27-IV-1978.
Finally passed an exam. Since the Numela (numeric methods of linear algebra) in september, this is the first: functions of multiple variables and complex analysis, a whopper of a subject. By the time one gets finished with the complex functions, most of the weird surface or curvilinear integral stuff just evaporates. Should have been two exams, really. This exam is the reason I am formally enrolled into third year, because this is from the second year's curriculum. While it was OK to drag one or two exams from one year to the next, you couldn't drag two years. Well, one off my chest. Now for the rest.
The lady who rent us the room (just a converted shed with thin walls, but at least we had a sink and a tankless water heater... well it did have a tank but only 5l) had two dogs. An old little pekinezer bitch and a huge young scottish shepard, the kind that Dennis the menace had. These days he got into a rut, and would straddle her, but his dick was about 25cm above her tail, so no contact there, but he rocked it for real and would go on for a while even after she walked away. We found that hilarious, and I was lucky that I didn't have a tele lens at the time - I'd probably spend too many frames trying to catch the scene.
The cups are romanian, not as ugly as they were able to make them.
Our walls were full of pinups from Playboy, Lui and even Start (the croatian version of the same, but with serious text in between). By our counting (and the duty would usually fall to me) we had a few hundred tits, about a hundred cunts and I don't even remember how many asses in view at all times. We got them mostly from assistants (not actually Paja but two other guys) and Ljuba's former landlord (from 2nd year) after they'd discard them. So thumbtacks everywhere, and sometimes sticky tape. This was actually a repeat of what we did last year, with the advantage of a lower ceiling.
I sometimes wondered where were these guys getting those magazines, but then there were probably places in Belgrade and Novi Sad where the imported tirage was sold, with probably import prices, but these were guys with some income and no worries - and mostly no time to squander the money on booze and partying (about which I was probably wrong - I later heard they just didn't do restaurants, booze was a domestic affair, over chess mostly), so they could afford it.
The hospiting (i.e. practice teaching) didn't turn out too bad for either of us, though I was never in the same group with either Ljuba nor V.J., so I didn't see how they were doing. I got a "your classes will not be boring" from our mentor colleague. I remember I got some geometric construction to do, and it got quite complicated, and the blackboard was (green and) rather wet, and the girl who got up to do it was getting lost in details a few times, but in the end it we succeeded together. The other time it was something simpler and not memorable at all. Of course, all of this hospiting was done in the cream of the cream of Novi high schools, one of the two downtown gimnazijas, with smart kids from better families, parents mostly from university, larger firms with seats in town, old city families or just plain province administration and/or politics. Completely unrepresentative of what real life will be.
The shot is from 1982.
About this time LebarProm opened its so-called dragstor in the sidestreet, behind the end of Gimnazijska street. It came across as completely otherworldly, in compliance with the new school of design, in a style which was previously applied only on Sava centar (aka Kebs pyramid - KEBS being the conference on european safety and cooperation) last year. This is where they completely gave up on the attempts to hide all those air ducts and cable conduits, but rather left them hanging as they were, under the ceiling (which, in case of Sava centar, simply didn't exist in most of the space), painted in lively colors and became a part of the aesthetics. Here in the dragstor they were bright red, which somehow strangely fit with the shiny black marble floors and walls covered with large dark tiles. Some architecs was set loose on it, and did the job swimmingly. And that was supposed to be open 24 hours a day, and so it was, at least for a few years. We didn't drop by too many times, didn't need anything from it most ot the times, but when we happened to, it was nice, smelling of fresh bread and pastry.
Until then their stuff was sold a corner away, in a double sized kiosk set at the corner of „Crvenkapa“ (Red Riding Hood, kids' clothing shop), and it was somehow sad, the kiosk had no heating and you could never buy pogačice while still warm. Now this was much better.
Mentions: gimnazija, LebarProm, Ljubivoje Tomić (Ljuba), Novi Sad, Paja Ćurčić, pogačice, in serbian
10-III-2020 - 18-X-2025