25-VII-2005.
Now with my girls gone, David on vacation and me having enough time, I took to close the hole where the old Westinghouse AC was. I just cut the lower part of the old front door, using the electric jigsaw. Measured it precisely, so it fit snugly. Then I added a layer of sheetrock aka plasterboard, just to have an extra layer of insulation. Had a couple of hours of fun with that.
The tomatoes in the old bathtub and pots were ripe, finally, so at least I ate something decent. Don't know what did I really eat these days, I'm no cook, my gastronomic achievements consist of barbecue, scrambled eggs, microwaving and can opening. But my salads were damn good.
I got the belgian visa, valid starting this day. Which I, of course, can't use unless it's some time in august - after that, 5th of september or so, my H-1B expires, and if I travel anywhere abroad, I can't return.
My girls were in Belgrade at the US embassy (and generally strolling around) to extend their aitch four visas for the remaining 40 days or so.
These days I'm playing gPlanarity, a nice game of patience and, ahem, topology (not quite all of functional analysis). Over the years (adding this paragraph in 2022, the rest I wrote in 2013) I got to 144th level, though I think I once got far beyond that, but the config files got lost when moving to a new OS.
I got tocunted with lack of breakfast knives like those at home. Here the breakfast is not alike at all - it's either a sandwich or cereals with milk, nobody spreads and lays one bite at a time nor cuts a slice when needed, they spread and slice it all in advance, they must be all highly skilled in knowing exactly, in advance, how hungry they are. So the spreading knives don't cut, and the cutting knives have a sharp tip, so you can't scoop the spread from the bottom of the vessel and keep punching through the butter wrapper. So I becunted and took one of these cutting knives, put it to the grinder and made a round tip. There, a breakfast knife.
More emails with Škrba...
That's the logic of megdonalds... have a procedure that even the dumbest dumbamaros will be able to learn (because you don't want to hire those at least literate, they'd ask an honest pay), and a procedure to control the procedure, and ride on. Here when something goes belly up, they don't look for who caused it, but for the guy who didn't stick to the procedure. Think about this...
It's fascist, but useful from the viewpoint of the work discipline of an average Serb. The idea drinks water*.
No!, as my boss would say. That's one of the issues where we're at an advantage, compared to Amers. They are forbidden to think... almost the mental composition we found back then in Hungarija, when Ileš would becunt and start cursing [to them] Janoš Kadar (Kádár János) and [telling them] to kick him out of [their] head for once. In both system anyone who starts thinking and having ideas is screwed. In socbloc they waited for orders from Pešta, from party or whoever, and here from quarterhead company (company headquarters or summat), boss or whoever. Just like in any other hierarchy, getting job done is irrelevant, it's more important to insert** yourself up and stomp down. And then anyone who does something his own way risks to even succeed, thus becoming dangerous to those above, attracting the ire of directly competing peers, and sabotage from below - the hierarchical version of neigbor's cow. So they strictly learn not to make waves, and to do exactly nothing that wasn't written down. Checklist rulez. That goes so far that when in a shop you ask for something, the answer is strictly limited to yes and no, we don't have that (eg. boss was here last year, needed a sim card for his debile). The clerk's mind didn't come up with „We have another shop in the other pavillion of this mall, where they have it“ until we specifically asked for it.
This mentality is on the strict list of things I don't want to bring home.
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* the proverb actually goes „the barrel holds water until the majstors go away“, so for years it was „this still holds water“. When and how it got diverted into „drinks water“? Me neither.
** „uvlačiti se“ is literally „to indrag oneself“, i.e brownnosing
Mentions: David Krakovski, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Ileš Notaroš, majstor, in serbian