two evenings ago (ser. preksinoć) I started watching, for the third time, Babylon 5. It took a whole week to download from a torrent (link provided by Boća in an oldwave email). I transfered the whole first season to the two new flash drives, of 32G each, because Daffy (i.e. Warner bros) finally moved a dick and paid for a decent restauration. What Netflix had on devedees was a dog's dick, probably a veeaitchess rip. This now is how it was supposed to be looking and how it was shot. I watched it from disks in 2008 or 9, then downloaded from somewhere and watched at ease in winter 2011-12. The best SF series ever, Stari drek* is below wiping their shoes.
Džimi has new kittens, and they're in the van tyres that serve as bench post. The birch seeds are already everywhere, and it won't stop shedding them until october. The world's dumbest breeding program - it drops these seeds by thousands, and yet I haven't seen, in these thirty years, any new birches sprouting around.
Bilja reports that the first package arrived (they never send a phone together with anything else, some regulation), she didn't open it. Well I don't expect you to bring the whole package intact... did you ever make a trip to Romania? To which she laughed, but true, this is about as close to smuggling ordinary retail stuff as one can get nowadays.
The visits on Byo (now a fully owned subsidiary of sGradlj.com, just with a separate counter) are progressing fine, actually doing better than the mother ship, except there's about just one visitor, who started reading at about middle of eighties, and went on, sometimes reading a hundred pages a day. Now there's just a few pages left, as of this morning he's (or she's, dunno) at 19-VI-2022., less than a month, so he should read this today if I publish it fast enough. This is to ask the person to write on burundi any impressions, fire at will, just so I can have some feedback. I'm writing this for fifteen years now, and have no clue how does it look. Probably interesting enough, if there's at least one person who reads it.
Now this is the craziest triper of a communication... leaving a message in an unfinished book, for the reader to stumble upon... himself.
Reminds me of that joke about a whodunit, when in the end it's not the butler, not this guy, not that guy... so who's the killer then? The reader is.
In the evening I saw he read this first (as it were at the time) and then the previous article (of ninth), and stopped there. No feedback. Too bad, this kind of entanglement deserved one more round of play.
On eighteenth the mother site surpassed Byo. The guy just dropped by and re-read this and the previous article; the other twentysome visits were by some UA from Paris. With just about thirty people being left there, I can easily guess who it was. Then on nineteenth there were zero views, and stayed more or less so for next two weeks - the guy from Paris read a few more - and on the mother site it dropped to 20-40 a day. Eh, back in 2015 200 was the norm.
In the morning I went to the old house to mow the grass. Not much of a problem, the draught is now into its second month and nothing grew too much. Talked with the neighbor behind, who mows the part behind the corner, left him my phone number, told him to pick the two peaches if he ever sees any fruit on them, also to take out the horseradish when the time comes, I never come around to do it, just leave two roots for me, that'll be more than enough. Met also Zina's father, a driving instructor, says he had a proper flu, they don't make them like that anymore, this was something last century brand, full week (treated or not), with lungfulls of rich slime, not corona, felt taste all the time and corona has dry cough.
In the evening Nina went to the gym with Vera, so I sms'd Dragana that we'll be late at least half an hour. Of course, Nina has her own definition of timing, so we were exactly one hour late for the 78th frendz parti, doesn't matter, Dragana and Borko didn't get too far with their drinks. First we exchanged places, at our request, you two against the wall, and we against the AC, just turn it off and don't worry, we're immune. They both have this habit of getting a stiff back if the AC blows straight at them. And then she discovered it's better this way - the spare chair is now on her left, it's not offleg as it was before. Well if we can say offhand...
The discussion was quite interesting, as Borko pressed on defending his notion that he did right when he refused his daughters when they asked if he could be their friend, because it's small and passing thing, he's a parent, which is higher and (his) lifelong thing. Ow, man, you managed to make it either-or and introduce a hierachy in a single move.
Nobody minded the clock, the talk was varied and altogether interesting, good fun (still have to ask for a definition of „semiautomatic underpants“). Amazingly, we saw a cab just leave the station at 3:30, and even more miraculously, they had another one in three minutes. Sometimes it takes three phone calls at 1:30 to get one.
On twentieth, after lunch I went to pay the month's bills, at Milena's aunt (the payment and exchange kiosk). The uncle died a couple of weeks ago, colon cancer, tried to cure it by diet. The aunt is not a half of the chick she was a couple of months ago (when she looked like Pasa, twenty years younger). Looks five years older, all of a sudden.
In the evening, a surprise - Jan announced that certain „Jan“ (here he used his name here, in Byo) thinks of dropping by, with his son, some time this year. Date to be specified.
Talked with Lena on skype, in the evening, while Nina was with Vera in the gym. The situation at the job is getting worse - she got a raise, but not the estimated 15% (and her regular review in september had fallen through the cracks of organizational chaos), rather some 6,5%, and about 30% of workforce was laid off. None of the various VPs of this or that, managers, lifecoaches, cheerleaders (yes, there's a position like that) were fired. All four trannies are also still there. She said she checked the roster, by age-in-office („staž u firmi“) and she and Milan are already in the top ranks there - only the three founders are there longer than they. And yet all of those eight initial programmers, who built the product and thus the company, are still in the same positions as then - all those VPs and managers who came later now outrank them.
There's a job out there, where they could make 200K$ instead of current 60K€.
Not the first nor the last time that a good software company, with a solid product and good sales, was ruined by influx of investor money, which expands it beyond recognition. The political correction they applied along the way is just a cherry on top.
On 21th, 6th time on Peskara this year, without baba - she stayed at home to cook tomato juice. We went earlier, around 14:30, and found ample parking space, I took a lot barely 10m from the gate. The rush begins a hour or two later, and they don't begin dispersing until 18 at least. It seems that many come after work, and then the younger ones just move on into the night on the town, or on the spot, there are a couple of taverns right there. Took no pictures, she had another set of remarks on one recent photo, didn't like how she looked on it, the angle was all wrong, and somehow I didn't feel like doing it, the charm was gone for a walk.
Crossed my mind: there's no finished autobiography.
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* old dreck, i.e. old shit
Mentions: Really, why?, Version 1.1, 19-VI-2022., Api, Biljana Lajković (Bilja), Božidar Sokolović (Boća), burundi, Byo (Byo), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Milan Nastić, Milena Požarić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), oldwave, sGradlj.com, Spasenija Višnjić (Pasa), staž, triper kombinacija, UbiquAgora (UA), Vera Vraneš, Zina, in serbian