History may put this entry off by a couple of days back and forth. This is the day before the independence of Slovenia, announced a few days ago, becomes official. Or not - the republic is still legally a part of the federation, and the federal constitution has no provision for secession, unless maybe with the consensus of other members. Sitting in the evening by the keyboard of one of the Acrotech's machines, probably a 16mHz 286 with a Hercules bw video card and a simple crt, I hear radio Novi (Vita Simurdić or Jovan V Nikolić at the helm) play, in the last minutes of the day, Tomaž Domicelj and his "Vlak na jug" (train to south), where the chorus goes
"zdravo, Jugoslavija, kako si / zakaj se delaš da me ne poznaš"
[hello, Yugoslavia, how are you / why do you pretend that you don't know me]
Which is the old Arlo Guthrie's song, just replacing California... with a completely different text. And I knew Tomaž's text from before, it's a gastarbajter's song. But now the meaning is turned upside down. And Tomaž himself will reissue the song on another album, with „zdaj se delam da te ne poznam“ (now I pretend I don't know you).
Shit. I loved this country.
That evening I was putting together some of the texts for that specialization paper in ventura (under bundled GEM, the Windows version wasn't ready yet).
Around this time we of DBA hit Žabalj. There was some guy, a CPA but, incongruously enough, a hunk of a guy, who used our apps in his work, and who kept bringing us more customers from the place. There was the local wholesale and retail chain, some small production unit, they made electric fans and were founded by their Students', a wheat mill, and few more small commerce firms. My job was mostly the mill, where a cute young blonde was my liaison, somewhat disabled, limped seriously. We cooperated quite well those fisix times I was there.
Once we delivered there one of those tall machines from Savo Brandić, and of course, the modem was an afterthought. Next time, as I was quickly done with what I had (that sum of taxes which I kept in the SumPor.dbf table, and then couldn't recognize when I saw it all uppercase few weeks later, as sumpor=sulphur...), it fell on me to install the modem. Luckily they had a proper RJ-11 outlet, so I didn't have to use nail clippers to bare the two middle wires and screw them into the old type plug, I only had to screw the modem in and plug the cable into it. While I was under the table, one of the ladies asked „majstor, can a coffee?“ (the proper phrase, the question with third person „can“ means „is it okay if“), „sure, no sugar, anytime!“... and I kept working down there. By the time she brought it, I was already at the keyboard and checking the connection to the home office (I knew the password by heart, still do, the first 11 initials of our names, in more or less chronological order of employment), and as she lowered the cup on the desk, began „ow professor muchly sorry I didn't know, I appologize“... What was that? Well, Grgi whispered into her ear that I'm not a majstor, but rather a mathematician, a professor...
They took us for late lunch, not into the „Odiseja“ (where we ate once, nice place but awful echo, can't talk at all) but rather into some hole-in-a-wall in some backstreet, closer to the mill. Excellent fish čorba, and also roast fish... Just after the čorba some older guy comes from the other table, says „sorry couldn't but overhear that you're from Zrenjanin... well, so am I, I have a burek shop here, and I'm doing fine and it's all nice, but when I hear Zrenjanin I feel the pull...“ and then went on waxing of his nostalgia. Brata. Grgi and I just exchanged glances with our host and said nothing, but when we got into the car... What the... I mean it's barely 20km, get on the bike, pedal to town, have your fill of joy and go back for dinner. You can do so every day, what's stopping you...
8-I-2010 - 12-I-2026