That's the date on my driver's license, the one I wanted to extend in 2005 but the cops said that for returning gastarbeiter it doesn't matter if it expires. For this one, a couple of days before, a cop stopped me while I was just leaving the offices (then in Pašićeva) and wanted to check, of all things, my hand brake. Told me to pull it up, then tried to push me - and it gave in easily. Told me to fix that ASAP, then asked for my license, and seeing that it expires in a couple of days, told me to head straight to their offices to get a new one. "Or else you would have to pass the driver's exam all over again"
Good man.
That day I was rebuilding PolC in serbocroatian, as we were trying to pull up a demo for the city hospital. The demo went swimmingly, Avai appeared there at its best, with ready answers for nearly everything (the fact that Gradek's father was prominent among the spectators helped too), but it turned into nothing, as plans for something big, from Siemens or who knows where, were already in the works. Not that those ever materialized, but were enough to give us a no go.
The nice thing was that I called the main event, the contact between the doctor and the patient, a session. The other team, who also presented their stuff (before us or after us, probably on a different day, so I didn't see any of that) called the same thing an "episode of treatment", which one of the main doctors took almost as an insult. They were doomed just for that.
But then we were doomed just as well, because the hospital, in the end, couldn't decide for itself, it's a part of the state's health system, and as in any other state held things, the decisions are made in Belgrade. For smaller stuff they may do something if it fits their budget, and we may have sneaked through that way, but the bosses didn't want it small. And there was always the danger that it could happen just like it did with cadaster (books of the land) in a few municipalities, where they had good apps from DBA and used them happily for a couple of years, and then were saddled with the apps which the state bought from Informatika Belgrade, which were far worse (and are still in use, still not much better than they were then). The girls there literally cried when they saw what they had to use.
Around this time, this year or next, Lena was playing in the other street. There were still many unbuilt lots, so pedestrian traffic between the streets was normal. Even I almost never asked anyone who'd give me a ride to drive me all the way, over our cobblestones, because there was a missing piece in the main street, the asphalt was ending two blocks before, so I'd get off there and carry my bags the rest of the way through this street, and would then take a diagonal shortcut through the unbuilt lots.
And it happened that a dog bit her in that other street. Not any regular avlijaner*, of which each street has at least a handful, but a scottish sheppard. Obviously abandoned by its owners, who probably didn't now have the wherewithal to feed themselves properly, let alone such a big beast. Such cases happened often lately, luckily no tattweilers, rottweilers and them... what was its name, eh - brad pitt bullshit.
She took her to zzzzz, just like she once took Nina for hedgehog bites, but this time they didn't hurry with a serum, seeing how she had no symptoms of anything, but decided to wait for the analysis. They have reported the case, the dog was caught and its head was sent to Pasteur institute in Novi.
Then the wait for the results took unusually long, and the institute didn't answer the calls. So some time around the second week of wait, someone dropped by the institute along with some other errand he had in the town. Turns out the institute's phones were cut off for unpaid bills.
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* avlija - turkish loanword, yard. Avlijaner sounds german, but actually means a mongrel of general mixed origins.