07-VI-2021.
Jaca called yesterday, but we were somewhere with the girls, so then I called her. Got her husband, said they'll give year to Teja on saturday. Asked how did we survive the year under corona, I said "weak year indeed, got only hundred liters of rakija, the year before we got two hundred". He said it was the best answer he got so far.
In the morning I went to the cops HQ to get the traffic licence for Joda, finally somewhere to go on a bicycle. That's this cute building across from the busodrome, and it's always busy. That's where they do IDs and passports, traffic and drivers' licences, and ever since the epidemic the queue is outside, looks like a čerga (gypsy camp). They seem to be working even slower than before. Luckily, no wait this time, done that last time, just handed the temporary permit and got the card, signed receipt and I was done.
After lunch we went to Klincaid. I got the hand saw and thick gloves ready, to make more obstacles on our side of the wall - to cut more hazelnut branches and to bring the old chickenwire fence with barbed wire on top from the other end - but no, the starlings were finished with the early sweet cherry tree, and the neighbor was satisfied with the one that's closer to the fence. So I got out the big ladder (though technically it's outside, but actually in the big shed, behind the huge pile of cut branches which were supposed to be the fuel for last year's rakija) and we started picking. Excellent, early sort, we ate a lot and gathered more than 30kg.
In the evening at Dragana's, 48th frendz parti, no camera again, just shot this ad at the supermarket's noticeboard, of which I was warned the other day. That's the text that the gypsy teams of recyclers (of sorts) shout from their cars, roaming the streets daily, with all the inventive violence against the language - mixed up cases, genders, singular vs plural, wrong accents, none of which matters (now also in written form). The text should be "kupujem stare perjane jastuke i dunje, staro gvožđe, stare šporete, veš mašine, frižidere, zamrzivače, televizore" (repeating "I buy" was omitted here). What matters is that it's loud, to be heard well and far while they cruise the area, every day, hoping that some appliance will be declared junk today, and offered to them to buy off. There's a persistent rumor that they're also staking out the area, scouting for anything to steal (themselves or to sell a tip, who knows). They shaped up over the last ten years - they don't drive clunky old ladas anymore, now it's white vans, and instead of squealy megaphones they have good amplifiers, which is some progress, but unfortunately now you hear what and how they say.
Of course, as soon as I wrote this down, the dežurni for our area has switched (they seem to have some turf sharing agreement), with awfully bad shout horn, sounds as if forced through a tin toy horn, luckily incomprehensible now.
I took another rakija from the archive, the 2020.4 tutifruti (i.e. from 4th cask), but after the roast Dragana and Borče switched to wine again, and she did not switch to beer, but stayed with me on Dragana's quince, which was weaker than our standard, but was nice and smooth. That idiot is trying to sue Dragana again, to wrestle out the apartment, even though he already wasted ten years on that and smoked it each time. Along the way her leg is swollen again, the one she broke and her ankle was in dozen pieces back in 1985 when her driver was slat drunk and she took it on her to drive home from Petrovaradin. She wasn't drinking, just tired then, and they got as far as Žabalj when they crashed. She was three months in a cast... and we heard (for at least the third time) the story of the dežurni doctor (whom she knew well) who came to see that she has a good night's sleep before the surgery. She was chock full of tranquilizers but still couldn't sleep, so he brought 0,2 liters of some rakija for her and some for himself, and made her drink all of it. And it worked.
I remember that this time I was able to keep everyone concentrated on a long joke I was telling, and even managed to deliver the punchline. The only problem was that ten minutes later I couldn't remember which joke it was, and still can't.
Stayed until 1:30, got our cabbie.
Joda is under the sweet cherry tree, which is attacked by some lice and starlings. The lice eat the young leaves, at the branch tips, which we don't mind, as they make it grow slower, and it's already too big. The slower it grows, the better. But something drips from those tips, a combination of juice from the fruit the starlings have nicked, and lice shit. But I didn't take it to wash today, cherrypicking first. We didn't make sweet cherry rakija yet, but those who tried it (it's a specialty in Hungary) praise it. We'll see.
On tenth I took the van to have the AC fixed, which they fixed twice already - two years ago it lasted a week, last year just four days, even though they said they pressure tested it and found no leaks. So whatever it is, do it right this time. The guy who got to work on it was my namesake, the guy who bought the saxo. And he said this is a rottex, here, this is the dryer and these two aluminium tubes go to the two coolers, and they are falling apart, and connect to a steel fitting... if he just tried to unscrew, he'd get shards. If you can find the parts... or else this is nothing, we didn't do a thing, no charge.
I tasked Nina with finding the parts, as she was the one who always complained about the van, and knows her ways around car parts, so may as well contribute. Which will probably come to nothing - the very next day I heard we should rather take Joda to Lena's wedding. Then I told her that its AC also doesn't work, but can probably be fixed by just refilling, as the previous owner thought it should work lickety split, and even went to Greece with it last summer, so it must have leaked in winter. We'll see.
In the afternoon I took out the big ladder and picked that shorn sweet cherry on the street, where we chopped off lower branches because the kids kept tearing them. Excellent, the fruit is of those that burst in your mouth. Though not much of it got eaten, the novelty has worn off already and it's not interesting now. Picked also the sour cherry on the corner, which is inside those 60cm between the neighbor facing wall and the actual borderline, so it's technically ours. I picked one branch from the neighbor's tree too, counting on him to do likewise with the branches from ours which grow on his side. That's how it goes.
BTW, the 60cm rule was brought about in times of Austro-Hungary, when the favorite method of horse theft was to go through neighbor's barn, tear the connecting wall and drag the horses out. So no buildings should have common walls.
