On 3rd, went to gimnazija to enroll. I was nauseous somewhat, what with the thick smoke in the girls' toilet, where Tejka and Dragana were filling the application form for me. At least I had someone to mock - Zova. Sat with him at vodotoranj, along with some old guy with one and a half leg, who was mocking someone else, of same age. "See those two girls there? You couldn't fuck either of them, while these two could... You've played off yours". Then to us: "Look at that one! Would you be able to fuck her?". The exemplar in case was a real sex bomb, a true masterpiece. "Why not". "When was the last time you fucked?". Ouch... Zova and I looked at each other. Sure, it wouldn't cross our minds to tell the old man that we never did it. So he said "ah... couple of months ago". "What, grab the first one then into the park, eh?". I said "Nah, tent is better". "Tent?". "Yeah, at least you get to lie down on something, park is just trouble, no good place".
One of these days I made the best portrait of Dragana, a 3/4 portrait. She came with the new hairdress, done by her sister, and it was unusually short in front. She just turned to say "no", meaning that she didn't want to have a picture, and that's when I clicked. Perfect.
And Melanija sent me a postcard from the coast, then a letter. She seems to have the same idea, keep it warm but don't fan the flames.
BTW, finally saw "2001: a space odyssey" last tuesday, must be 31st of august.
On 4th, Tejka came. First I wasn't in the mood, so she mostly chatted with mom, but then when we were alone, she started about music, prompted by the 202 switching, as we sat, from something really good to some neofolk (!). And then she spilled the beans on how "she used to love 202 above all, but now she can't stand the domestic pop, all those broken hearts and endlessly repeating refrains, sweets for the sentimental fools". Then we switched to talk about studio B, with their "wishing fountain", which was where they played songs for the asking - which is anyone who'd buy Borba, clip the coupon and send it along with the song they wanted played and the dedication. There were many such programmes at the time, and pretty soon there were many local stations who lived on that, they didn't have much else but that, where people would pay just to have their name and some peace of their wit broadcast. On studio B it was just one dinar, or 1,50, to get the coupon. Doesn't even make much money that way, but it boosts the sale of Borba.
I explained how I made fake stereo - put both the transistor and the old radio to play the same, then set my head in the middle. Excellent effect.
So yeah, this counts as a small victory. Not mine, though, I just helped - Pišta and his brother are into Hendrix, they have a bunch of albums, and now she switched sides.
In other news, it's not Josipa who will join Korni Grupa, it's some guy Zdravko Čolić, who used to sing in Ambasadori. Oh well, it's an imperfect world.
The photos came back from Cinephoto, 221 dinars for the 32 shots, ouch, that's quite steep. And the size isn't much - 75x105 mm (the weird format didn't make sense until I recalculated it into inches).
The first day of 2nd grade in gimnazija was on 6th. The first grade was general; starting from now we (divisions 3 to 5, and the hungarian in 6) will have more classes in maths and science, while the others (divisions 1 and 2) will do more social studies and languages. For this, the original divisions from the first grade were recomposed, so we lost about a half of the folks from the last year, and got just as many girls from the previous I/1 (which was a girls-only division). Of those, I knew many from elementary (Dragana, Tejka, Bosa, Oli Boj, Milica, Savka).
The director made a speech, where he didn't forget to mention that we're completely free to grow hair as long as we want - at home. In this school, however... Not that it was enforced all the time on everybody, but you never knew when you'd be picked up to be a showcase. And then it could get nasty.
We got the small classroom in the corner, facing the DJ's cabin in the yard, unfortunately between the staff room and the front part of the building, and this proximity to their eyes brought undue attention to us. Not that we weren't doing what everyone else was doing (and more and worse), it's that we were caught more times than we should. At least we learned to cover our tracks and misdo (do the misdeeds, right?) quietly. Didn't work quite swimmingly each time.
The first week is a lottery. We don't get any advance notice on who'll our professors be. For maths, all of a sudden, that nasty girl, who was standing in for Radoje until he returned from the vojska, appears. Gives us a series of nasty exercises with square roots, which we aren't quite familar with, and confused us completely. Ouch, this year is already turning bad. And it's a double feature, i.e. we had two math classes in a row. But then for the next class, Radoje appears. Says there was some confusion about who teaches where, cleared out now. A collective sigh of relief. Says he went to the class as listed, saw all unfamiliar places, then went to the principal and the case got solved. Fourth class, biology, promised the same level of difficulty that this first math class did. The lady is huge, and doesn't seem to be in a good mood ever. Fifth class we celebrated again, seeing Sonja. Sixth, the new latin guy. Whoa. The Dedica has retired, and we got this nasty looking... whatever. Relatively young, but already with a magister title and a bald spot, not tall at all but with a big round head with nasty wrinkles all over the face in near future - we nicknamed him Spužva (sponge, in croatian) on the spot. He seemed promising to make a PhD soon, speaks two or three dead languages and a couple of live ones, and quickly realizes that the old man has held us on a very very loose leash, and solemnly promises to rectify that. He shot a dozen of nasty remarks, specially on Slavka (picked at random, I'd guess), while at the same time declaring that he's doing all this for our sakes, that he considers us full persons, yet indirectly calling us asses.
(few years later he did have some trouble, was eventually arrested as a croatian nationalist, with connections to some ultra-dark catholic circles etc... didn't end well)
This is the worst, for the day.
For history, the same old guy ast last year, trying to discipline us again. Since Tejka and I were sharing the rear middle desk, of course we'd exchange a sentence or two, but it seems the lesson was important or he was short of nerves, so he moved her first, then me too, to sit in the front desk doorside, till the end of the year.
This had one unexpected effect... He kept a repository of funny things the students have said, most of them probably caused by the stage fear he gave them. I decided that we can't be too stupid compared with professors, so I started writing down what he said... but soon I found there is only one professor and there are twenty six (or seven) of us, and we are the far better source of goofs, by sheer power of numbers. I kept with it until the end, and while I was preparing my matricular paper, I practiced typing by retyping all those sidenotes. I had them on textbook margins, between the notes in the notebooks, on bus tickets and pretty much anywhere where I thought they wouldn't get lost. Ended up with 88 typed pages, with minimal line spacing, which I'd always bring to each maturski and everyone could refresh their memory. Eventually Staša scanned it, everyone got their copy as 88 jpg images.