The sweet cherries are better to eat; sour cherries we put into the barrel for rakija, to ferment.
On eleventh I finally washed the Joda, though the last night's rain has washed away all the sticky stuff, which was probably mostly sugar. I brought that special brush, bought 67 years ago to wash the fića, and scrubbed what compressor won't. Of course, there was some little rain in the afternoon.
One of the girls, probably Linda, made this drawing of Joda and saxo, side by side. Lacking in details, it does show the general shape and relative sizes.
On UA a dispute runs for days between one guy from Toronto and pretty much anyone who bothers to reply, on the subject of crappy programmers. He started several threads on the same subject, and in almost each one of them he managed to get into a quarrel with someone, most frequently Jan. Anyone who disagrees with him and does not consider his word to rank with the holy writ and absolute truth, is generally an idiot, blind fool, ignoramus etc etc, and Jan is also accused of harrassing him.
And then Jan writes to me on skype that this guy used to work at Firriver for about three weeks, before my time, around 2005, on reluctant recommendation by James, and in these three weeks he contributed a dozen lines, but demanded that all the framework be granulated - one class or function, one file. Which would be possible, that's two weeks work, provided that nobody looks at emails or anything else while that lasts. No other way out, he got fired. I actually know the guy personally, we had a beer back in 2002 in Providence or whatever is the other side of St Louis, where that conference was. Looked regular then.
"He got my wrath recently when he declared he had worked with me and people were laughing at my code and clients were dumping ideas as unworkable. The client was that old clinic in Toronto and they are still a client today, and knowing the people there at the time, none of them would do anything he suggested. "
Then we discussed what to do with the guy. If we put him on ignore list, he'll count that as a victory; if we keep trying to reason with him and deny his assertions, we'd be feeding a troll.
Then I got an idea. I answered one of his 200 messages thus:
There's no problem, you have achieved a great thing here.
For the rest of my days, the words "crappy coder" will be associated with your name. And you worked diligently, over many days, to strengthen that association.
Might not be what you intended, but it's not a bug, it's an unintended consequence
Jan said to that that the guy's gonna go bonkers on me for this. Well, who fucks him. Then we went to voice, and talked for half an hour. Said he just finished a build of v7.07 of Feds and gave himself the rest of the week off (yeah, right, friday 15:30). So, how are things? Well, Das has 14 people in his office, two of which code in fox, so he can offload some work, they're already ten months in. Das not just has no time to code, he doesn't even do support anymore, just manages the office, and seems to be doing it quite fine. On the other hand, Toronto office is a complete mess. Jan not just has no clue of who's who, does even not know their number this week. And don't mention any portals or web, I get a rash. This Jevgenij guy is such a sleaze, I have to defent Kees about twice a week (this is where I chimed in, raising it to sleaze squared). And, ah, btw, in a few days it's Suez's 50th birthday, you could greet him. Nope, will not do, when Laura left and he became the product manager, he completely went to the dark side, I couldn't recognize him. We were pals before, but then he became somebody else, whom I don't know. When I left and went through skype to clean up the contacts list, I deleted him too.
On 12th we went over to Bačka, to attend this year's remembrance service for Teja. Quite modest, barely ten of us, the priest sings well and, of course, I strive to not hear the text, because it's the usual advertising pro domo sua. They are all kind of religious, crossing themselves at all the proper moments, their younger son recites očenaš in the end and then again before the lunch.
The lunch is at the same place as last year, of course much more relaxed now. And oh they have a new baby, we didn't know, cute both the mom and the girl, there - some benefit from all that IVF. Interesting folks - heard a few stories about bosnian brides, how one of them was just visiting here, saw a young electrician up the pole, three days later she's already married and needs to cook her first lunch. The clash of civilizations - she dosn't even know what's parsley what's parsnip what's carrot, and has never seen tomato sauce. And Teja also married on the quick - she met uncle on my first birthday, and at some point they went for a walk and... it was a long walk. They returned with a decision to get married. Strange times.
Went with them then to their place in Gardinovci. Jaca sat with us, because I forgot where to turn, we haven't been there since 22-I-2013.. The house is not just spruced up, they made it a real count's court. They didn't lower the ceilings, still 3m. And on the outside it still looks like a classic peasant's manor. Jaca is looking quite good, and her husband has lost a lot of self, they impress with their good shape both.
Joda hits the road nicely, comfortable, just to have the AC fixed. I really feel like traveling somewhere. Anywhere. Took it to pressure wash (self-service, in my old street, by the railroad, west tip of once bager), used even that old brush, feels like new now.
On thirteenth in the evening Borče called saying Dragana had an ultrasound shot and they found something on her liver, so she'd rather that we don't meet unless we insist, but even then she wouldn't drink. Of course we won't meet under such conditions, makes no sense. We have, just in case, tested the first cask of last year's tutifruti, which didn't sit right on first try. This time it did, excellent, that's what we'll do next time. And then we can stop taking rakija to degustations, because they are not that anymore, we all drink what we want. Last time they went rose wine, Tikveš of course, while we stayed on Dragana's quince, which was weaker than we're used to, but tasted nice and went smoothly.
Mentions: 22-I-2013., bager, dežurni, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Feds, fića, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), fox, frendz parti, James Olsen, Jan Brenkelen, Jasmina Sentović (Jaca), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jevgenij Nosorowetz, Joda, Kees de Cock, Klincaid, lada, Laura O'Hare, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Mohandas Raj (Das), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), rakija, saxo, Suez Lima, tutifruti, UbiquAgora (UA), Vesela Senić (Teja), in serbian
25-VIII-2021 - 25-III-2026